Isaiah 53:4-12; Mark 10:35-45
+ Well, we can close the book on another Diocesan Convention. Yes,
yesterday, our delegates and I were in Bismarck, doing what we sometimes do
best—representing St. Stephen’s.
Compared to some, it was a very
quiet, very uneventful convention. One might even say it was a bit…boring.
I was expecting…I don’t know. Something.
But no. Not that I’m complaining, mind
you. Give me this kind of convention any day over some of the conventions I’ve
been to in the past.
Let me tell you, I’ve seen some
difficult conventions. Conventions in which there has been bickering, in which
there was arguing, and, of course, when there was much jockeying for positions.
This, as we all know, is sometimes what
the Church is, whether we like it or not. And such behavior is nothing new.
In our Gospel reading for today, we
also see some jockeying for position. I
think we can all somewhat relate to this story. We have all had our own Jameses
and Johns. We’ve all had them as
co-workers, or fellow students, or simply fellow parishioners. I’ve definitely known some priests like
this.
They are the ones who—while we
quietly labor, quietly do our duties—they sort of weasel their way up the
ladder. They jockey for position. They are the ones who try to get a better place
in line by butting in front of everyone else. They are the ones who drive us—who work and
sacrifice and try to do the good thing—they drive us crazy.
Or maybe…and maybe none of us want to
admit it …maybe, they are the ones that we relate to the most in this morning’s
Gospel. Maybe we are ourselves at times are the James and the Johns. Maybe we ourselves are the Sons or Daughters
of Thunder.
Whatever the case may be, the fact
is James and John are really missing out. Like some of the other apostles, they just
don’t get it. They don’t quite
understand what Jesus is getting at when he is talking about the last being
first. They don’t understand him when he
says that we are called to serve and not be served. They just don’t understand that simple virtue
of humility. Their view of
Christianity—their view of where they stand in relation to Jesus—is a constant
jockeying for position. And many of us
to this day feel the same way in our own lives, in our work and in our faith
lives.
There are many people who look to
the Church in this way. For many people in the Church, the Church is simply a place that is here to serve them.
They feel that Christianity is all about being served by the Church.
Guess what? I hate to break the news
to you. It is not. The Church is not here to serve those of us who are in the
Church. It is our duty as followers of Jesus, as members of the Church, to
serve.
What today’s Gospel shows us is that
Jesus is calling us to something much bigger than we probably fully understand.
I think a lot of us—even those of us who
come to church every Sunday—sometimes look at Christianity as a somewhat
quaint, peace-loving religion. We dress
up, we come to church on Sunday, we sing hymns, we hear about God’s love, we
receive Jesus in the Bread and Wine, and then we go home and…and we don’t think
about it again until the next week.
But the Christianity of Jesus is not
soft. It is not just a whitewashed, quaint religion. The Christianity of Jesus, as we hopefully
have all figured out here at St. Stephen’s, is a radical faith. It is a faith that challenges—that makes us
uncomfortable when we get comfortable, that riles us when we have become
complacent. It is a faith that works
well here in church, on Sunday morning, but also should motivate us to get up
from these pews and go out into the world and live out the faith we have
learned here by serving others. And it is this fact that many of us
might find a bit frightening.
Like James and John, we all want to
gain heaven. We all want a nice place
beside Jesus in that world-to-come. I
want that place!
But few of us want to live out our
faith in all that do and say right now. And even fewer of us are ready to be
servants—to be slaves for others. We don’t always want to serve the lowliest
among us. We don’t want to suffer like
Jesus suffered. We don’t want to taste
from the same cup of anguish that Jesus drank from on the night before he was
murdered. And we sure don’t want to be humble sometimes.
I will admit, I am in that boat a
lot. I sometimes don’t want to be a
servant or slave to others. I don’t want to suffer like Jesus suffered. And although I might try—and not always that
hard—I am not so good at being humble sometimes.
But we all, I think, at least here
at St. Stephen’s, are trying. We all
making the effort in some way. As
followers of Jesus, we are reminded that we are called truly to be servants to
each other and especially to those who need to be served. We are asked as followers to do something
uncomfortable. We are asked to take a
long, hard look at the world around us and to recognize the fact that there are
people living in need in our midst. And
we are called to serve them. And in those moments when we ourselves may need to
be served, many of us have discovered that serving others is sometimes the best
antidote for that need.
What we cannot do is ignore those in
need. When I ignore those in need, when
I don’t serve, when I don’t stand up against injustice—I am made very aware
that in that moment, I am not following Jesus. If I don’t do those things, but I still stand
up here and call myself a Christian, then I have truly become a “Son of
Thunder.” And, for most of us, that is exactly what it sounds like when we want
the benefits of our faith, without making the sacrifices of our faith. In those instances, we truly do sound like a
low, distant thunder.
We cannot bulldoze our way into
heaven by riding roughshod over those we should be serving along the way. For
us, as followers of Jesus, our job is simply to love God and love our neighbor
as yourselves—and when we do, in our lives, in our work, in the way we perceive
the world around us, then a natural humility will come over us. In those moments, we do recognize that God is
in control. Not us. What is more humbling than that realization in
our lives? We are not in control of anything ultimately!
Again, here is another example of
this radical Christianity. It carries
through in how we serve each other. Christians are not expected to bring anyone
to God through an arrogant attitude. We
are not expected to come charging into people’s lives, making them tremble
before us in fear. We are not expected
to thump our Bibles and wave the Words of Jesus before people in a desperate
attempt to win souls for God. We aren’t
forcing God on anyone, nor should we. In
doing so, we dominate people. We coerce
them into believing.
But if we simply serve those Jesus
calls us to serve, with love and charity and humility, sometimes that says more
than any Sunday sermon or curbside rant.
Think of the words Jesus could use. He could use, “power” to mean “dominance,” or
“oppression” or “force.”
But he doesn’t. Rather, Jesus uses the words “serve” and
“servant”
Certainly we are given plenty of
“power” as Christians. In our baptism, we
are given power—but this power we are given is the power to die in Christ and
to be raised into a new life with Christ. That is what we celebrate every time we
celebrate a Baptism and renew our baptismal vows. That is what we celebrate when we think back
to what happened at our own baptisms. We
celebrate and we live out in our lives this power—this power that we are dead
to our former selves and alive—alive in a powerful and amazing way—with Christ.
Baptism empowers us—it makes us
something more than we were before—but not in the way we think of as
empowering. It empowers us by making us
true servants to each other. It is not a
strength that overpowers others. It is
rather a strength rather that empowers us to serve each other and God. It strengthens us to bear the anguish and
despair of this life. It strengthens us
to persevere and to live our lives fully in Christ.
In all of this, Jesus is telling us
that we are to be servants—servants not only to God, but to each other as well.
I, as a priest, who stands here at this
altar at each celebration of the Eucharist —I am not the only one called to be
a minister of God. We are all called to
be ministers of God. By our very
baptism, by the Eucharist we share at this altar each Sunday, we are called by
God to serve each other.
We are not here on Sunday morning to
be served—to be waited upon, to be lavished with gifts. We are here to serve. And it is this sense of service that we must
take with us out of here into the world.
James and John eventually figured
this out. They went on from that day and
served Jesus in the world. Eventually ,
they would both die for Jesus as martyrs—as very witnesses to Christ by their
deaths.
So, for those of us who get angry at
the sons of thunder in our lives—let us be patient. For those of who recognize ourselves as a son
or daughter of thunder—just relax. God
always finds a way to break through our barriers—if we let God. It is this breaking through, after all, that
makes our Christianity so radical.
So, let us serve God. Let us serve each other in whatever ways God
leads us to serve. By the very fact that we are baptized and fed with Jesus’
Body and Blood, we live out our service in the world. And when we do, we just may find that the
thunder we hear is the thunder not of arrogance or pride, but rather the
thunder of the kingdom of God breaking through into our midst.
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