Mark 10:35-45
Presented October 22nd, 2006, by J.D. Kline
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Stewardship Theme: Celebrate Abundance—Give Yourself to God
Perhaps you remember the novel by Chaim Potok entitled The Chosen. It’s the story of two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s. One of the boys, Danny, is the son of a Hasidic rabbi, an ultra-conservative Jewish sect; the other, Reuven, is the son of an Orthodox professor who teaches the Torah. The boys first encounter one another on a baseball field, as the teams from their two schools compete against one another. It is quickly apparent that there is tension, even hostility, between the two groups. The Hasidic boys consider the Orthodox group to be unfaithful, having, from their perspective, watered down the true faith.
Danny comes to bat against Reuven, and drills the ball directly at the pitcher’s mound. Reuven attempts to catch the drilled ball, but instead it hits him in the face, his glasses shattering. A shard of glass is lodged in Reuven’s eye, and he must have surgery. Later, as Reuven returns to his home, everything looks different. Many of the things he had long taken for granted now possess a luminous and alive quality, and Reuven later writes of that time, “Somehow everything had changed. I had spent five days in a hospital and the world around seemed sharpened now and pulsing with life…. I felt I had crossed into another world.”
At the heart of faith, I’m becoming convinced more and more, is an experience much like that described by Reuven—the ability to see and experience life in new and fresh ways. Every bit as remarkable in Reuven’s life is that he and Danny, who began as fierce opponents on the baseball field, became fast friends, crossing boundaries that otherwise would have remained in place, learning to know one another’s faith, family life, and culture. Along the way, both Reuven and Danny found their perspectives broadened, their horizons expanded, far beyond anything they had previously imagined. That, too, speaks of the nature of faith.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews, you may recall, defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). In The Message Eugene Peterson offers this paraphrase: “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.” In the aftermath of Janice’s death I received hundreds of cards, and among then was one in which the sender wrote something to the effect, “When someone we love dies, it is as if heaven comes a little closer.” I must confess I was initially taken back by the words; in the midst of shock and grief, when everything was a blur, the message seemed almost out of place. But in the days since, as I have been able to receive the words more fully, they have served as a reminder of the power of faith, suggesting that even the usual boundaries between heaven and earth can be crossed, that we can indeed taste a bit of heaven’s love in the very midst of grief. The message of that card underscored faith as the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not fully seen.
Faith, says Jim Wallis, is what makes hope possible. Hope. Who among us does not find himself or herself questioning, perhaps with some regularity, how to maintain a sense of hope while living with seemingly endless reports of violence and warfare, injustice and abuse, uncertainty and grief and fear? We sometimes wonder—do we not?—just what difference people of faith can make in our broken and hurting world.
In his book Faith Works Jim Wallis speaks of hope as a matter of “believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.” I rather suspect that Jesus had to remind himself with some regularity of this understanding of hope as believing in spite of the evidence. Again and again, particularly in the Gospel of Mark, the followers of Jesus are portrayed as simply not grasping what Jesus was saying, what Jesus was all about. The disciples just don’t get it! This morning’s Gospel lesson is a perfect illustration, as James and John come asking that Jesus grant the two of them special places of honor in the kingdom of God, one at Jesus’ right hand and the other at his left. What immediately precedes that request is Jesus explaining to the disciples—for the third time—what he must face in the near future, as they continue the journey toward Jerusalem. Jesus asserts that he, the Son of Man, the child of humanity, “will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again” (Mark 10:33-34).
Though Jesus speaks repeatedly of impending suffering, death and resurrection, the disciples seem unable to deal with the harsh reality of the cross. They choose instead to hear the words of Jesus as little more than figurative language suggesting that though there might be a slight glitch in the road, Jesus and the disciples will surely come out on top! The two sons of Zebedee, James and John, in reality come asking for top-level cabinet appointments in the realm of God, assuming that the new world will be set up just like the old world, only with different leaders in place. The bad guys will be ousted, and Jesus and the disciples will take over.
James and John—and the other disciples who later express anger at the sons of Zebedee—see this as a time to be jockeying for key positions in the new order, concerned for their prestige, their influence, their place of honor. And we understand that, don’t we? We too struggle with our position in the pecking order of life; we too grapple with issues related to the level of recognition we will receive. In his book In the Name of Jesus Henri Nouwen makes the telling observation that “the long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led [by the Spirit of God].”
But Jesus, once again, reminds his followers that he has come to do something radically new. It’s as if he is challenging his followers to cross over into another world, to embrace a new set of values and priorities, to choose no longer to live by the ways of cut-throat competition and self-seeking, but rather to opt for Christ’s way of compassion and grace, mercy and peace and self-giving love. “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” says Jesus, “and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be great must be your slave” (10:42-44 The Message).
Our model is Jesus, who does not merely pretend to be a servant until the time when his reign approaches and he can take off his disguise and climb onto his throne. No, Jesus is a servant through and through, and all throughout his ministry, right to the very end, Jesus does not back off from inviting and challenging us to think and act in new ways. Even when those closest to him fail to grasp what he is about, Jesus persists. Is that not a model of abundant hope—continuing to trust in the unfolding of new possibilities, when all evidence suggests that change is not coming?
With Jesus, we too are called to lift up new possibilities. Walter Brueggemann speaks of our calling as one of prophetic imagination, learning to envision new levels of justice, peace, hope, and right living. “The task of prophetic imagination and ministry,” asserts Brueggemann, “is to bring to public expression those hopes and yearnings that may have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we no longer know they are there…Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the major opinion.”
In recent weeks our Wednesday morning Bible study group has been exploring the exile, that bleak period of time in Israel’s history when the people were forced to leave their homeland and live in Babylon. It was a time of deep despair, a time when the very underpinnings of life seemed to be lost. Yet once the exile occurred, Jeremiah, the very prophet who announced judgment unless the people repented for the deep levels of injustice in their society—once the exile occurs, Jeremiah offers words of hope. Writing to the exiles far from their beloved homeland, the prophet urges them to settle into life in Babylon, all the while trusting that God will eventually restore them. Speaking for God, Jeremiah writes, “For surely I know the plans I have for you…plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Hope pushes us beneath the surface of life, trusting that God will bring healing in the midst of our times of darkness and despair, trusting that God will bring reconciliation and new life in the midst of brokenness and fear and pain, trusting that God will bring justice and peace to a world sorely divided. Hope—abundant hope—is what enables us to envision new possibilities, to cross boundaries that have long separated us, to choose Jesus’ way of servanthood and self-giving love over the more familiar ways of cut-throat competition and self-seeking. Hope: believing in spite of the evidence, then watching as the evidence begins to change.