Modern visitors to Israel who travel the road north
from Jerusalem toward Shechem notice clay-ovens next to some houses along the
roadside.
Many prefer to cook in these out-door
ovens rather than on their electric or propane gas stoves.
Ovens like these have been around
since ancient times. In the biblical period each village had a common oven.
Since villagers were often members of a very large, extended family, these common ovens were family ovens.
The common fuel
for the oven was something that was more plentiful than wood: camel or donkey
dung.
One of the duties
each young girl had to learn was to collect the dung, mix salt in it, and mold it
into patties to be left in the sun to dry.
In the Middle
East and many Third World countries, such dung patties are still used as fuel
today.
A slab of salt was placed at the base of
the oven and upon it the salted dung patty.
Salt has catalytic properties which cause
the dung to burn.
Eventually the salt slab loses its
catalytic ability and becomes useless.
Or as Jesus says,
"It is good for nothing but to be thrown outside where it can still
pro-vide a sure footing in a muddy road?'
This is the Mediterranean
cultural imagery Jesus has in mind when he says: "You, my disciples, are
the salt, that is, catalyst for the earth-oven."
(In the Aramaic
and Hebrew languages which Jesus spoke, one and the same word means “earth” and
“clay oven.”
To be salt for the “earth -oven” is to
start fires and make them burn.
If Jesus’
disciples do this, they will also become “light of the earth.”
Catholics in the
United States have become afraid of “starting fires.”
We have achieved
a certain status in wealth and possessions, and we like the status quo.
Let’s not rock any boats.
Too many of us
want to come to church and hear a nice homily that will let us return to our
comparatively comfortable lives for the rest of the week.
We really don’t
want to hear our pastor and our church tell us how evil and uncivilized is the
war that’s going on.
We really don’t
want to hear our pastor and our church talk to us about money and immigration
reform, homeless and food stamps.
But the fact is that Jesus started fires
and created light.
Back then some saw and understood.
Others got burnt and put to death.
Today some see
and understand that disciples must be people who start fires and create light.
Others today
don’t get burnt and put to death, but they suffer the fate of those whom Jesus
called “hypocrites.”
In Jesus’s time
the word meant “actor.”
These people
today, like those in Jesus’s time, take their lines from scripture, but it is
hardly the script by which they live.
They are people afraid to start fires,
and thus, people who create no light in
our world.
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