22nd
Sunday after Pentecost
October 21, 2018
Mark 10:35-45
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlZtXtJ6ZfQ
)
Are we there yet? [pause] Are we there
yet? [pause] Are we there yet? If you’ve ever been on a road trip with
children, or people with no sense of time passing, then chances are good you’ve
heard this question. It might even be that no more than two minutes after you
left your house, someone has asked for a snack, or a bathroom stop, or a
cigarette break if you’re traveling with a smoker. When our kids were 3 and 1,
my husband sent me a on a trip by myself to see my best friend from college,
and it was so different traveling by
myself! Quieter. No one asking for anything. No one holding on to me. No one to
worry about or keep track of but myself. However, we’re social people. We tend
to travel with others when we have the opportunity. And Jesus traveled with
others; he was not a lone wolf. The twelve disciples plus other followers went
with him as he traveled around, teaching and healing.
We’re still in Mark 10, but there’s a
pattern that began back in chapter 8 that I want to draw your attention to.
Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels, only 16 chapters long. Chapter 8 is
the halfway point. And in chapter 8, after some teaching and healing, while on
the way from Bethsaida to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus tells the disciples for the
first time that he’s going to suffer, be rejected by the authorities, executed
by the government, and will rise again after three days. He does this again in
chapter 9, while passing through Galilee, from the mount of transfiguration to
Capernaum. And Jesus does it a third time in chapter 10, while passing through
the region of Judea on the way to Jerusalem, in the verses immediately before
the section we read today about James and John.
Three is a key number in Christianity,
as you may have noticed. It’s the number of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. It’s how many days Jesus spent in the grave, between the cross and the
resurrection. It’s how many times Satan tempted Jesus before he began his
public ministry and three years is how long that ministry lasted. Jonah spent three
days in the belly of a whale. Three visitors came to tell Abraham and that he
and Sarah, in their old age, were going to have a baby. Three is a holy number,
representing wholeness, completeness, and perfection. So, here in the middle of
Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples three times what’s going to happen next.
He’s going to be betrayed, handed over to the authorities, given the death
penalty, and three days later will come back to life.
Jesus knows this is a conversation topic
for a trip. This isn’t a dinner table conversation, or one to have in passing,
or even one to have on a mountainside or in a boat. This is one to have while
traveling. Road trip conversations are often different than ones you have every
day. Road trip conversations are when your mind wanders and you get to think
about different things and process things that you hadn’t finished thinking
about before. In a car, it’s time in a confined space with your travel
companions, who are a captive audience, and it can become a time to catch up,
to share deeper thoughts beyond logistics and day-to-day details. Now, Jesus
and his disciples aren’t in a car or a plane or train, they’re walking. Not
everyone is going to hear all parts of the conversation because some are
walking in front, some behind, some to the side, some are walking and talking
with someone else. The second and third times Jesus has this conversation with
the disciples, Mark says that Jesus actually takes the twelve aside to tell
them. There are no eavesdroppers from the crowd. It’s just the thirteen of
them. They’ve been traveling, thinking about what they’ve seen and heard, maybe
lost in their own thoughts, maybe shooting the breeze with a fellow traveler,
and Jesus tells them, look, this is what’s going to happen. The advantage is
that they are traveling, they have time and space to think about this, they
don’t have to move on to the next thing immediately. There is value in the
journey itself, rather than as an ends to a means.
However, here’s the thing, all three
times Jesus tells them about his impending death and resurrection, the
disciples have trouble dealing. Even though Jesus has given them this time and
space of a journey to process it, each time they still struggle. The first
time, it’s Peter, who after Jesus shares, rebukes Jesus. And that’s when Jesus
rebukes Peter back with the line of “Get behind me Satan! You do not have in
mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” That’s chapter 8, Peter’s
just plain in denial. No way, Jesus, this is just not happening. The second
time, in chapter 9, Mark says the disciples “did not understand what it meant
and were afraid to ask him about it.” Jesus has said this twice now, and he
sounds a little cuckoo. So they talk with each other instead and when they get
to their destination, Jesus asks them what they were arguing about on the trip.
The disciples “keep quiet because on the way there had argued about who was the
greatest.”[1]
Jesus tells them he’s about to be killed by the government and they’re
jockeying for position for who’ll be the next leader of the group. They’re
afraid to ask Jesus about it and so they focus on themselves. Who’s the best
disciple? Who does the most for Jesus? Who sacrificed the most?
Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish
priest who founded the Jesuit order in the 16th century. Before he
became a priest he was a soldier and after being seriously wounded, spent some
time convalescing in a castle where the only books were about the lives of the
saints. Ignatius was bored enough that he started reading about the saints and
comparing his life to theirs and imagining how he would go about doing the same
great things that they did. That is a healthy competition, when it’s
encouraging and inspiring. After Ignatius was healed was when he went to
seminary, became a priest, and went on to found the Jesuits, an order known for
their emphasis on education and service.
But the disciples were not building each
other up and inspiring each other to do great things for Jesus. They were
arguing who was the greatest and why I’m better than you. That kind of
competition is not healthy, it’s not helpful, it does not belong in the church.
In Mark 9, Jesus tells the disciples, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the
very last, and the servant of all.”
This is similar to what happens in
chapter 10 as well. A third time, Jesus tells them about his impending
betrayal, death, and resurrection, and this time, it’s James and John, the sons
of Zebedee, also sometimes called the sons of thunder, who come to Jesus and
ask him to do them a favor. They know it’s not the best thing to ask, otherwise
they wouldn’t have asked for their request to be granted before they gave the
request. In fact, in Matthew’s Gospel, it’s their mother who comes and asks for
them! And we know, there are some people who ask for a favor, and we say,
“sure, anything,” and there are other people to whom we say, “depends on what
you’re asking,” which is the answer Jesus gives them. James and John ask to sit
on each side of Jesus when he comes in glory. Jesus says, “You don’t know what
you’re talking about. Are you really able to do that?” They say, “yes,” Jesus
agrees that yes, they are, but they still may not sit on his right and his
left. Then the other ten find out and they are angry with James and John! How
dare they! They had just been reprimanded for arguing about who was the
greatest, and here these two brothers go sneaking off trying to guarantee their
good position in advance.
Jesus tells all twelve of them, “Rulers
can be tyrants. But you’re not. Whoever wishes to be great must serve and
whoever wants to be first must be last. For the Son of Man came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” You are not to
engage in power struggles. You are not to jockey for position, or the best seat
in the house, or the best parking space, or anything else. Life is not about
others serving you. Life is about you serving others. You are to be last, you
are not to worry about your position. You are to give your life for others. You
are to “go about quietly, taking care of the needs of others.”[2]
Not boasting, not giving orders, no favorites. There is no individual power or
prestige when you gather in my name. You come as brothers and sisters. You come
to serve.
Serving is the appropriate response to
our incurable human tendency to put ourselves first.[3]
Our goal is not to be the biggest and the best. Our goal is to be faithful, and
to help others be faithful as well. In my gospel parallels book, which lines up
the four gospels as best you can so you can easily compare the similar
passages, where Matthew, Mark, and Luke all talk about service, the author puts
John’s example of service.[4]
Only in John is the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.[5]
As all this traveling was done by walking, and typical shoes were sandals, your
feet got quite dirty on the road. When you arrived, you washed your feet, or if
it was a nicer place, a servant was there to wash your feet. After the last
supper, the night Jesus is betrayed, Jesus gets up from the table, ties a towel
around his waist, and washes his disciples’ feet. Jesus is the ultimate
servant. He’s a king, too, but he doesn’t act like any king we know. He leaves
the throne to get down and dirty, not with the noble class or white collar, or
even really the working class. He takes on the role of a servant. This was
Jesus’ humility. Paul describes it in Philippians 2 and advises us, “Think of
yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with
God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages
no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of
deity and took on the status of a slave, became human. It was an incredibly
humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a
selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death – and the
worst kind of death at that – a crucifixion.”[6]
This is who our role model is. Not someone who took advantage of his
connections, not someone who pulled strings, not someone who threw his
privilege around, or lorded it over others. Jesus said, no tyranny. “To be a
tyrant is to claim a false power based on deep fear. To claim a healing power
is to find strength in humility.”[7]
Not a false humility, or self-deprecating humility, but a quiet taking care of
the needs of others.
Paul says later in Philippians 2, “What
I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep doing what you’ve done
from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive
obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble
your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive
before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what
will give him the most pleasure. Do everything readily and cheerfully – no
bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a
breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a
glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message
into the night.”[8]
People take a second look at you when
you quietly do good things, when you help without asking for compensation, when
you do hard things without grumbling, when there’s something different about
you and it intrigues others. Be that breath of fresh air. Carry the light.
Provide others with a glimpse of God. That’s what we who are called by Christ’s
name, who are called Christian, are called to do. Show the world that God loves
them.
[1] Mark
9:34
[2] Forbid Them Not, Year B, by Carolyn
Brown, p. 169
[3] Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
p. 190
[4] Synopsis of the Four Gospels, edited by
Kurt Aland, p. 226
[5] John
13:1-17
[6] Philippians
2:5-8, MSG
[7] On
the Mend worship series by Dr. Marcia McFee, Healing Power synopsis
[8] Philippians
2:12-15, MSG
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