Lording
Mark 10:35-45
October 18, 2009
The old hymns are much beloved for their tunefulness, their passion and their Biblical lessons neatly packed into the verses.
“Are ye able,” said the Master,
“to be crucified with me?”
“Yea,” the sturdy dreamers answered,
“to the death we follow thee.”
Refrain:
Lord, we are able. Our spirits are thine.
Remold them, make us, like thee, divine.
Thy guiding radiance above us shall be
a beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.
Wonderful, rousing hymn, and the writer Edward Marlatt must have been reading a different Bible. Obviously based on the catch words of Mark’s Gospel just read, he just wasn’t listening.
James and John have just heard Jesus relate to the whole group about his betrayal, trial, execution and resurrection in the previous verse, and they immediately want Jesus to appoint them to the first seats at the throne of the kingdom. They were not interested in listening to Jesus. “Are you able to drink the cup I drink, to be baptized the way I am?” knowing they don’t care a peep about what he has just said. They want power and glory. Mr. Marlatt should have failed Sunday School 101.
This is so contemporary it could be contemporary this week. These are the two fishermen brothers, James and John, sons of Zebedee, “sons of thunder,” who were the third and fourth disciples tabbed by Jesus according to Mark’s version. You wonder if they were always rivals of Simon and Andrew, the first two chosen. “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you,” they boldly demand of Jesus, and probably surprised, he responded, “What do you want me to do for you?”
These are the days of the consumer church - we want the church to do stuff for us - or we will go elsewhere. And the church, if it wants to be successful and have lots of members and money for upkeep of the building - comes with folded hands and says, “And what may we do for you?” How can we be religious for you?
That’s the way it is everywhere else in our society - competition and doing more for the customer - or is it congregant? Just as with James and John, there is no mention of the difficulties and challenges of being a Christian, of the self-denial and the cup and baptism and the cross. Just, what can you do for us? We want to feel good and successful and we want our spiritual needs satisfied.
“We are able,” James and John replied somewhat lamely. Jesus did not, however, tell them what he thought of their importunity. He affirmed them, “Oh yes, you will drink from my cup, and be baptized as I have been baptized.” And in the long run, they all would be. As bad as the disciples were, as selfish and cowardly and mentally thick as they were like we are, they eventually became the disciples who walked where Jesus walked. That is the Good News become flesh.
However, “to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant,” Jesus concludes on a more disappointing note. Believe it or not for all those hymn writers, Jesus cannot do everything and isn’t allowed to do everything. The church is not about training successful citizens who will be the rulers and elected officials of our province or country.
When the other ten heard this conversation, they were indignant at James and John. That’s when you know this is a church, for we are experts at indignation. To be fair, human beings have the same problem and for the most part church members are human beings. No one likes another person trying to claw his or her path to success over you and your accomplishments. Jesus knows it is time again for a family conference.
“You’ve all seen how the rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them and their great men exercise authority over them.” Notice that it’s the other guys, the Gentiles, not the Jews, who do that kind of thing. Lording it over their subjects, usually a male kind of thing, is another beloved human social manipulation. What’s the problem? A couple of examples from the US Senate, since of course Canadians don’t do this lording over business (thanks to Scott Hozee).
Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona was known to enter the Senate cafeteria and lay his cane on whatever table he chose to sit at for lunch. Often that chosen table would already have a clutch of secretaries or Senate staffers sitting there eating, but everyone knew that if Hayden laid his cane on your table, you had all better be gone by the time he returned with his lunch a few minutes later.
Most Senators also insisted that when they wanted the elevator in the Senate Office Building, they wanted that elevator immediately! To let elevator operators know that it was a Senator waiting, the Senator would buzz the elevator’s call button three times. When that signal was heard, the operator was to skip all other stops (even if others already in the elevator needed a certain floor) and pick up the waiting Senator without delay. Once when Senator McCarran of Nevada heard the car pass him by after he had rung three times, he turned on his heel, stomped back to his office, called the Sergeant-at-Arms, and ordered the hapless young elevator operator fired on the spot (which he was).
But it shall not be so among you - whether you are Canadian or Jewish, whether you are an American Senator or Christian - we don’t do it that way, the way Gentiles lord it over other people. Oh, a detail: we are all Gentiles. Perhaps nowhere else in the Gospel is such a clear distinction between the way of the world and the way of the church laid out. God knows this is the way the world operates, machinations of power and manipulations of advantage and privilege, but when that enters the church and religious life - as it so regularly does - how sad we are. We want you to do whatever we want is the worldly refrain recited too often in too many churches.
Jesus, make no doubt about it, declares that if you want to be great, if you want to be first, you must be the servant of everybody, you need to be the slave of all. The way of the world’s power is turned upside down because now if you want to be first you need to be last, you are the servant of everyone above you. This is not just the opposite of the world’s grasping for position and power just to be contrary to the real world; the real world is where we serve one another. The Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve. Can you tell me how real, how authentic, how genuine is Senator Hayden’s cane on his chosen table? Are Senator McCarran’s three rings on the elevator button any kind of signal of the truth in life? Anyone who thinks he or she has the right to lord it over others like that has no comprehension of the truth and has become an unreal human being.
We are here to do only two things: to worship God - anyone who worships declares herself to be just a human being under God; and the second is that we are called here to serve everybody above us as servants of God. Servants, not the lords pompously vying for first place, are the ones who live in and create the real world.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan