Mark 10:32-45
October 21, 2012
William G. Carter
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came
forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we
ask of you.”And he said to them, “What is it you want me
to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at
your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking.
Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism
that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are
able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with
the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant,
but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”
When the ten heard
this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the
Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their
great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among
you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of
all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but
to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Through twenty centuries, the church
has usually painted a pretty picture of the twelve original disciples of Jesus.
Pious people have named churches after them, often referring to the first
disciples as the rocks upon which Christ has built his church. You have heard
of Saint Peter’s Cathedral. There is a monastery of Saint Thaddeus in Iran. With
incense in the air, I have even heard somebody say, “Pray for us Saint Judas
Iscariot, patron of all Christ’s betrayers.”
Yet anybody who hears the Gospel of
Mark's stories about the disciples will wonder if they were saints at all. Mark
gives us a tinted picture of who they were and what they wanted. Sure, the
disciples walked the road with Jesus. They listened as he taught. They watched
as he did signs and wonders. They followed where he led. However, according to
Mark, they never really got the point. In fact, they usually look foolish.
Today we hear about James and John
scurrying up to Jesus while the others weren't looking. "Teacher,"
they said, "we want you to do whatever we ask." Hear that for what it
is: that is a shameless request. Those two brothers really didn't have the
right to ask for a blank check. Jesus, in his eternal patience, decided to
sound them out. "What do you want?" he said. They replied, "On
the day when you enter your glory, when you ascend as King of Kings and Lord of
Lords, at the great moment when you sit upon the throne over heaven and earth, we
want to sit at your right and at your left."
Well, it was a ridiculous request .
. . and when the other ten disciples heard about it, they got very angry with
James and John. They were upset, not because they thought it was the wrong request
to make, but because James and John asked for it first. Those two lowly
fishermen wanted two premiers seats in the Kingdom of God, two thrones of honor
for that day when Jesus will finally shine in the fullness of his glory.
This is what the Gospel of Mark reveals
about the twelve disciples who stood closest to Jesus. They sound like children
who play "King of the Hill." They shamelessly tried to scramble to
the top of the heap. We hear them beg for power, and shake our heads in
disbelief.
It is jarring to hear such blatant
self-promotion. We don’t expect that in the church, because out in the world,
such attitudes are present every day. The world we know encourages us to take
the initiative, climb the ladder, and push to the front of the line.
"Blessed are the aggressive," says our culture, "for they will
get what they want." If that means pulling the boss aside and making a
private pitch, then that is what must be done. Like it or not, this is how the
world works. How strange to see the same attitudes in the church, even if they
may not be immediately obvious.
Will Willimon is a a Methodist
pastor. He once wrote about power and politics in his denomination. Methodist
preachers, he notes, are under the care of a bishop. Bishops, in turn, are
Methodist preachers who are elected by fellow Methodist preachers after an
extensive campaign for the office in which the candidate tries not to be caught
campaigning. As he observes,
It is a long-standing Methodist
tradition that bishops must not appear to have sought their office and, once
elected, the new bishop must make a public declaration that "I didn't seek
this office and I didn't want it but, once the Lord calls . . . Methodist
preachers take all of this with a grain of salt, the same way Baptist
congregations have learned to be somewhat skeptical when one of their preachers
moves on to a better church claiming, "I hate to leave this church and I
would rather stay here, but the Lord calls." Baptists note that the Lord
rarely calls someone out of one church into another church unless that church
has a higher salary. Methodists have likewise noted that there have been few
preachers who, once they are elected bishop, turn the job down.[1]
The curious thing about Willimon’s
words is that, shortly after he made that crack, he was elected the United
Methodist bishop of North Alabama. And he didn’t turn down the job.
"Teacher, we want you to put us
on your right and on your left. But keep it quiet. Don't make it too obvious.
Others may become offended that we asked first." By telling us this story,
Mark knows what you and I know: anybody is prone to the same desire for
privilege and protected status. We want a Jesus who will give us what we want,
a Lord who can shower a little power on us, a Savior who can make us better
than we are.
It happens in congregations. I
remember reading a book that a friend gave me when I became a minister. He
wanted to knock the crust off my naiveté, so he gave me this tongue-in-cheek
book. According to the book, here is the first principle of church life: "Despite
the pious things we say, at any given time, less than five percent of any group
in the church is operating with purely Christian motivation. The other
ninety-five percent is asking, 'What's in it for me?’”[2]
Oh, I read those words, and thought,
"Oh, no. That's not true. Christian people are inherently generous and
gracious. They are always eager to help, remaining free from selfish motives
and concerns about getting their own way." Then I tried to gather a group to
volunteer at a homeless shelter, and one after another said, "What's in it
for me?" Somewhat discouraged, I attempted to gather adults to make meals
for the homebound. Each one said, "What can I get out of it?"
"Teacher, give us what we want.
Give us the seats of glory." Jesus seems naïve when he replies, "You
don't know what you're asking." We know perfectly well what we are asking.
We want God to meet our unlimited, unchecked, unwarranted needs and help us get
ahead.
Yet in a deeper sense, any request for
cheap success reveals we do not know what kind of God we meet in Jesus.
"Look," he said to his disciples, "we are going up to Jerusalem.
And it's uphill all the way. The road is hard and difficult. We face painful
twists and turns. There will be suffering, humiliation, and death. There is no
easy road to glory. Are you able to drink this cup? Are you able to bear this
kind of baptism?"
James and John reply, "Sure, no
problem." But do they really know? Do we know?
Jesus came to proclaim the kingdom,
the mysterious reign of God that grows like a secret seed, ever so gently, ever
so silently, until it becomes the greatest of all plants. One morning, God
willing, we will wake up and see this gift of God and we will wonder how it
happened. We won't know. The kingdom grows in spite of us, in ways we cannot
comprehend.
The key is Jesus himself, who comes
with a kind of paradoxical, left-handed power. Recall what Jesus does in the
Gospel of Mark. One minute, he screams away the demonic forces that torment
human minds, telling them to hush. The next minute, he gathers little children
and lepers into the embrace of God. One day he shouts at wind and waves and all
the turbulent powers of an unruly creation. Another day he rides a humble
donkey into a hostile city. Once Jesus puts his fingers in the ears of someone
who has never heard the good news of God. Immediately he uses his words as a
scalpel for cutting away the cancerous lies that keep people from the health
which God intends.
In every way, Jesus Christ has come to
make a difference in this painful, haunted world. This is his mission. He has
come to serve, not to sit on a throne with dull-minded disciples on his right
and his left. He has come to give his life to pay off our ransom to the powers
and principalities, to set people free from all that can damage, hurt, and
destroy.
Are you able to drink that cup? Are
you able to share his baptism? Anybody who would follow Jesus must be a servant
as he is a servant. It requires a total change in how we live. If we want to
follow Jesus, we can't live for ourselves anymore. That’s what conversion looks
like. We must give our lives in service to others.
Richard Foster tells about receiving
a phone call from a friend. The friend's wife had taken the car, and he wanted
to know if Richard could take him on a number of errands. Richard was preparing
to teach a college class, but since the man was his friend he reluctantly
agreed. As he ran out the door, car keys in hand, he grabbed a book to read
along the way. It was a book by Dietrich Bonhoffer called Life Together.
Foster picked up his friend, and the
errands did not go well. There were plenty of stops and starts, traffic was
bad, and precious time kept ticking away. Finally they pulled into a parking
lot, the friend got out, and Richard stayed behind with his book. He opened it
to the bookmark, and read these words:
The second service that one should
perform for another in a Christian community is that of active helpfulness.
This means, initially, simple assistance in trifling, external matters. There
is a multitude of these things wherever people live together. Nobody is too
good for the meanest service. One who worries about the loss of time that such
petty, outward acts of helpfulness entail is usually taking the importance of
his own career too solemnly.[3]
Ah, God gets through sometimes. Just
when you are feeling so important, God gets through. Happens to me all the
time.
It happened at my high school
graduation. I was elected senior class president; I was so proud of myself. Of
course, my opponent was visiting Europe at the time of the election, so she
couldn’t really campaign. So I was the president. That meant I could give a
speech at graduation, an important speech by an important leader. I was so
proud of myself. Worked on that speech for weeks.
When the day came, and they called
out my name, I stood regally and moved toward the platform. As I climbed the
steps, my big feet started walking up the inside my graduation robe and I fell
flat on my face. Ever try to give a speech when 320 of your classmates are
laughing at you?
And then, when it was all over, my mother
said, “God did that, to make you humble.” Gee, thanks, Mom. So much for my big
moment.
To this day, I’m not sure I believe
that God make us to fall on our faces. I think we just do that naturally. And
if you’re living close to the ground, humble, it isn’t as far to fall. The word
“humility” comes from the word “humus,” as in the soil, as in, “your feet are flat
upon the ground.” You don’t think more highly of yourself than you need to.
This is a picture of how we follow
Jesus, the same Jesus who says, “I did not come to be served; I came to serve.”
No pretention. No arrogance. No ambition to prove his power. Mark says, one day
after another, Jesus went to the people where he could offer the most help. He
set all glory aside and did what he could for the benefit of the people around
him.
You know, we have people like that
in this church. A lot of people like that. They are tireless in doing what
needs to get done. I am reluctant to single anybody out, but there are so many
of you. Sometimes the service offered is quiet, behind the scenes, just a phone
call, or a greeting card, or a simple offer of support. Maybe it’s a delicious
meal made and delivered. Or a ride to a doctor, even a ride to a far-off
hospital. It happens all the time around here. God bless those who serve. Not
those who talk about serving, but those who actually do it. God bless you.
This is the ministry of Christ that
we do. We speak of the stewardship of our money, and that is critically
important. But there is also a stewardship of power, to be lived out in the
life of service. As Christ sets aside his glory, as he hides incognito in the
Galilean countryside, so he calls us to set aside all self-importance to make a
constructive difference in the places where we live, where we love, where we spend
our time.
Are you able? Can you drink that
cup? Share his baptism? To follow Jesus, in our time, in our place, means to
live for the benefit of other people. That’s why we are here. Not to stand out,
not to single out, but to serve.
Jesus still asks the questions: "Are
you able to drink my cup? Are you able to share my baptism? Are you able to
walk with me, giving yourself to others in a life of service?" If we dare
say yes, we must remember the road of discipleship is uphill all the way, and
it leads to the foot of the cross. Whoever would follow Jesus must follow him all
the way there. He never promised anything else.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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