Mark 10:35-45
Presented October 18, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Some years ago, while pastoring in my former congregation, I participated in a prayer retreat organized by a number of neighboring evangelical pastors. The goal was to deepen relationships across many of the dividing lines within the church of today—racial, theological, and denominational lines of division. It was a noble goal—this effort to chip away at the divisions among those who profess to be followers of Jesus. But as I pondered today’s Gospel lesson from Mark, chapter ten, I found myself recalling a song the retreat leaders invited us to sing with some frequency during that retreat, as we gathered in a circle for worship and sharing sessions. The song proclaimed that Jesus was a winner man, and kept repeating that single word: winner, winner, winner, winner, winner, winner; Jesus was a winner man.
I found myself troubled by that song while on retreat many years ago, and as it came to mind again while reflecting upon today’s Scripture text, I was troubled—and disturbed—all over again. Today’s lesson is one in which Jesus is urging us to express our partnership in the gospel by embracing a life of servanthood. “Whoever wishes to become great among you,” says Jesus, “must be your servant” (Mark 10:43). But the song, quite to the contrary, speaks not of servanthood, but of emerging victorious over others, coming out on top. Truth be told, the song seems far more descriptive of the American obsession with being number one, positioning ourselves above everyone else, than it is of the life and ministry of Jesus—a life and ministry that, from beginning to end, point us in a radically different direction than does our culture, so consumed with glamour and success, with victory and power over others. Indeed, Jesus proclaims a way of living that goes against the grain of much of what we have come to deem the natural order of things. Rather than blessing a life of coercive domination over others, Jesus calls us to the way of liberating love. Rather than top-down domination, Jesus invites us to a life of bottom-up service. Rather than the iron fist of vengeance, Jesus counsels a welcoming gesture of loving kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, and grace beyond measure.
Jesus literally turns upside down the competitive and often unjust ways that characterize so much of human life. Writes Donald Kraybill in his book The Upside-Down Kingdom:
The kingdom [Jesus models and proclaims] is full of surprises. Again and again in parables, sermons, and acts Jesus startles us. Things are not like they are supposed to be. The stories don’t end as we expected. The Good Guys turn out to be the Bad Guys. The ones we expected to receive a reward get spanked. Things are reversed…. The least are the greatest. The immoral receive forgiveness and blessing. Adults become like children. The religious miss the heavenly banquet. The pious receive curses…. We are baffled, perplexed…caught off guard.
Is this not the power of today’s lesson from the Gospel of Mark, a conversation between Jesus and the disciples that catches us off guard, prodding us to consider a radically different perspective in life? The passage follows on the heels of Jesus asserting, for a third time in Mark’s Gospel, that he is headed to Jerusalem, where he will face certain death. “Listen to me carefully,” Eugene Peterson has Jesus cautioning the disciples in his paraphrase of today’s lesson. “We’re on our way up to Jerusalem. When we get there, the Son of Man will be betrayed to the religious leaders and scholars. They will sentence him to death. Then they will hand him over to the Romans, who will mock him and spit on him, give him the third degree, then kill him. After three days he will rise again” (Mark 10:33-34 The Message).
The first disciples seem no more prepared to embrace this troubling message about Jesus’ death, and its challenge to embrace an upside down way of thinking and acting, than do we. Indeed, the first followers of Jesus reflect the commonly-held hope among the Jewish faithful of that day—the hope for a messiah who would come with vengeance and sword in hand, toppling the oppressive Roman rule while restoring Israel to a position of prominence and prestige. It is a “winner man” version of the messiah, one that stands in marked contrast to the suffering servant images from Isaiah 53, images that run throughout this morning’s lesson. Recall that passage from the writings of the prophet Isaiah, speaking of a suffering servant:
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised,
and we held him of no account.Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed (53:3-5).
This image of a servant who suffers and dies that we might live made little sense to the initial disciples; quite to the contrary, they want Jesus to turn his journey to Jerusalem into a march towards glory. James and John give voice to this yearning, as they come requesting that they might occupy positions of honor right beside Jesus, when God’s kingdom is fully unleashed in the world. “Grant us to sit,” James and John request, “one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37).
Jesus responds sharply, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (10:38). To walk with Jesus, to drink from the cup of suffering, to be baptized into the refining fire of self-giving love—all of this demands the embracing of a radically new way of living, a way of living that flows forth from a new heart and a new spirit. Tom Wright in his commentary Mark for Everyone claims that the cross Jesus anticipates in today’s text is not simply “a difficult episode to be gotten through on the way to a happy ending. It is precisely God’s way of standing worldly power and authority on its head.”
That’s why Jesus responds so sharply to the brothers who seek positions of honor. They do not understand that Jesus is literally redefining power, standing worldly power and authority on its head, offering in its place a new kind of power. The power Jesus offers is not a power over others, but rather the power of self-giving love; it is the power of servanthood. In a world obsessed with upward mobility, getting ahead no matter what the cost, Henri Nouwen suggests that the gospel of Jesus points us instead along the pathway of downward mobility. It is a matter, asserts Nouwen, of discovering the power of powerlessness. In his book Finding My Way Home Nouwen puts it this way:
The movement from power through strength to power through powerlessness is our call. As fearful, anxious, insecure, and wounded people we are tempted constantly to grab the little bit of power that the world around us offers, left and right, here and there, now and then…. But insofar as we dare to be baptized in powerlessness…we are plunged right into the heart of God’s endless mercy. We are free to reenter our world with the same divine power with which Jesus came.
You may recall Paul’s challenging words in his letter to the Philippians, chapter 2:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant/slave (2:5-7).
If we are to be partners with God, proclaiming God’s gracious compassion, forgiveness, and new life, we too must become servants. We take the risk of appearing powerless, in order to extend Christ’s compassionate mercy and grace. At a recent recognition dinner for those persons who have been among Manchester College’s most generous donors through the years, Jo Switzer, college president, suggested that civilization most flourishes when people plant trees under which they never get to sit. Nevertheless they plant the trees, trusting that others will be able to enjoy the fruit of their gifts. This is the nature of Christian stewardship—giving not for our own personal reward, but for the greater good of those around us, those who would follow us.
It is a surprising partnership—this call to take on a style of gracious living that turns upside-down the patterns of life so commonly embraced by much of the world. In Church of the Brethren tradition we have long affirmed that we are called to be nonconformists; Christ’s gospel compels us to live by a significantly different set of values and priorities than does the world around us. A key verse comes from Paul’s writings to the Romans, chapter twelve: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2). Brethren would agree with Peter Gomes, pastor of Harvard University’s Memorial Church, who writes in his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus that this verse from Romans 12 is “perhaps the most dangerous verse in all the Bible,” for in urging us along the pathway of nonconformity, the apostle Paul recognizes that we are called into a surprising partnership, into a markedly new way of living that can turn life upside down. It is the way of walking in the footsteps of Jesus, the way of finding wisdom and blessing in living as the pure in heart and the poor in spirit, the way of hungering and thirsting for justice and peace, the way of humble living and of servanthood, the way of embodying Christ’s self-giving love.
My friends, this is our calling. God grant us courage and strength to heed the call. Amen.