Readings
Isaiah 53:4-12
Psalm 91:9-16
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45
In today’s Gospel passage we have a very human story about James and John, the sons of Zebedee. You see, these two guys are the same ones we hear about in another part of the Gospels that are arguing over who is the greatest. They’re all about power and position. They want their piety and their loyalty to be rewarded. They figure that if they’re doing more or better than their compatriots then they should be justly compensated. Hence the request to Jesus to have them sit at his right hand and his left.
To be seated in such a way is to let the whole world know that they are Jesus’ favored ones. But moreover, this is a reference to monarchical power. Theirs is a vision of Jesus in which he will rule like a king over others. It is a vision in which, if their request is granted, they too will have command and control. They will be Jesus’ second and third in command. They will receive honor, privilege, and power.
But Jesus brings them up short. He asks them if they will drink from the cup which he will drink from. I’m sure they were thinking of royal vessels filled brimful with wine. But Jesus is speaking of a life of servitude dedicated to the least and the last. The cup of which he refers is a life marked by his suffering and death. It is an intentional way of living that will transform the world, but is marked by a different way of exercising power. Rather than being about lording power over others it is about humble service of others. It is about the inversion of the power paradigm. In fact, it is so much so that he calls them to be “slaves” to all.
This brings into crystal clear focus a problem that Christianity has had for most of its existence. Namely that we, throughout history and even today, have a tendency to make the practice of religion about piety and power.
We want to make the idea of being in right relationship to God be about how often or how well we attend church. We want to make it about prayer. We want to make our devotion to God be about our affection to the ideas we have about God. And that’s the benign part.
Christianity, as a system of beliefs, has also been all about command and control. We have made right thinking a definition of righteousness and we, both individually and collectively, have historically been quick to condemn those who do not get with the program. We have tried to control how people behave in their lives and tried to control what they think and say about God and the nature of God. Countless examples abound. Whether it be the Inquisition, the witch trials of the 17th century, or our more recent controversies around human sexuality, we have been anything less than slow to use coercive power to control the lives of others and to punish those perceived as guilty.
But Jesus wasn’t about right thinking. As I said a few weeks ago, Jesus wasn’t really into orthodoxy as a way of making sense out of the practice of religion. No, Jesus was all about relationships. His profound insight was that how we treat one another says more about our relationship to God than anything else. He called us again and again to love our neighbor as ourselves. He called us, as he says in today’s passage, to be a servant, and more specifically a slave to all.
Now what exactly does he mean by that? Well, we need to be careful when using the word slave. We’re not talking about the racial slavery of our own history. Rather, we’re talking about a humble service of others in which we relinquish our sense of command and control over our own life and the lives of others.
Jesus is asking us to make the wellbeing of others our primary concern rather than our own wellbeing. He is asking us to set aside assumptions of superiority and privilege and instead put ourselves in the shoes of those around us. To put it in his context, we are not called to Christianize Rome, but rather to be the alternative to the cultural and religious assumptions of Rome.
But we resist such a notion even to this day. Why? Because it is hard. It is far easier to be good cultural Christians who focus on piety and charity. It is easier to make Christianity about the afterlife than this life. It is easier to assume that a Christian America is the solution to all our ills and then to work politically for its implementation.
Why else would we see the rise of Christian nationalism? Why else would we continue to see people who call themselves “Christian” resorting to violence to impose their vision for society? In the end it is a faith divorced from the teaching of Jesus we hear this morning. It is a piety that goes for the low hanging fruit and does not challenge the secular assumptions that ultimately shape it.
No, friends, we are being called to be a people whose greatness is defined not by our power, but by our willingness to set aside our power. We are being called to be a people who are willing to choose service over control. We are being called to not make America a Christian nation, but to be the Christian alternative to the brokenness of our American culture.
What might our world look like if we dared to pick up the mantle that Jesus lays before us? Will it be costly? To be sure. Will it involve some uncomfortable choices? Undoubtedly. But what it will create will far outweigh what it costs. By choosing to make the shape of our lives match the shape of Jesus’ life we will be partners with him in making real the Reign of God. We will experience nothing less than the peace, the hope, the joy, the meaning, and the purpose that comes from God. His love will be our love, and his life will be our own.