THE PULPIT: the journey to greatness
Mark 10:35-45
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came over and spoke to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do us a favor." “What is your request?” he asked.
They replied, “When you sit on your glorious throne, we want to sit in places of honor next to you, one on your right and the other on your left.”
But Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering I am about to drink? Are you able to be baptized with the baptism of suffering I must be baptized with?”
“Oh yes,” they replied, “we are able!”
Then Jesus told them, “You will indeed drink from my bitter cup and be baptized with my baptism of suffering. But I have no right to say who will sit on my right or my left. God has prepared those places for the ones he has chosen.”
When the ten other disciples heard what James and John had asked, they were indignant. So Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
---
One writer reminisced about his experience as an intern in Washington DC:
"[W]hen I got to Washington I discovered that even among young people, being a good guy was not the key thing: The key thing was your position on the great Washington totem pole of status. Way up at the top of this pole is the president; way down at the bottom, below mildew, is the public. In between is an extremely complex hierarchy of government officials, journalists, lobbyists, lawyers, and other power players, holding thousands of minutely graduated status rankings differentiated by extremely subtle nuances that only Washingtonians are capable of grasping.
“For example, Washingtonians know whether a person whose title is "Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary" is more or less important than a person whose title is "Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary," or "Principal Deputy to Deputy Assistant Secretary," or "Deputy to the Deputy Secretary," or "Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary," or "Chief of Staff to the Assistant Assistant Secretary." (All of these are real federal job titles.)
“Everybody in Washington always seems to know exactly how much status everybody else has. I don't know how they do it. Maybe they all get together in some secret location and sniff one another's rear ends. All I know is, back in my internship summer of 1967, when I went to Washington parties, they were nothing like parties I'd become used to in college.
“… Washington parties were serious. Everybody made an obvious effort to figure out where everybody else fit on the totem pole, and then spent the rest of the evening sucking up to whoever was higher up. I hated it. Of course, one reason for this was that nobody ever sucked up to me, since interns rank almost as low as members of the public.”
Sounds just like the disciples, doesn’t it. They’d spent the better part of three years together. Christ had finally confirmed what everyone already knew. He was the Messiah. Everyone knew what that meant: a new kingdom, new power and new positions up for grabs!
Three of the twelve had emerged as big dogs in this pack: Peter, James and John…the latter two being brothers. We all know that climbing the ladder is all about timing. If you are too early in making your play, you fall and look pretty silly doing it. Peter is a good example of this. When Jesus first brought up the subject of being the Messiah, Peter jumped at the gun a little too quickly. He pulled Jesus aside, as if Peter were Jesus political advisor, and gave him a little advice. It was not what Jesus wanted. Peter jumped too quickly and was quickly put in his place. “Get behind me!” “Go to the back of the line.” Peter had his chance, but he blew it.
That means, of the three frontrunners, only James and John are left. Jesus brought up the issue a second time, but not wanting to seem too eager, they each chose to keep silent and wait for a better opportunity. It dawned on them, “If we go together, we might have a better chance than if we compete against one another.” “We’ll go as a package and leave it up to Jesus who gets what job. The important thing is that we keep it in the family.”
A little more time passed. The two sons of Zebedee bided their time until exactly the right moment. Together they walked along the road to Jerusalem. Each day they grew closer and closer until finally, Jesus took them aside. They sat down in the shade. As they started sipping their drinking water, Jesus opened the door they’d been waiting for. He began talking about the new kingdom!
Jesus had said what he had to say. Knowing that this was their chance, James and John nonchalantly approached their teacher. With great respect they made a simple request, “Jesus, dear Rabi, won’t you be gracious unto us? Won’t you grant to us whatever we ask?” Did they really expect Jesus to say yes? Did they really think he would just grant anything, not knowing what he was granting?
“I guess that all depends on what you want…what is it that you want?”
The two were a little nervous now. Maybe they hadn’t chosen the right time. Maybe they should have waited. “O-well, it’s too late to turn back now,” they thought to themselves. “We want to sit, one of us at your right, and the other at your left in the kingdom.” There it was…they’d made their move.
The others were sitting back trying to eavesdrop, but they couldn’t make out exactly what was going on. One of them thought they heard. Had they heard right? “Did they just ask what I think they asked?” It seemed that everyone heard the same thing. Because of they were griping amongst themselves, they couldn’t hear Jesus’ response. It didn’t matter, because they were not going to sit there and let the two brown-nosers get the positions they were each secretly hoping to get. Up to Jesus they ran. By this time all twelve were trying to make a case for why they should get the privileged seats in the Kingdom.
We’re all like that. We might be ashamed to admit it, but we’ve all been there. A better job, better benefits, more influence, more authority, more respect. We all want to be someone special. None of us want to be a nobody. We all want to be SOMEBODY!
How you get to be somebody is not a big secret. All you have to do is watch TV for a couple hours and you will have it all figured out. First, you have to have the right connections. You need connections because you can’t get a job without them. You need a job, because it is the first step up the corporate ladder. Once your foot is in the door, it won’t be long until your new connections start getting you promotions. Soon you will be the manager at your location. You will have a pretty good salary, drive a nice Lincoln, have a pretty cool house, maybe a swimming pool and a big screen. But that isn’t high enough. You really want to be SOMEBODY. You keep connecting, you do whatever you have to and you’re on your way up again. Now you’re SOMEBODY at corporate. You have a Hummer and a Porsche. You have a mansion on the ocean. You have several big screens, personal assistants; you even have a chef and a chauffeur. Isn’t life great? Money, cars, mansions, gadgets, servants, groupies, influence, power: the American Dream!
“Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.” --- Huh? What?
“And whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” --- No cars? No chefs? No chauffeurs?
“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” --- BUT I WANT TO BE SOMEBODY!
We all want to be somebody. We all want to be great. This quest for greatness, however, is what has been our greatest downfall. In Eden, the temptation faced by Adam and Eve was the prospect of being great. “When you eat of [the tree of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” If they ate the fruit, they would be great. OK, so as Christians, we can’t be great. We must give up our desire to be somebody.
WRONG! Jesus never says you can’t be great. He never says you can’t be somebody, but rather that in the kingdom we are all somebody! He says, “If you want to be great…” “In order to be great, you must…” Jesus does not condemn the desire to be great. We all should aspire to greatness. Jesus simply redefines greatness.
Henri Nouwen is one of my favorite authors. He suggests that our greatest temptation is to replace love with power. He writes, "The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love."
Greatness to the world means getting to the top of the pyramid. The pinnacle of the pyramid is the one who stands alone with all the power. Greatness is climbing to the top. Everyone else is beneath the one on top. Christ says greatness is a measure of love, not power. Greatness is not a pyramid but rather a cone. The road to greatness is the journey to the bottom so that all are considered greater. “He must become greater, I must become less.” Love compels us to sink lower and lower so that we find our greatness not in lording power over those beneath us, but in serving those above us.
William Willimon, Professor at Duke Divinity School tells this story:
“The other day I was talking to a man who has become a close friend of a Hungarian government official. "Have you ever met a real-live, lifetime, 100 per cent atheist?" he asked. "I mean somebody who is an atheist the same way I am a Methodist."
I confessed that I had not.
"Well, this woman is that kind of person. I thought, when I first met her, that getting to know somebody who lived her whole life, every minute, every day, without even a thought, not even a hint of God, would be a real revelation for me. I figured that she must be strange, different, like somebody from another planet."
"You know what I found out?" he asked, getting close to my face, gripping me by the collar of my overcoat.
"No, what did you find out?" I asked.
"There’s not a damn bit of difference between her and me. She isn’t somebody strange; she is just like your average, everyday, commonsense American. Like me, she never wonders, ‘What does God want me to do now?’ Like me, she doesn’t lose sleep expecting God to come down and do something about the world. She just goes about her life, deciding on the basis of what’s in her own best interest... That little ‘godless communist’ could pass for you or me anytime."
How do we seek greatness? Do we seek to gain greatness through the lure of success, wealth and power? Or do we seek greatness through loving and serving?
“The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” To the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came over and spoke to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do us a favor." “What is your request?” he asked.
They replied, “When you sit on your glorious throne, we want to sit in places of honor next to you, one on your right and the other on your left.”
But Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering I am about to drink? Are you able to be baptized with the baptism of suffering I must be baptized with?”
“Oh yes,” they replied, “we are able!”
Then Jesus told them, “You will indeed drink from my bitter cup and be baptized with my baptism of suffering. But I have no right to say who will sit on my right or my left. God has prepared those places for the ones he has chosen.”
When the ten other disciples heard what James and John had asked, they were indignant. So Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
---
One writer reminisced about his experience as an intern in Washington DC:
"[W]hen I got to Washington I discovered that even among young people, being a good guy was not the key thing: The key thing was your position on the great Washington totem pole of status. Way up at the top of this pole is the president; way down at the bottom, below mildew, is the public. In between is an extremely complex hierarchy of government officials, journalists, lobbyists, lawyers, and other power players, holding thousands of minutely graduated status rankings differentiated by extremely subtle nuances that only Washingtonians are capable of grasping.
“For example, Washingtonians know whether a person whose title is "Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary" is more or less important than a person whose title is "Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary," or "Principal Deputy to Deputy Assistant Secretary," or "Deputy to the Deputy Secretary," or "Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary," or "Chief of Staff to the Assistant Assistant Secretary." (All of these are real federal job titles.)
“Everybody in Washington always seems to know exactly how much status everybody else has. I don't know how they do it. Maybe they all get together in some secret location and sniff one another's rear ends. All I know is, back in my internship summer of 1967, when I went to Washington parties, they were nothing like parties I'd become used to in college.
“… Washington parties were serious. Everybody made an obvious effort to figure out where everybody else fit on the totem pole, and then spent the rest of the evening sucking up to whoever was higher up. I hated it. Of course, one reason for this was that nobody ever sucked up to me, since interns rank almost as low as members of the public.”
Sounds just like the disciples, doesn’t it. They’d spent the better part of three years together. Christ had finally confirmed what everyone already knew. He was the Messiah. Everyone knew what that meant: a new kingdom, new power and new positions up for grabs!
Three of the twelve had emerged as big dogs in this pack: Peter, James and John…the latter two being brothers. We all know that climbing the ladder is all about timing. If you are too early in making your play, you fall and look pretty silly doing it. Peter is a good example of this. When Jesus first brought up the subject of being the Messiah, Peter jumped at the gun a little too quickly. He pulled Jesus aside, as if Peter were Jesus political advisor, and gave him a little advice. It was not what Jesus wanted. Peter jumped too quickly and was quickly put in his place. “Get behind me!” “Go to the back of the line.” Peter had his chance, but he blew it.
That means, of the three frontrunners, only James and John are left. Jesus brought up the issue a second time, but not wanting to seem too eager, they each chose to keep silent and wait for a better opportunity. It dawned on them, “If we go together, we might have a better chance than if we compete against one another.” “We’ll go as a package and leave it up to Jesus who gets what job. The important thing is that we keep it in the family.”
A little more time passed. The two sons of Zebedee bided their time until exactly the right moment. Together they walked along the road to Jerusalem. Each day they grew closer and closer until finally, Jesus took them aside. They sat down in the shade. As they started sipping their drinking water, Jesus opened the door they’d been waiting for. He began talking about the new kingdom!
Jesus had said what he had to say. Knowing that this was their chance, James and John nonchalantly approached their teacher. With great respect they made a simple request, “Jesus, dear Rabi, won’t you be gracious unto us? Won’t you grant to us whatever we ask?” Did they really expect Jesus to say yes? Did they really think he would just grant anything, not knowing what he was granting?
“I guess that all depends on what you want…what is it that you want?”
The two were a little nervous now. Maybe they hadn’t chosen the right time. Maybe they should have waited. “O-well, it’s too late to turn back now,” they thought to themselves. “We want to sit, one of us at your right, and the other at your left in the kingdom.” There it was…they’d made their move.
The others were sitting back trying to eavesdrop, but they couldn’t make out exactly what was going on. One of them thought they heard. Had they heard right? “Did they just ask what I think they asked?” It seemed that everyone heard the same thing. Because of they were griping amongst themselves, they couldn’t hear Jesus’ response. It didn’t matter, because they were not going to sit there and let the two brown-nosers get the positions they were each secretly hoping to get. Up to Jesus they ran. By this time all twelve were trying to make a case for why they should get the privileged seats in the Kingdom.
We’re all like that. We might be ashamed to admit it, but we’ve all been there. A better job, better benefits, more influence, more authority, more respect. We all want to be someone special. None of us want to be a nobody. We all want to be SOMEBODY!
How you get to be somebody is not a big secret. All you have to do is watch TV for a couple hours and you will have it all figured out. First, you have to have the right connections. You need connections because you can’t get a job without them. You need a job, because it is the first step up the corporate ladder. Once your foot is in the door, it won’t be long until your new connections start getting you promotions. Soon you will be the manager at your location. You will have a pretty good salary, drive a nice Lincoln, have a pretty cool house, maybe a swimming pool and a big screen. But that isn’t high enough. You really want to be SOMEBODY. You keep connecting, you do whatever you have to and you’re on your way up again. Now you’re SOMEBODY at corporate. You have a Hummer and a Porsche. You have a mansion on the ocean. You have several big screens, personal assistants; you even have a chef and a chauffeur. Isn’t life great? Money, cars, mansions, gadgets, servants, groupies, influence, power: the American Dream!
“Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant.” --- Huh? What?
“And whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” --- No cars? No chefs? No chauffeurs?
“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” --- BUT I WANT TO BE SOMEBODY!
We all want to be somebody. We all want to be great. This quest for greatness, however, is what has been our greatest downfall. In Eden, the temptation faced by Adam and Eve was the prospect of being great. “When you eat of [the tree of good and evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” If they ate the fruit, they would be great. OK, so as Christians, we can’t be great. We must give up our desire to be somebody.
WRONG! Jesus never says you can’t be great. He never says you can’t be somebody, but rather that in the kingdom we are all somebody! He says, “If you want to be great…” “In order to be great, you must…” Jesus does not condemn the desire to be great. We all should aspire to greatness. Jesus simply redefines greatness.
Henri Nouwen is one of my favorite authors. He suggests that our greatest temptation is to replace love with power. He writes, "The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love."
Greatness to the world means getting to the top of the pyramid. The pinnacle of the pyramid is the one who stands alone with all the power. Greatness is climbing to the top. Everyone else is beneath the one on top. Christ says greatness is a measure of love, not power. Greatness is not a pyramid but rather a cone. The road to greatness is the journey to the bottom so that all are considered greater. “He must become greater, I must become less.” Love compels us to sink lower and lower so that we find our greatness not in lording power over those beneath us, but in serving those above us.
William Willimon, Professor at Duke Divinity School tells this story:
“The other day I was talking to a man who has become a close friend of a Hungarian government official. "Have you ever met a real-live, lifetime, 100 per cent atheist?" he asked. "I mean somebody who is an atheist the same way I am a Methodist."
I confessed that I had not.
"Well, this woman is that kind of person. I thought, when I first met her, that getting to know somebody who lived her whole life, every minute, every day, without even a thought, not even a hint of God, would be a real revelation for me. I figured that she must be strange, different, like somebody from another planet."
"You know what I found out?" he asked, getting close to my face, gripping me by the collar of my overcoat.
"No, what did you find out?" I asked.
"There’s not a damn bit of difference between her and me. She isn’t somebody strange; she is just like your average, everyday, commonsense American. Like me, she never wonders, ‘What does God want me to do now?’ Like me, she doesn’t lose sleep expecting God to come down and do something about the world. She just goes about her life, deciding on the basis of what’s in her own best interest... That little ‘godless communist’ could pass for you or me anytime."
How do we seek greatness? Do we seek to gain greatness through the lure of success, wealth and power? Or do we seek greatness through loving and serving?
“The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” To the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
posted by EF + at 11:17 AM
1 Comments:
That's the difference between the Kingdom of God and the power under and the kingdom of the world and the power over. Check out Gregory Boyd's The Myth of a Christian Nation. He talks a lot about the search for power and the search for service. The guy lost a thousand people from his church (that's 1/5 of his congregation) when he got up to the pulpit and said, "America is not the light of the world. Jesus Christ is the light of the world.
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