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.”
Oh James and John.
They just keep missing the point.
They just keep looking for honor and prestige and power, much like the
rest of the disciples. Always arguing
over who is the greatest. And now they
are going over the heads of the rest of the disciples and trying to get Jesus
to give them the best seats in the house and the highest honor, which is why
the other 10 are so ticked off. They
want what James and John got! But they
may have other thoughts if they knew what they are asking for though.
From the 12th chapter of
Acts – “About that time King Herod laid violent
hands upon some who belonged to the church. 2He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. 3After
he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.” And as for sitting at his right and left
hand, from the 15th Chapter of Mark, “It was nine o’clock in the
morning when they crucified him. 26The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of
the Jews.”27And with him they crucified two bandits,
one on his right and one on his left.”
The place of honor that James and John so wanted, is a place of
death. Christ’s most glorious moment is
the crucifixion, between two bandits, naked to the world, dishonored before
everyone. In that moment God is brought
low, brought down to the lowest of the low in human society. So often we think of God being far off, the
Man with the Plan and the long white beard up in heaven, watching down on us
mere mortals, who must appear as small as ants.
And yet in that moment, for those hours, God was a broken man, nailed to
pieces of wood, put on display for the world to see, and killed in the manner
reserved for traitors, while himself had been betrayed by a beloved disciple. Far from being the clockmaker who sets
everything in motion and walks away, as Thomas Jefferson imagined God to be, God
became intimately involved in the world and took upon the worst human suffering
that could be dished out, physically, emotionally, and relationally. Here was our God, a Broken and seemingly
defeated man.
And yet the
cross is the place of God’s greatest glory as well. Why? Because
God serves. God took this pain and
punishment and humiliation on the cross in order to lower the bar, in order to
say that “No matter who you are, you are loved by Me and no one is too low to
clear the bar. Are you an addict? I love you and want you to be with me. Are you poor and destitute? I love you and want you to be with me. Are you a criminal? I love you, and I want you to be with me. NO matter who you are or what you have done,
I love you and I want you to be with me.
And this is
a radical thought for ancient Israel. In their thought, you knew you were
blessed and loved by God if you had amassed wealth, if you had a good
life. That is why the disciples are so
stunned in last week’s reading when Jesus says that it is near impossible for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
After all, if they are the most beloved by God, as shown by their
wealth, and can’t get in, then what hope do the rest of us have? What hope would we have, what hope does
Youngstown have, when it is the poorest city in the country? Our hope is in Christ’s glorification on the
cross. Because not only did God in that moment
move the bar, God showed where God’s deepest love was, and with whom God looked
upon with the most favor and aligned himself with. God showed in that moment that God’s
preference is with the poor and the oppressed and the outcast, and not with the
rich and powerful.
And this is
what James and John, and we today, still have a hard time believing. Like them, we keep hearing another version of
the story, where instead of Christ’s glorification being in the cross, in love
and service to others, we get fixated on the idea that we will get honor and
blessings as the world sees, instead of as God sees. Even though Jesus has said repeatedly its
about service, and not being served, about the first being the last and the
last being the first, the disciples are still getting hung up on some glorious
future when they will be surrounded by wealth and power. And I’m sorry, but if you are looking for
power and prestige and wealth through the church, you are really looking in the
wrong place. And it is when we place our
own desires above the needs of God’s children, when we desire to be served
instead of serving, that we become lost and there is damage done to the
congregation and to the entirety of God’s church. For truly we do not belong to ourselves, but
we belong to God.
That is the
very definition of Christ’s baptism, which we share. It is dying to ourselves and our wills and
living in the light of God’s will and God’s love. We are called to discern and to act on God’s
will and not our own and we are called to lives of service. There is no room for ego here, no room for
advancement, no room for prestige.
Instead, when we truly follow God’s will, we can be assured of
humiliation and suffering, because following God means acting in the opposite
direction of the rest of the world. And
James and John, and all the rest of the disciples just could not wrap their
head around it, even though they had been told repeatedly. And while we may get it, we don’t like to
hear it, because it is hard at times to hear the positive. We want the fame, we want power, we want the
money, we want the ease of life. It can
be hard to hear the good news of God when we are told that they are not the
reward or the goal that we are to receive.
But there is
plenty of good news. The first is that
God is very much invested in us, and God cares for us deeply, more than words
can ever say. God was willing to empty
himself, to take up the cross and to suffer humiliation and death in order to
be closer to us, in order to show us his love.
And we are loved no matter our screwups, no matter our issues, no matter
our histories. We are forgiven and we
are loved purely because it is God’s nature to love us. We can never sink so low that we are outside
the love of God. And when we realize that
love, when we truly experience that love of God, the rest of those things that
distract us, those things that steer us down those self-destructive paths that
seek glory and honor and praise, all melt away for we shall be content in the
love of God. And in that contentment, we
shall find peace and we shall find comfort and we shall find purpose.
We find our
purpose because we are created in the first place to praise God and to be in
relationship with God. When we remember
this and when we live following the will of God, we find our true place in the
world and we find contentment. When we
remember that we are also created for one another, and not for ourselves, we
also find peace and purpose. As Mother
Theresa once said, “If we have no peace, it is because
we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” We do not belong to ourselves at all, and to
our own desires, but we belong to each other, we belong to the family of God,
which is all people. And we belong to our Creator, whom we show love through
love for each other. It is when we
support each other, instead of trying to be like James and John and stealing
the spotlight, we grow together and we lift each other up to be the best that
we can all be. IN that, we glorify our
Creator and we find true joy, more than can ever be found in one-upmanship and
conflict and control. I pray that each
of us may find that peace from God found in true, loving community. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment