You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
There
is a pattern developing here in the Gospel of Mark. It is quite a simple one too: Jesus talks to the disciples about his
impending death, and they ignore the plain language of what he is saying,
seeming not to have a clue about where they are ultimately headed with him.
Three
times it has happened! The first time
Jesus =mentioned dying, Peter jumped all over him for his doom-and-gloom
mentality, and Jesus in turn rebuked Peter for his insolence and deep
misreading of the situation – “Get you behind me, Satan!”
The
second time Jesus does one of his death predictions, the disciples get into a
big “hush hush” discussion about which one of them is the greatest. However, Jesus could not help but overhear their
conversation and takes them to task, explaining in no uncertain terms what
really constitutes greatness.
Today,
in the verses preceding our Gospel reading, Jesus tries a third time to bring
his followers up to speed. “Listen to me
carefully (he says). We’re on our way up
to Jerusalem. When we get there, the Son of Man will be betrayed to the
religious leaders and scholars. They will sentence him to death. Then they
will hand him over to the Romans, who will mock and spit on him, give him the
third degree, and kill him. After three days he will rise alive.”
And
for the third time, his haunting words simply fly right over the heads of the
Twelve. We call them “disciples,” but
perhaps, as Methodist preacher Alyce MacKenzie said tongue-in-cheek, it would
be more accurate to call the “duh-ciples” in light of all the stupid ways they
react to the most profound things that Jesus says.
This
time, James and John (You might remember them as two of the first disciples Jesus
chose – “come with me, and I will make you fish for people” – and so they should
have known better.) came to Jesus and made what was a pretty stupid and
irrelevant request under the circumstances:
“Teacher (they asked), we have something we want you to do for us.”
Jesus,
always open to possibilities, answered, “What is it? I’ll see what
I can do.”
“O goody!” they must have thought. “This could be better than a genie giving us
three wishes! We had best ask away before he changes his mind.”
So
the conversation continued. “Arrange
it,” they demanded, “so that we will be awarded the highest places of honor in
your glory—one of us at your right, the other at your left.”
Or
- “Yo, Jesus. “We have this blank check
. . . would you mind just signing your name right here so we can cash it
in?”
James
and John are bold and brash – and maybe shrewd and crafty to boot. Maybe they want a shortcut. Maybe, as religious
blogger Carson Witnauer speculates: “Their message is, ‘Hey Jesus, you know how
we’ve been helping you out here in your ministry? Well, how about a little
favor in return – give us whatever
we ask for.’’’
Or
maybe they are insecure. Perhaps for
once they had heard and understood exactly what Jesus had said about his
impending death. In their anxiety, they
just wanted to be sure they were taken care of in the aftermath.
Or
then again, maybe they are deeply faithful. That is what Episcopal priest
Barbara Brown Taylor speculates as she “acknowledges the possibility of their
‘gross ambition,’ but their question may also illustrate their profound confidence
in Jesus and his final triumph.
No matter how bad things may look or sound,
James and John ‘are so sure of Jesus' final victory that they sign up to go
with him.’” (Kate Huey)
Craftiness? Anxiety?
Stupidity? Faithfulness? We do not know for sure what motivates these
two. However, if nothing else, you have got to admire the two disciples for
their honesty.
Surely,
however, Jesus must have thought they were a tad on the audacious side. Maybe that is why he quickly responded, “You
have no idea what you’re asking. Are you capable of drinking the cup I drink,
of being baptized in the baptism I’m about to be plunged into?”
Not
intuiting what lay behind those words of impending anguish, James and John
blithely responded, “Sure, why not?”
They
did not get it; they just did not get it.
So Jesus ended the conversation by remarking that he did not have the
final say over who would sit where when the kingdom finally was
established. God is responsible for the
seating chart.
Interesting! You know, I cannot help but wonder if Jesus’
words came back to haunt James and John when, from a distance, some months in
the future, they saw our rabbi hanging from a cross, the only smacking of a
kingdom being the crown of thorns that cut into his forehead, a petty thief similarly
crucified to his right, and another nameless criminal in agony on his
left. “Can you drink the cup of
suffering that I must drink?”
It
was about this time that the other ten disciples got wind of James and John carrying
on their power brokering and jockeying for position in the kingdom to
come. The others were miffed, to put it
bluntly. And can you really blame them? Surely they too had many of the same
questions, if not the presumption that sacrificing everything to follow this
man Jesus should merit some sort of reward Perhaps they merely lacked the
hutzpah of the two erstwhile fishermen.
Jesus,
however, used this situation that bordered on anger and was rooted in a basic misunderstanding
of his mission to make a point – a point he had made many times before in
parable and sermon and evening conversation, a point about the Kingdom he so
desperately was attempting to usher in, a point about God and what was
important to God, a point about what it means to be made in God’s image, to be
sons and daughters of the Holy One, a point about the world they knew and the
world as it was meant to be, a point about power, real power, the power of
love, the power of generosity of spirit.
“You’ve
observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” Jesus said, “and when
people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to
be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant, and if
any one of you wants to be first, he must be the slave of all.”
Real
power, Jesus seems to say, lies not in the wealth we accumulate, in the
spacious homes we own, in the cars we drive.
Real power lies not in insulating ourselves from the daily lives of
others in our world, but real power is the courage to leave this building
behind – this sanctuary, this place of holy safe keeping - and be of service -
washing feet, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, rising up in
righteous anger about income inequality.
Real
power means letting go of that which makes us so secure in our lives. Theologian Marcus Borg highlights two images
in the passage we read – the image of the “cup of suffering” and that of
“baptism.” He writes that those are
traditional metaphors of death – and so Jesus is asking James and John if they
are up to dying with him – a question he also asks of us because such dying
lies at the core of our Christian faith.
Borg
goes on to say that he means "a dying of the self as the center of its own
concern" and "a dying to the world as the center of security and
identity."
That kind of dying, Borg says, leads to transformation:
"a change so sharp that it can be described as dying to an old life and
being born into a new life."
Real
power then means allowing ourselves to be transformed from slaves to our
culture to servants for all the world.
It means recognizing that the Kingdom, which we say we so desire, is
predicated not on the values of our culture (achievement, whoever dies with the
most toys wins) but on our ability to give and to serve. The kingdom is predicated on our ability to
love and to be generous in all we do. Thus, for Christians, generous serving – loving
ministry - is not optional, something to be tacked onto our schedules if we can
spare the time. Service is the heart of the Christian life.
You
know, we come to church for a variety of complicated reasons, a strange mix of
spirituality and social contacts. We
come for support and for community and because our kids are acting up. As Methodist pastor Dale Miller notes, “People come to church with their consumer hats on, asking, ‘What
will I get for the investment of my time at church? What services can I expect
to get for my pledge dollar?’”
Oh, sure, church is a place for getting – getting support,
getting community, getting our kids straightened out, getting a good pot roast
dinner every now and then. However, if
we take Jesus’ words to his disciples to heart, at its most vital, church is
less a place of getting and more a place for giving. Church is a place where generosity of time
and resources is highly valued – in fact, is essential to the church’s
survival. Church at its best and most vital is a place
where serving is a reality. It is a
place where service - this heart of the Christian life – is boldly exposed and
explored and, above all, affirmed. And
maybe in the giving, we get what it is that we are really seeking – a closer
relationship with God and with the loving community surrounding us.
The power of a church – like the power of the disciples - lies
in its ability to serve – not in its building or in its accumulated wealth –
but in its ability to serve. The power
of the church then lies in its congregation – in their willingness both to
serve and to generously support those ministries of service.
This church that you call your spiritual home needs your
generosity if it is to be powerful, if it is to survive. It needs the generosity of each one of you,
and no one is exempt from that need. This
church needs your time – as a Sunday School teacher for our children, as a
deacon, as a trustee. This church needs
your financial support on an ongoing pledged basis.
It we want this church to be great, it will need to be first
in the many and varied ways we serve others.
If we want this church to be a place where even Jesus would feel at
home, we – all of us – have a responsibility to fashion it into a place filled
with opportunities to be of service.
Is that you, Lord,
changing the diaper in
the nursing home,
holding the spoon for the woman in her wheelchair,
wiping
down the toilet and the floor;
is that you
serving the dinner at the
homeless shelter,
sorting the cans at the food bank,
mowing the aged neighbour’s
lawn;
is that you, Lord,
bandaging the wounds of
the bomb victim,
erecting the tent for the refugees,
handing out the water and
the food;
is that you
driving the patient to the
treatment center,
sitting through the night with the family,
making the call to
the forgotten friend;
is that you, Lord,
lighting the candle in
the darkness,
keeping vigil for compassion and justice,
loving in us and through
us and with us
until the world that you love has been
changed?
“Whoever
wants to be great must become a servant, and if any one of you wants to be
first, he must be the slave of all.”
Let’s all of us – all of us – make our church great – not because we
have to or because we should, but because the church is who we are – loving
children of God. As eighteenth-century
Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Secker said, “God has three sorts of servants
in the world: some are slaves, and serve (God) from fear; others are hirelings,
and serve for wages; and the last are sons [and daughters], who serve because
they love.” And when we serve generously
in love, we receive back more than we could ever imagine.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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