NOTES for Mar 9:50

How did people discover the useful properties of salt? First, through instinct, perhaps, for animals also lick salt where they find it. Then through taste, as small additions of salt make food tastier. Then, salting food in advance, they came upon salt's preserving action. Perhaps it all happened differently, but salt truly has a number of properties very useful for people, which made it almost a treasure in former times.

Several times Jesus uses the image of salt in His preaching. In what we have read today, the most important thought is that there is salt itself as the highest degree of saltiness; any "under-salting" can be corrected by it, but if salt itself "loses its strength," nothing can correct it. There is something absolutely necessary for our life: relationship with God. Everything else can be "salted," can acquire meaning, through this relationship, but if this relationship is lost, nothing can replace it. Therefore Jesus calls His disciples to preserve this "salt," this relationship with God, and the reverse side of this relationship turns out to be right relations with one another, peace.