by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood – October
21, 2012
Sermon Text: Mark 10: 35-45
For the past month or so our lectionary cycle has had us steadily
marching through the meaty middle of Mark. Right before today’s passage begins,
we have Jesus – for the third and final time – attempting to explain to his
disciples what it means to be the Messiah. Explaining that he will be betrayed,
tortured, killed, and then rise again.
In today’s passage, after Jesus predicts his death for the third
time, his disciples James and John respond by saying, “So, Jesus, we were
wondering – after all this torture and death and resurrection business, we were
really hoping we could be awesome with you for all eternity.”
Wait, what? Is that really what they said? Yes, yes it is.
Jesus just told them he’s going to be tortured and killed and
their immediate reaction is to wonder if they can somehow ride on his coattails
into glory.
In his sermon on this text, Martin Luther King, Jr. called this
desire to get ahead, to be up in front – leading, being showered with accolades
– the “drum major instinct.” And he says we all have it – at least to some
extent. It seems to be simply a natural part of being human, this desire to be
loved and to be given attention. He reminds us that from her first cry, a baby
is seeking love and attention. As adults, King says, we still never really get
over it. He says, “We like to do something good. And you know, we like to be praised for
it. Now if you don't believe that, you just go on living life, and you will
discover very soon that you like to be praised.”[1]
So true. So true. I’d like to think
that if I was with Jesus that day, I would have taken the time to think about
something other than myself, but I don’t know – I might have been right there
with James and John. Scared about the future, worried for myself, wondering if
I could find a way to the top of the heap when all the craziness shook out.
Dr. King says it doesn’t have to be a problem – this drum major
instinct – if you can find a way to keep it in check, and I believe he’s right.
Jesus presents an alternative vision for greatness when he
responds to James and John. Jesus doesn’t scold James and John for acting out
of this natural human desire to be applauded and praised. Instead, he gently
and brilliantly teaches them there is another way to be great.
In the midst of a world that told the disciples that greatness was
hierarchical and only the people at the top of the heap were worthy of love and
affection, Jesus calmly and quietly presented another way to look at things. In
short, he did what Jesus was always so very good at doing: he turned the world
upside-down.
That guy was always taking the norms and just flipping them over.
Want to live forever? You’ll have to die first. Want to be rich?
You’ll need to give away all your possessions. Want to be first? You need to be
last, actually. Want to sit with me at the head of the table in heaven? Well, I
don’t actually know much about the seating chart up there, but if you’ll follow
me, I’ll show you a new way of being great.
As I was driving through Brown County this past week, I saw a
small country church and the sign said, “Jesus gives hope and peace.” Jesus
gives hope and peace.
In the midst of a world where we are bombarded by messages telling
us that we need to get ahead, Jesus gives hope and peace. When we are told we
need to be worried about getting that promotion, making tenure, buying a bigger
house, throwing the best party, getting the best grade on that project, looking
better than all our friends, owning the coolest new gadget….Jesus gives hope
and peace.
That’s what the Messiah does, folks. He gives hope and peace.
He tells James and John that if they want to be great, they have
to be wiling to drink the cup that Jesus drinks and be baptized the way he is
being baptized. That’s code for, “You have to be willing to die.” And after you
do? “Well,” he says, “I still can’t promise you’ll be sitting at the head of
the table because I’m not the one making those arrangements.”
The hope and peace that Jesus gives to James and John is the same
hope and peace he offers to us today – we don’t have to buy into this notion
that being great is all about being number one.
We don’t have to be worried about whether we get to sit at the
head of the table because, truly? It doesn’t matter.
We are freed from running around and around on the giant
gerbil-wheel of life, trying to get ahead. We are freed from constantly
comparing ourselves to everyone else and wondering if we’re better than them.
We are freed from worrying where we get to sit at the table because it turns
out we’re not supposed to sit at the table at all.
The great people? The truly great people? They aren’t sitting down
at the table. They’re the ones cleaning the table, cooking the food, serving
the food, and washing the feet of the weary travelers who have come to eat
dinner.
On Tuesday night this week, when the presidential debate was
happening, one of our members posted this little gem about her husband on
facebook: "While folks are talking about how they will ‘help’ people,
Lanier Frush Holt is leading the first shift at the first night of this year's
Interfaith Winter Shelter. Now that is sexy, folks."
And, of course,
Lanier wasn’t the only one here. Do you remember just how many of you stood up
last week to be blessed as we begin the shelter season? And there are so many
more who work tirelessly behind the scenes – giving money, offering prayers,
giving praise or a kind word to those who work the shelter week in and week
out.
This service
business can sometimes feel pretty thankless and lonely, but I want to say to
you today, Jesus says you are great.
Jesus gives us
a new way of thinking about greatness – one that is rooted is selfless service
to the other. Now you might not always get thanked when you serve other people.
It’s not the praise that makes you great, it’s the deep and true connection you
have with the other – and with the Holy – when you reach outside of yourself to
be a part of something bigger.
Jesus says that
to be the Messiah means that he’s come to give his life as a ransom for many.
That image,
Jesus as a ransom for many, probably conjures up images immediately in your
head of Jesus dying on a cross to somehow magically wipe all our sins away in
some big cosmic chess game that God made up. I want you to walk with me for a
minute into this ransom image, but first, I want you to put away the image of
God and the cosmic chess game with the weird rules.
Instead, let’s
look at it from a sociological perspective.[2]
In the Ancient Near East, a ransom would have been given to purchase slaves.
Typically, if a person was used as a ransom, the worth of the person would have
been calculated and you would often get a one-to-one trade. This person for
that person. Now, I have to say, I really don’t like talking about trading
people and owning people – obviously, that image is pretty abhorrent to our
modern sensibilities, but it is the language being used here, so hang with me.
Jesus is being
given as a ransom to buy some people out of slavery. But notice that he’s not being
used to buy just one person or two or three. Jesus is so great, so grand, so
amazing, so wonderful that he is able to be a ransom for many people. There is
something about Jesus that enables him to buy back many many people from
slavery.
Slavery to what? Slavery to whom?
Well, in my
experience, Jesus has the ability to ransom us from all kinds of slavery.
That’s what makes him our savior. That’s what I’m mean when I say Jesus saves.
In this
particular instance, I think Jesus is rescuing us from being enslaved to that
drum major instinct.
Jesus sees two
of his dearest friends, James and John, struggling so mightily with this human
desire to be praised and given attention. Instead of scolding them, he lovingly
shows them a new way.
He guides them
gently through the pain of the cup and the waters and he shepherds them ably to
the shores of a new world where they can be freed for service. He reminds them
that all they need to do to be truly great is forget themselves a bit and seek out
ways to serve others. He reminds them that they are linked to every other
living creature in this world through the love of God. He helps them remember
that as nice as it feels to be praised, it sometimes feels even better to
praise someone else.
If we are
called to follow in the Way of Christ, then we are called to preach this
message – this good news – to the world around us. In the words of Dr. King,
“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.”[3]
We need to say
together to the world, “Do you want to be great? Do you want to be praised?
That’s fine. That’s natural. We know a way you can be great. This guy Jesus
told us about it. He told us that it feels really good to serve other people.
He told us that the more and more we worry about others, the less and less
we’ll feel anxious about ourselves. Here – come and walk alongside us. Come
serve at the homeless shelter. Come with me to my shift at Community Kitchen.
Here – come with me to the Habitat breakfast or the MCUM luncheon and learn
about these amazing organizations and help me as I support them. Do you want to
be great? Come to the nursing home with me, or the jail, or down to Seminary
Square. Sit with me for a bit as I talk with these people that the rest of the
world has forgotten.”
The Church –
and when I say the Church, I mean the “big C,” universal Church, not
specifically First United Church – has spent too many millennia obsessed with
being great according to the world’s standards. We Christians have, on many
occasions, found ourselves way too worried about filling up our pews, building
bigger buildings, adding more people to our roll books, and stuffing our
coffers.
I want you to
invite a friend to church – not to sit in the pew with you and share our belief
system, but to walk with us in the CROP walk, to give blood in a blood drive,
to clean a cot for a guest who doesn’t have a home, to donate cloth diapers to
parents struggling to make ends meet, or to do some new thing that we haven’t
even dreamed of yet.
We, too, can be
like Jesus. We, too, can be a ransom for many.
We can call out
to those who haven’t yet discovered how good it feels to serve. We can be a
place for those who want to serve and don’t know where or how to plug in.
As we have been
saved, let us reach out to others and share the secret: “Do you want to be
great? We follow someone who taught us that we have to serve others, just like
he did. Come along with us. Let’s be great together.”
[2] With credit
to the Social Science Commentary on the
Synopic Gospels by Bruce Malina for this understanding of “ransom.”
