Seasoning that Can Save You (Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

Linn Tonstad and Yii-Jan Lin discuss pedagogy, amputation, embodiment, and a worm in Mark 9:38-50. The text is appointed for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.

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Linn Tonstad is Associate Professor of Theology, Religion, and Sexuality at Yale Divinity School. Yii-Jan Lin is Associate Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School.

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Transcript

Voiceover Voice:

You know, I’ve heard the expression that the pinch of salt was left out of that person, as if they’re just not very interesting, but here it’s something even deeper.

Helena Martin:

This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.

This episode, we have Linn Tonstad, Associate Professor of Theology, Religion, and Sexuality, and Yii-Jan Lin, Associate Professor of New Testament. They’re discussing Mark 9:38-50, which is appointed for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21, in Year B. Here’s the text.

[Mark 9:38-50]

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

“If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Linn Tonstad:

There's a lot of weirdness in this passage, and I've thought about a lot of the different parts of it on many occasions. But I will say that in an ongoing way, I think a lot about the millstone line. Because as a teacher, I'm both terrified of that level of responsibility, and I also find it helpful in a way to be reminded that teaching is really serious business and that I better be careful. And, you know, it's not that I imagine I really have control over this, but that I think a lot about what is it to envision something like teaching. And of course, I'm reading that into lead these little ones astray, but nonetheless to envision something like teaching as a place that has that level of seriousness and responsibility attached to it. It's almost like I extricate the millstone from a lot of its associations but remind myself that it's something to take with that level of seriousness. And I think that's interesting in terms of what it says about how many of us live or have lived in relation to these texts at various points. Because I don't think anything that I'm doing with it there is lying here sort of in the text in that way and yet it's where texts come alive for us certain ways. I don't know how you enliven the weirder bits here.

Yii-Jan Lin: 

Yeah, I think it's interesting and I think it's, yeah, that you relate it to pedagogy is really on point because he's not saying, you know, it would be better for you if you did harm to one of these little ones, but rather if you caused one of them to sin, right? So, there's two very different things.  But it seems like the danger that is being alerted to here is causing them to sin or to err in some way. The strange bits to me would be if your hand causes you to sin, if your foot causes you to sin, an eye, et cetera, and you know, how far do you want to push the interpretation of this? And I always encourage students, perhaps leading them into error, but to think of this literally. To make it absolutely visceral and also, you know, to question what sin is. And it's interesting here, the Markan passage, it gets expanded in Matthew and Luke to be passages in the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain where we're talking about anger and divorce and, you know, adultery and those sorts of things. Here there is no social contextualizing. It's just sin and a very grim statement about the severity of it. And I don't know where to go with that. 

Linn Tonstad:

Yeah. This is where the moment of kind of uncertainty around where exactly origin may or may not have gone with this [laughter]. Sometimes history gives you something that's even better than you could have imagined, right? Did he cut it off? Question mark. 

Yii-Jan Lin:

Yeah. Took it really seriously according to some. 

Linn Tonstad: 

There's something about the detachability too, of parts that's being imagined here, because you are sort of, you remain without your parts in a certain sense, and if you're encouraging students to kind of take that quite literally then I suppose there is a point where we would imagine what is left. Especially given that the assumption is often that sin pervades the whole person, and it doesn't seem to in that way, right? There seem to be specific, separable parts that are the sin causing parts, and you can sequentially remove them.

Yii-Jan Lin:

Yeah. It almost seems like your body is your adversary, right? As, as a possible reading, right? Either in this struggle your foot causes you to sin in a purposeful, intentional way, or the fact that you have a foot is causing you to sin. In which case, why are we created in this way, right? That that's the case…

Linn Tonstad: 

Pre create without any of those dangerous parts. 

Yii-Jan Lin:

Then where are you? [laughter]

Linn Tonstad: 

Well, and then that connects to that really weird bit at the end with everyone and sacrifices and getting seasoned with salt, and if the salt loses its flavor. That one's easy enough. But what is going on with the sacrifices and the salt and so on? Is this the thing that gets added to you that makes you tasty, that makes you an acceptable edible? [laughter]

Yii-Jan Lin:

Yeah, I mean, if, you know, I've heard the expression that the pinch of salt was left out of that person, right? Like, as if they're just not very interesting. But here is something even deeper, right? Like, that's a condemnation, really. 

Linn Tonstad:

I've never heard that expression before, but I think that's a condemnation, too. [laughter]

Yii-Jan Lin:

Right. 

Linn Tonstad:

And quite a good one. 

Yii-Jan Lin: 

Yeah, these verses, people have mulled over them and don't know. What does it mean? Their worm never dies. I mean, that's also used in Hebrew Bible. And the fire is never quenched. Sounds horrible. Have salt in yourselves. Some sort of seasoning flavoring that can save you.

Linn Tonstad:

Yeah, how does the flavor save you, right? Have salt in yourselves and have peace with one another, or however the last line runs here. How does your saltiness lead to peace?

Yii-Jan Lin:

I have no idea. [Linn Tonstad laughs] Because I think often being salty, both literally and maybe figuratively in the, literally in the figurative sense of literal, obviously, being salty is not necessarily peace causing. It seems to be something more like, hold on to your specificity, be your own weird self, right? Or something like that. 

Linn Tonstad:

Yeah.

Yii-Jan Lin:

And, I mean, we seem to be speaking in a lot of non sequiturs here. Jesus does. We're talking about causing people to sin, then we're talking about tearing off parts that cause us to sin, and then we're salting with fire, and then have peace with each other. And also, there's a worm.

Linn Tonstad:

Yes 

Yii-Jan Lin:

There's a worm.

Linn Tonstad: 

Yeah. You know, one of the weirder things, of course, that theologians have liked to speculate on in the history of thinking around these things is, you know, what needs to be changed in order for something to be in a fire and not be consumed by the fire, right? What needs to, like, what blockages do you need? What shields? How do we imagine that something could, you know, a fire that doesn't, you know, get quenched since somehow, it's not, it's going on forever, right? Then maybe, maybe the worm is in the fire, right? Then the fire is just going on and yet the worm never gets eaten up by the fire or something like that.

Yii-Jan Lin:

Very strange. 

Linn Tonstad: 

How does any of this become possible? And, you know, Augustine, of course, likes to do the things where he's doing, you know, clearly there's all these other weird things that happen that I can't explain, so, this is probably just, you know, God being even more with the weird. [laughs] It's too bad we eventually discovered how the maggots get into the meat, right?

Yii-Jan Lin:

I wanted to ask you about what you thought of verse 40, when Jesus stops the disciples from stopping someone doing an exorcism. And he says, “whoever is not against us is for us.” And, you know, lately I've been hearing a lot of whoever is not for us is against us. So, I want to hear your thoughts on that politically or just thoughts. 

Linn Tonstad:

I mean, I really like that version of it, right? Because a lot of my work is against the making of certain kinds of us-them distinctions. And so here it's almost like a saying, if they haven't made themselves a ‘they’, don't make them a ‘they’. And so of course I like to, I like to read it that way. We know there's the parallel text, “whoever is not for us is against us” elsewhere. And I've always thought that one is a much more dangerous version of the text because it creates enemies where there aren't any, and this one de-enemifies or de-enmities. But I suppose that can also be a politically risky thing to do. 

Yii-Jan Lin:

But I like the avoidance of a categorization, at least, right? That you said a ‘they’, you don't have to create that.

Linn Tonstad:

I'm hugely for the vision of creating [ways] that work these days.

Yii-Jan Lin:

Yeah, for sure.

Linn Tonstad:

Which may be the impossible dream.  

Helena Martin:

Thanks for listening. You can visit our website for more Bible study resources: YaleBibleStudy.org.

Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. And our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.

We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.