PROPER 24B

THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. PHILIP, ATLANTA

THE  REV. CANON TODD D. SMELSER, PREACHER

Who among us does not have at least the slightest hope that someone will actually think that we are important to them?  To be favored, to be praised, and ultimately to be loved is the most basic of human desires.  Maybe we only children never had to vie for affection from our parents, but as adults we all seek that approval from peers, from friends, and from those who hold authority over us. 

Clearly, Jesus’ disciples were no different.  The brothers James and John ask Jesus for special consideration: they want to be his favorites, to be recognized as just a little bit better than the rest of the group.  This story comes after another one in Mark’s Gospel in which the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest while they were walking to Capernaum.  In this earlier story, once they arrive there, and are settled in the house where they are staying, Jesus comes in and asks them what they were arguing about on the road.  Perhaps realizing how silly it would sound, and perhaps ashamed to put their desire for recognition in words, they are too embarrassed to respond.

In this later story, however, at least two of the disciples, James and John, have found their courage confront the Master.   They are alone with Jesus, away from the others, and they can ask him for a favor without the others hearing.  They ask Jesus to let them sit at his right and left hand “in his glory.”  In other words they ask Jesus for places of power and authority in final realm of God.

As is so often the case in Mark’s Gospel, the disciples, here represented by James and John, do not understand what Jesus is talking about.  Their request seems to imply that they think God’s realm is like a great royal banquet in which they will be eternally seated at the head table.  They still do not understand what Jesus has been talking about when he talks about his impending death in resurrection in Jerusalem.  Nor do they understand what Jesus has been saying about servanthood, “that whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.”

This text is as counter-cultural as it was then, and too often we are the ones asking, or presuming the favored status.  Not only do we, like the disciples, want to be special, we want to be the best.  We all know that we live in a culture that encourages self-promotion that worships fame, and values only winning.  Activities for our kids that used just to be fun are now all about competing.  Finding time to learn a musical instrument or a foreign language is seen as wasting time.  Church, and church attendance, must vie with all the other activities that compete with our time, and those of our children.  And getting into the Cathedral Pre-School carries about as much pressure as it did to get into Harvard and Yale when I was a kid.

We are all so concerned with the right connections, and the right schools and the right extra-curricular activities, and the right friends, that we may be missing the whole point.  The rush to the top creates a huge imbalance in our society.  For after all there are only so many slots on the A team, at premium schools, as CEO’s or Bishop—only so many VIP’s, only so many stars dancing.  Not everyone will succeed at that level.  So the rest of us are left feeling perhaps that there is nothing that we can achieve for ourselves, or that somehow we can’t quite make the mark.

But Jesus, as always is the case, calls us to a different way.  He shows us an alternative way of being, a way that values individuals and their efforts.  Jesus reminds us that our true worth as human beings, and as Christians, lies in relationships: with God, with each other, and with the work we are called to do.  By being faithful to those things, we find our real worth as people and as children of God.  Our calling is not to lord it over anyone, but to see each person as valuable, possessing dignity and worth.  Valuing each other, encouraging each other, recognizing each other’s gifts—this is the task of Jesus’ disciples.

The question remains in the Gospel, however, why does Jesus grant them anything?  He surely perceives the selfishness of their ambition and the ignorance behind their boldness.  They really don’t know what they are getting in to.  Yet there must be something here worth affirming, worth granting.  James and John are easy targets—like all those whom we know who seem only to be interested in their own advantage.  Yet Jesus treats their ambition as worthy of redemption.  It is almost as if Jesus is able to see through their surface needs, realizing that in their hearts and souls  James and John really do want to know the deeper truth, and experience the true love of God in their lives.

Maybe the greater sin is not misplaced ambition but complacency and lack of ambition altogether.  Where ambition exists, it can be redirected and reshaped.  But in the absence of any ambition or drive, we are left with the lowest common denominator and maintenance of the status quo.  Too often the church’s motto, “But we’ve always done it that way” has stifled creativity and excellence and growth.  As Diana Butler Bass reminds us, “at its heart, Christianity is dynamic tradition.”  “Practicing congregations” as she calls them, “see tradition as dynamic, fluid, and lived reality.” 

Like so many things about the life of the Spirit, all of this is full of paradox: it is only when we are free of the need to be number one, that we find our true selves, our own real self-worth, and our real vocation. 

I want to close with a little parable from THE WAY TO LOVE; THE LAST MEDITATIONS OF ANTHONY DE MELLO.  It may be something for us all to think about this coming week.

“A group of tourists sits in a bus that is passing through gorgeously beautiful country; lakes and mountains and green fields and rivers.  But the shades of the bus are pulled down.  They do not have the slightest idea of what lies beyond the windows of the bus.  And all the time of their journey is spent in squabbling over who will have the seat of honor in the bus, who will be applauded, who will be well considered.  And so they remain till the journey’s end.  But what if the journey is just beginning?

So Jesus called them and said to them, “Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.