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Dr. George A. Purnell
October 18, 2009
“Becoming Able”
Mark 10:32-45
Asking for something without showing one’s hand is a ploy used in negotiations. I don’t know about any other parents, but my children used this strategy with me. ‘Dad, I’m going to ask you something and I need to know up front that you’re okay with it.’
When this came, I always knew that there was something suspicious behind the request.
This is also how we sometimes approach God in prayer. Hey there God, before I turn my life over to you, I want you to do for me whatever I ask. I have a few requests: A short life of 90 years, during which I am healthy, hearty and happy. I want some recognition for my service and generosity. I want enough money to be comfortable and secure, or just enough to let me live where I want, buy what I want, travel where I want, and be able to leave my children a nice inheritance. If you will agree to these conditions, I am yours.
So, even though we may find the request James and John make of Jesus insensitive and selfish, we can understand it, since it is within our own experience. (I find it easy to identify with the disciples, because their character defects resemble my own.)
We read today that Jesus and some followers were on the road to Jerusalem when “he took the twelve aside again to tell them what was to happen to him.” Jesus describes his fate - that he “will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death.” He goes on to say that he will then be handed over to the Gentiles (Romans) who will “mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise.”
Instead of trying to comfort Jesus, and ask if there is anything they can do, two of the twelve, James and John, “came forward and said to him: ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you’.”
And this isn’t the first time Jesus has told them what lies ahead for him. (This is why we read in our opening verse today that “he took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him.”) In chapter 9, he told them he would be betrayed, killed and after three days rise again. The disciples, we read, “did not understand what he was saying” (v32). In chapter 8, he told them he would be tortured and killed and after three days he would rise. Peter took him aside and scolded him for such crazy talk.
It would be reasonable to wonder why Jesus had to keep repeating the same information to these twelve friends. Were these guys just dense, or was something else at work here? We also must wonder how James and John could be so self absorbed. Jesus has just told them he will soon be killed, and the first thing they do is to ask for a favor?
I think there are explanations for both these questions that, again, are as true for us today as for James and John in that day:
Jesus said he would be flogged, spat upon, mocked and killed, the disciples were confused. This did not match their understanding of a messiah. So, they could not hear Jesus immediately. They had to learn from his example.
This was horrible news. When we get really bad news, sometimes the initial way we begin to process the information is denial. Oh, that is not really what the doctor said. I will get better. They were in the beginning stages of processing hard information; which is a stage of denial.
Jesus does not agree to do what James and John ask of him. Instead, he asks them a question: “What do you want me to do for you?” When they say that they want seats adjacent to the throne of power when he returns in his glory, “Jesus says, ‘You do not know what you are asking.”
Instead of scolding them for being so self absorbed that they discount his suffering and death and put their own futures ahead on their list of concerns, Jesus seizes this as a teaching moment, saying: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (He is referencing, of course, the cup of suffering and the baptism of death, both waiting just around the corner for him in Jerusalem.)
“We are able,” say James and John.
(They were not, of course. As the events unfolded in Jerusalem, they deserted Jesus. They were afraid for their lives. The synoptic gospels agree that of Jesus’ acquaintances, only women remained with him at the Cross.)
When the other disciples learn that James and John had made this request of Jesus, they become angry. All twelve disciples had made tremendous sacrifices to follow Jesus. They had left their former lives behind. So when James and John sought special treatment, the others had good reason to wonder why these two thought they were more deserving.
Once again, Jesus turns this dispute into a teaching moment. Whoa, fellows, there is no hierarchy of importance here. You know that the Gentiles (Romans) have their pyramid of authority…their governors and generals, their revenue collectors and officers of the court…and “their ruler lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.”
“But it is not so among you,” Jesus tells his disciples, for “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Jesus concludes by offering the gospel in a sentence: “For the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus took his followers aside in our reading today and shared with them a radically new vision of what it means to be powerful. Power will come to you not as the result of your position or possessions, but from the purpose to which you have given your lives. If you want to be great, you will give your life in service to everyone.
This is Jesus’ core teaching throughout the gospels, of course. He told us over and over that the first will be last and the last will be first…that we are to give without expecting anything in return…that we will find life only when we lose our life for his sake...
More powerful than his teaching, however, was Jesus’ example. Jesus served everyone he met on his walk through life. He served the poor, the sick, the scandalous, the stranger, the hated and outcast. Jesus’ disciples learned by watching how Jesus lived. And the world witnessed the full extent of his selflessness by how and for what purpose he died.
Jesus’ message has been preached to the choir throughout history. While he lived on earth, he repeated the same message to his disciples. And during the centuries since, he has continued to teach the same message in the New Testament, in the proclamation of the Word, in private devotions and prayer, and in personal revelations.
But as central this message and example of selflessness and service is to Jesus’ life and teachings, relatively few of us who claim Christ’s name get it. We are like the disciples in the sense that Jesus tells us over and over what it means to be great and we keep doing as we have always done. We take care of our needs first. Then, once we are secure, we think about others.
And when we are generous with our time, our talents, and our resources…when we give ourselves and our possessions away in service to others…most of us want at least some small recognition. We like to see our names printed in the list of donors. We like to have our names mentioned in the newspaper or in a public ceremony of some sort. Just something to let us know we are appreciated and to let others know of our generosity.
Of course there are people who live lives of service who do become well known. Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer come immediately to my mind. But we never know the names of most people whose lives are the embodiment of Christ; people who give themselves away in service to others, neither asking nor wanting anything in return.
Christ-like living is not a particularly attractive lead or feature story or conversation piece. We have appetites for other kinds of news.
My friend and pastor, Carver McGriff, gave me some advice when I was getting ready to receive my first appointment as a United Methodist pastor. George, he said, do your work faithfully. Pray with the sick. Comfort the bereaved. Offer hope to the dying. Find joy in serving, and realize that few people outside a small circle will ever know of your work or your name.
I am the senior pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in Indiana, he added, but go two blocks up the street and ask somebody if they know me and they will say: McGriff? How do you spell that?
Do something wrong and your name will make the papers, he said. But when you do the Lord’s work you will receive no notoriety…
The same is true for all Christians, not just Christian pastors. We know that we are not greater than our Lord, who “came not to be served but to serve, and give his life as ransom for many.” We know that we are to offer our lives in service, as did our Lord.
We know this, but wonder if we are able. When we think of James and John – and think that even though they walked with Jesus and had the benefit of hearing him teach and watching him live, they did not “get it” – we wonder if anyone is able to live as Jesus prescribed.
But the story of James and John doesn’t end here. We learn later that they did “get it.” We read in the Acts of the Apostles that King Herod, threatened by the spread of the Jesus movement following the stoning of Stephen and conversion of Saul, “laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church” and “had James killed with the sword.” (Acts 12:1-2) John lived in exile in Ephesus, and then died in banishment on the isle of Patmos. So, both of them came to understand their call to servanthood in time.
Are we able to drink the cup of suffering and be baptized into death as Jesus was? If we are not able today, we can grow into this understanding of life, as did James and John…and St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa of Calcutta…and countless servants through the ages whose names we do not know. Amen.
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