Not To Be Served

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Ordinary 29/Pentecost 21B

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Text: Mark 10:35-45

³⁵James 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.” ³⁶And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” ³⁷And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” ³⁸But 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?” ³⁹They 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; ⁴⁰but 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.”

⁴¹When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. ⁴²So 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. ⁴³But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. ⁴⁵For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

“Truth or Dare!”

That is what the request that James and John make of Jesus sounds like to me. Not that I have a WHOLE BUNCH experience playing ‘Truth or Dare’… it was only the preferred game to play among us MK’s at mission meeting (yes, your Lottie Moon offerings at work) when it was raining and we couldn’t go outside.

It strikes me that the same principle was being applied here. Agree to something – whether saying or doing something – before you know what that is going to be. It sounds childish. Juvenile.

But these were grown men. You would expect more from them.

But they were going against a lifetime of conditioning. If you are conditioned to something it means you are expecting it, you are looking for it, you are locked into it. The understanding is that it is a foregone conclusion that ‘that thing’ WILL COME TO PASS.

In this case, James and John were conditioned to believe in and expect to see a Messiah who embodied all they were used to seeing in a Ruler – a Leader – a KING – up until they met Jesus.

I would propose to you that not much has changed over the last two thousand years in terms of what we look for in a leader. We look for charisma, for dynamism, for strength expressed both physically and emotionally, as well as spiritually. We look for someone who elicits our devotion, our commitment, someone who will stand and be firm in the face of opposition.

Someone who looks like … Caesar.

We are just wired that way.

That is why it is so difficult to shift – to effect the sea-change in our expectations that God had coming in the person of Jesus. His brand, his form, his method of leadership is simply too counterintuitive, too out of sync, too contrary to what we understand as BEING leadership.

When he asked James and John, in response to THEIR request, if they would be willing to drink the cup that he drinks, to be baptized with the baptism that he was going to be baptized with, you can almost SEE the parallel thoughts forming in their minds as they were speaking and hearing the question: Jesus, to whatever degree he was capable, was asking them if they’d be willing the suffer the same fate (suffer being the operative word) that he was pretty sure he’d be facing in the not too-distant future – understanding that it would involve suffering, pain, and death. THAT was what he was asking them.

THEY on the other hand, were hearing something more along the lines of what they were envisioning when they approached him with THEIR request at the beginning of the passage – their thought seemed to be that Jesus was asking them ‘are you willing to “suffer” the ‘trials and tribulations’ that come with being overlords of masses of population, and leaders of armies and navies, suffering by living in governmental palaces and having every whim attended to. In their world, the only way they were capable of envisioning at that point, what Jesus was asking them was overshadowed by the thought that they would have power; raw, complete, total power – over the life and death of all the subjects of the kingdom of Judah. THAT is what was locked into their minds – THAT was what they were conditioned to understand. When they ask about joining Jesus in his glory, they are not asking in the spiritual sense of glory. They are asking in the very earthy, carnal, physical sense of ‘glory’.

By this point in the conversation – which was happening while they were walking along the road to Jerusalem – the other disciples had overheard just enough to understand that James and John were angling for the good seats.

And they were jealous. And they began to argue.  Children often do. I know I did. On 18 hour drives through the desert you run out of reading material pretty quickly – when it is mostly comic books.

But Jesus points them around. It is actually a fairly stark reminder that they are acting contrary to what God had for the people of Israel in terms of governance. He reminds them that they have chosen to structure themselves after the surrounding principalities and kingdoms, not the way God had originally planned for them to govern themselves.

He goes on to underscore the contrariness of their model of leadership according to how he was teaching them: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all ⁴⁵For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”.

Realize that he is using the word “slave” in a context where it is not a euphemism for a practice and a way of life that has for the most part, thankfully, long since disappeared, with a few notable exceptions, but he is speaking that word into a context where he very likely would have gestured to an actual slave who was walking past them in the other direction, carrying his master’s bags as they traveled in the opposite direction.  

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? And I don’t mean the question rhetorically. I’m using ‘church’ in the sense of ‘us who are sitting and standing in this room here this morning’, not ‘the cloud of people who associate with this building on occasion.’ Be thinking what does this mean for ME, for YOU, for US.

Think of it this way:

For fire to be fire, it has to burn. It has to be hot. If it’s not hot, it’s not a fire. Yesterday at Carolyn’s, we had a fire going on the beach. As the afternoon progressed, a pretty stiff breeze began to blow off the water, and it blew the smoke back towards the trees. But you could stand anywhere around the fire and you could feel the heat – whether you were upwind or downwind, or beside it on either side.

For ice to be ice, it has to be cold. If you hold an ice cube in your fingers for any length of time, you eventually start to feel the discomfort of your fingers beginning to freeze.  If you held something in your hands and called it ice, but it didn’t feel cold, you would know it wasn’t ice.

For a person to be a follower of Christ, he or she has to be a servant – to have a servant’s heart – to be that giving and that submitted – or he or she is not a disciple.

That’s the starkness of what Jesus is telling James and John and the rest of the disciples.

How do you picture what it means to be a follower of Christ? Is it … is it to be in front of hundreds or thousands on a Sunday morning, or is it to be in front of faithful servants regardless of the number?

Is it to be willing to stretch yourself for your neighbor – whether that neighbor is making good choices or not –  in the name of Christ?

Is it being willing to give of your time and effort, and finances, when seeing the result of that giving may not be in our lifetime?

The first shall be last, the last shall be first. 

The “upside-down-ness” of the kingdom is clear in relation to how we have chosen to structure our idea of power.

Let’s pray.

In this season, especially, O God, we are watching as our society plays out this acclaim of leadership and power. And it is a struggle to not model ourselves after it, because it permeates every aspect of society.

But you, O Lord, have called us to a different way: a way of reverent obedience, radical submission, total service.

Make us faithful, O God, even as our Lord Jesus was. For it is through him that we pray.

Amen.