Job 38:1-7
Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45
May the words of my mouth and the mediations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
You know me well enough to know that sometimes, I get an image burned into my head. Sometimes it’s worth sharing, more often than not there’s the reason I keep it to myself or share it only with Marie. Well, the first part of this passage did just that, and today I’m sharing.
I see the dreamy eyes of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, the sons of Thunder, as they approach Jesus. In their minds eyes they are sitting next to Jesus, everyone wearing white robes, everyone’s hair flowing in the wind, riding on the back of a classic Ford Mustang convertible, the Homecoming King and his honor attendants.
You know the wave: elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wrist. Smiling and waving at the appreciative crowd. In my hometown they would have been riding on the back of the convertible on Johnson Drive all the way from the high school down to Nall Avenue , just short of the Baskin-Robbins where I worked. Crowds of people along the way would be getting ready for the big game, but not before showing their undying love for the three in the car.
Jesus is in the middle surrounded by admirers and disciples, sitting in the glory seat. He’s the one everyone adores; but everyone can see James and John, the next most popular kids in the senior class.
Jesus can’t be matched, everyone knows that, but to be next to the Lord, one on his right and the other on the left in his glory, that is the greatest place they could ever hope to be. They sit and wave and bask in the Lord’s reflected glory and just know everyone wants to be like them. That's what they want.
Suddenly, Jesus busts their dream bubbles. “You might think you can get in the car, but do you think you’ll be able to take the ride all the way to Nall Avenue ? Will you be able to wear the crown and sash? Will you be able to take everything the crowds have to give?”
I’m sure James and John imagined sharing the love and adulation. “Oh, yes, we most certainly will be able to take it all.” I’m just as sure they didn’t imagine the jealousy, envy, hatred, and scorn.
Jesus gives the blushing boys a nod and tells them the truth they don’t understand, “Well guess what; you will get wear the crown and the sash and you will get to know it all, but whether you’ll be riding in the classic Mustang or not, that’s not up to me.”
That’s when the scenario in my head dissolves into the rest of the homecoming court, the ten who are sitting on hay bails on the flatbed truck behind the classic Mustang, they get upset with the upstarts. You know the rest, kicking, scratching, hair pulling… I can’t decide if my re-visioning of this passage is like a bad teen movie or the spoof of a bad teen movie.
If this reading is giving you a feeling of déjà vu, it should. This is the third time we find the Passion-prediction, apostle-slip, harsh-truth pattern in Mark’s gospel.
The first time is back in chapter 8 when Peter affirms Jesus is Lord. It began when Jesus tells the apostles there will be pain and suffering. Then Peter takes Jesus aside to tell him how to be the Messiah. Then Jesus dropped the bomb, “Get behind me Satan!”
The second time was found in chapter nine, “Then they came to Capernaum ; and when [Jesus] was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another over who was the greatest.” [1]
Today’s Passion description precedes our reading from Mark. In it Jesus says, “We are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him. Three days he will rise.”[2] Then James and John ask to be second in command. Then Jesus tells them what’s going to really happen.
This is the third time Jesus had told his disciples that he will be mocked, spat upon, flogged, killed, and after three days raised from the dead. It is completely absurd that immediately after this teaching, the third repeat of this same teaching, the Sons of Thunder ask if they can sit next to Jesus in his glory.
There’s an old expression: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” So what do we do when the apostles are fooled a third time? Jesus does what he did each of the other times; he showed them where they were half right and tried to teach them the other half. If the end game is redemption of the whole of creation, what else is there to do? That’s grace in action.
What makes this painfully human is James and John asking to sit next to Jesus in his glory. They were seeking power and glory in this earthly kingdom, seeking the good things power and glory can bring. This is what they thought his glory would be. They asked and Jesus told them they would share his baptism and share his cup.
What they didn’t grasp was that his full glory was on the other side of the Passion. What didn’t get through their skulls was that the cup wasn’t anything anybody would want to share. “Cup” often meant a cup overflowing with misery and woe. They are anxious to be next to him in his ecstasy but not in his agony. Holy Week shows us this. On the heels of his last Passion prediction, they ask Jesus if he will let them hear the cheers, but nobody asks to scream in terror.
There’s a holy “nannie-nannie-na-na” to hearing Jesus tell James and John that those places on the left and right are not for him to grant. It is glorious to hear that those places are “for those for whom it has been prepared.” In a grim turn, those places will belong to two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.[3] We want to bask in his reflected glory, that’s the easy part. It’s not so easy to share the anguish. We beg to be next to Jesus in his glory, but nobody wants a piece of Golgotha , the place of a skull.[4]
Let’s not sugar coat this either, Jesus knows his fate will be horrific. And he knows that being fully human, born from the womb of a woman; he will feel the pain. He will know the horror of crucifixion. He will know the horror of abandonment by those closest to him. Being the Messiah does not come with its own spiritual morphine. He is God and he is human, he will know the pain of a crucified man.
Being baptized in his own blood walking to his death? Drinking from the cup of the Passion? The passion Jesus told them about three different times? I wonder if they would have asked the same question if they had known what they were getting themselves into. It’s the good old fashioned “Beware of what you ask for, because you just might get it.” I wonder if this little heart-to-heart came to mind when the promise that they will be baptized with the same baptism and drink from the same cup was being fulfilled.
One more time, Jesus tells them what true leadership means. Jesus tells the disciples that the powerful lord their authority over the Gentiles. And the high officials lord their power and authority over those leaders. It’s a power struggle. It’s a top-down power struggle and as long as you can push your load downhill it’s all good. It’s being covered in what rolls downhill that gets nasty.
Whether it’s taxes or being forced to carry a soldier’s pack one mile, or any of the other nasty things the Romans or the Temple elite could require the people to do, being at the bottom of the ladder has no perks at all.
There’s one more truth about this fact, it’s not what Jesus wants us to do. “Not so with you,” he says, “instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” Microsoft Word warns me that that sentence has “verb confusion.” If that’s the only confusion it carries that would be enough, but what’s confusing in this sentence extends beyond the verbs.
He says “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” Here’s an important point that often gets missed, to be a servant or a slave you must have a master. Let me say this again, to be a servant or a slave you must have a master. So here’s the question Jesus leaves unasked. He doesn’t ask the apostles. He doesn’t ask the disciples. He doesn’t ask the Jews or the Gentiles. He doesn’t ask the civil or temple leaders. He asks “Who are you going to serve?”
In 1979, Bob Dylan released his “Slow Train Coming” album, much to the dismay of the listening audience. Suddenly this young Jewish man who had played folk and rock suddenly took a turn into gospel and Christian rock long before it was cool. The big single on “Slow Train Coming” was “Gotta Serve Somebody.” The chorus rings out as plain as day:
You're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.[5]
It doesn’t get any easier than this. It’s an either/or choice. Like Dylan sings you have to serve somebody and our choices are the devil or the Lord. Jesus proclaims “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” and “whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” Jesus shows how he has made up his mind, “for even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.”
Jesus tells us to be servants, slaves of all. That is the example he has set for us and continues to set. Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve. His life has been given to pay the ransom for many. That is what we are called to do if we are going to be great. That is what is required because this ransom was paid for us. This is the example Jesus sets for all humanity.
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Often people say they have no master. Nobody has command over them. There’s a fierce independent streak among westerners in general and Americans in particular that insists no man is master over me. That’s not the good news because when we become our own masters we let bad things become our masters.
For an easy example, some of us are slaves to chemicals. Whether it’s tobacco or alcohol or chemicals we get legally or illegally, sometimes these chemicals become our masters. On November 1 I will celebrate 25 years without a cigarette. It’s been a long time coming, but I have to tell you, there are still days when I crave a cigarette. It’s been 25 years and I can still feel that hot smoke fill my lungs and sinuses and remember how it made me feel.
It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Power, authority, and prestige are also things we think we can control, but in the long run they can gain control over us. This is what tempted the sons of Zebedee, the sons of Thunder. If we say we know better than that we make the devil’s favorite mistake, we forget we’re just as human as they were. When we want the things that bring us glory, we are hoping for the wrong things. Certainly this was a part of James’ and John’s thinking; after all they were only human.
Yesterday was Homecoming at East Texas Baptist University Marshall High School
We have two choices about who we serve, Jesus or the world. It may be the devil and it may be the Lord but we have to serve somebody. In the end, we need to remember that by the grace of God, through the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have been bought and paid for. God wants us to behave like this matters to us. God wants us to be first by being the slave of all. The disciples got it half right. It’s up to us to seek Christ’s way, even the baptism and the cup, and continue God’s work, getting the other half right too.
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