Sermons
“Twisting Expectations” based on Isaiah 40:3-5 and Mark 10:32-45
James
and John don’t get it – they’ve managed to miss the whole point.
Further, in the remaining 10 disciples’ responses to James and John,
we learn that they don’t get it either. They’ve ALL missed the
point. In the Gospel of Mark, the closest followers of Jesus, the 12
disciples, are absolutely clueless about … well, everything. Jesus
and the disciples are talking past each other. I think it is meant
to be amusing. It might be a little bit more successful in aiming
for amusing, however, if it didn’t feel so very close to home.
James
and John are scared, and as scared people do, they are seeking
security. They were on their way to Jerusalem, they had some sense
of what might be coming, and it was terrifying. Scared people often
behave in suboptimal ways. This fact feels relevant TODAY. Michael
Moore’s 2002 film “Bowling for Columbine” discussed our nation’s
“climate of fear.” He claims we’re taught to be afraid, and to
seek solutions to our fear, even when the reasons we’re to be scared
aren’t articulated. His movie was the first time I’d noticed that
phenomenon, and it was very helpful in insulating me from its effects
– for a while.
Then
it gotten harder. The recent news on climate change is terrifying,
and I think even validly so. In recent years I have been forced to
reckon with the fact that the values I hold most dear, the ways I
think the common good is achieved, and the society I wish to be a
part of building are NOT as widely shared as I thought, and that has
been scary too. Maybe it is only scary to know it – since it was
already there before, but it has been scary nonetheless. While this
has been normal in my life time, it also scares me that the United
Methodist Church at large and each individual UM church I have loved
will someday cease to exist and that day will likely be sooner than I
would choose.
These
large scale things exist on top of the normal day to day fears of
human existence: that one day I will die, that one day all those I
love will die, that illness or injury could come at any moment to
myself or those I love, that among those I care most deeply about
there are ones struggling because they don’t have enough, that a day
could come when I don’t have enough, that maybe nothing I do matters,
and universal fear that no one really likes me after all.
I
don’t think those fears are unique to me, but they also exist in me.
The normal day to day fears also existed back in Jesus day, and James
and John were likely quite familiar with those. They were also
facing some large scale concerns – they might lose Jesus, and the
Roman Empire might be interested in eliminating their whole
community.
At
the same time, they clearly believed that Jesus was going to “win.”
I say that because of how they respond to their fear. They’re
afraid everything is going to get destroyed, so they try to seek
power within the system as they understand it – and by doing so
they display just how much they believe that Jesus is the source of
power. They ask to sit at his right and and his left. We, the
reader, are supposed to be thinking of the insurrectionists who will
be crucified on Jesus right and left. However, the brothers are not.
They lived in an honor-shame society, the ultimate hierarchical
system. Honor was a zero sum game. They thought Jesus had it, and
they were trying to gain more honor by getting closer to him and
acknowledged by him.
However,
because it was a zero sum game, IF two members of the inner circle of
12 gained honor, then it meant the other 10 got moved further away
and lost honor. The other disciples seemed to believe as James and
John did: that things were scary, that this was a time to try to gain
security, that Jesus was the best bet they had, and that Jesus was so
honor-filled that the closer they got to him the better they’d do.
It
seems to me that they DID have the faith of a mustard seed, they just
didn’t have it in the right thing. While the disciples, led by James
and John, are vying for honor in a zero sum game that permeated their
society, Jesus is talking about an entirely different system. They
ask for a favor, and Jesus says, “You don’t get it. I’m not the
honor-source you think I am. I’m here to upend the system, not to
best it. Are you able to pay the price for upending the system with
me?”
This
is one of those places where people are talking past each other. I
appreciated the scholar who pointed out, “In the Old Testament ‘the
cup’ is an ambiguous image, which can connote joy and salvation (Pss.
23:5; 116:13) or woe and suffering (Ps. 11:6; Isa. 51:17, 22).”1
The same scholar points out that there are reasons to think of
baptism as suffering or as blessing, as well. Jesus seems to be
talking suffering, but the disciples, still hearing things in the
ways of the world around them, hear their honored leader as talking
about blessing.
After
the remaining 10 disciples proof they’re missing the point too, Jesus
makes another attempt to do general teaching. What he speaks seems
to me to be central to Christian faith itself. “You
know that among those-who-don’t-know-our-God, those whom they
recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are
tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to
become great among you must be your servant,
and
whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” In the
honor-shame system, servants and slaves were at the bottom. But
Jesus is twisting up all expectations, and putting servants and
slaves at the top.
He
finishes this teaching saying, “For the Son of Man came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” This
gets interesting. Charles Campbell, professor of Homiletics at Duke
Divinity School says:
“The
Way of the Cross, Jesus affirms, is the way of resistance of the
Domination System, which is characterized by power exercised over
others, by control by
others, by ranking as the primary principle of social organization,
by hierarchies of domination and subordination, winners and losers,
insiders and outsiders, honored and shamed. … Jesus calls the
community of faith, in its life together, to offer an alternative to
the ways of the Domination System – and to bear the suffering that
inevitably comes as a result. Jesus resists the domination system
throughout his ministry – even unto death on a cross – so he sets
us free (ransoms us, v. 45) from that system, so we might become
faithful disciples and take up his way of resistance.”2
Ched
Myers, author of Binding
the Strong Man
expands on the final point. He explains, “The term referred to the
price required to redeem captives or purchase freedom for indentured
servants. Jesus promises then that the way of ‘servanthood’ has been
transformed by the Human One into the way of transformation.”3
In this model, instead of leadership being about gaining power
over, leaders are being trained in the ways of nonviolence, to serve,
to resist, and if necessary, to suffer as well. Leaders aren’t
people who have, gain, or seek status, at least not as Jesus saw it.
That’s how the world works – how it worked then and how it works
now. Jesus presents an entirely different system: servant ministry,
taking care of each other.
By
lifting up the role of servant, Jesus inverted the entire hierarchy.
Furthermore, he established an expectation that his community of
followers would teach each other as extended kin, and as people
caring for the needs of each other. In the old system servant did
the care giving work, but in Jesus’ system, everyone did. The
followers of Jesus weren’t to be in competition with each other, they
weren’t in a zero sum game. They were to live by entirely
different rules.
They
were to LIVE the imagery of Isaiah. They were to become the
preparation for God’s way. They were the ones lifting up the lowly,
AND pulling down the mighty, to be in equal relationships with each
other! The followers of Jesus were to BE the glory of God revealed
in the world, visible for all.
Just
like the disciples though, we don’t do our best work when we’re
scared. I was reminded recently that the limbic system, which is
where our emotions live in our brains, is soothed relationally and
interpersonally. It is MUCH easier to feel good when we’ve connected
with those we love and trust then it is to talk or work our way out
of our fears by ourselves.
This
idea of radical equality with each other, of deep relationship, of
kinship without competition – this is really key. It isn’t just
for the long term well being of the sake of the kindom. It is ALSO
how we make it through the day to day, and how God helps us overcome
our fears and enact our roles as part of the glory of God. We
baptized Anna today, and we welcomed her as our sibling in Christ.
Now we teach her what it is to be loved in a radical community of
faith committed to twisting the world’s expectations into something
far better – the glory of God. May we do it well! Amen
1C.
Clifton Black, “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” in
Feasting
on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009).
191
2Charles
L. Campbell “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” iin
Feasting
on the Word, Year B, Volume 4,
ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville, KT:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2009),
193.
3Ched
Myers, Binding the Strong Man
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998 and 2008), 279.
Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
October 21, 2018