Above Our Pay Grade

(Scriptures - Job 38:1-11; Job 40:1-9, Hebrew 5:1-10,  Mark 10:32-45)

 

 

Our Gospel reading this morning reminds me of a famous line from the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke.  Faced with Luke’s repeated attempts to escape from a prison work detail, a guard addresses Luke with the famous line, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”   And that’s surely what Jesus was experiencing with his disciples.  In our Gospel readings over the past several weeks, three times, including today’s reading, Jesus tells the disciples that he’s going to have to undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the religious establishment, and be killed, but rise again on the third day.   And all three times, the disciples were clueless. The first time Jesus said this, Peter tried to quiet him down and Jesus told Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.”  A little while later, for a second time Jesus told the disciples that he would be betrayed into human hands, and be killed, and rise again on the third day – and all the while the disciples had been arguing over which one of them was the greatest.  Jesus used that as a teaching moment, told the disciples that “whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all” and used a child as an example of how we should approach the reign of God – “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  In today’s Gospel, Jesus goes into more detail – “we’re going to Jerusalem, and the religious establishment will condemn me to death, and then they’ll hand me over to the Gentiles, who will mock me and beat me and kill me, and on the third day I’ll rise again.”  And in response, James and John, among the inner circle of the disciples, come out with a request that, when Jesus came into his glory, he would grant them seats at his right and left hand.  It’s easy to miss as we’re reading Mark’s Gospel a section at a time from Sunday to Sunday, but when you put it all together, it’s really striking, the extent to which the disciples just don’t get it, are just plain stuck in old ways of thinking, just don’t seem to be hearing a thing Jesus is saying.  There’s pathos there, too – Jesus was fully human, and had to be struggling with his own feelings in anticipation of what he knew would befall him in Jerusalem, let alone trying to prepare his disciples for the events to come – and the self-absorption of James and John is just stunning.  “Yeah, yeah, Jesus, you’re going to Jerusalem and be killed….whatever…just make sure you save the first class seats for the two of us after you’ve done all the heavy lifting.” 

 But Jesus is, among other things, infinitely patient.  He once again makes this conversation a teaching moment. Said Jesus to James and John: “You do not know what you’re asking.  Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  James and John said, “Yeah, sure thing.” And Jesus told them, “The cup I drink you will drink, and the baptism with which I’m baptized, you will be baptized, but to be at my right and left hand isn’t mine to grant.”  Of course, the other ten disciples catch wind of the request of James and John and go ballistic.  So Jesus sits them all down and tells them – “You know how business is done among the Gentiles.  Among you it’s the opposite – whoever wishes to be great among you must serve you, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all.”  And Jesus tells them to follow his example – “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

 From where we sit, having heard Jesus’ teachings over many years – to the point where it almost blends with the organ music into a kind of religious background noise, it’s easy to sit back and criticize James and John, and all the disciples.  How could anyone be so clueless?  But I think it’s important to step back and realize how truly revolutionary Jesus’ words were for his followers – and how revolutionary they can be for us. Think how the photos of the moon and especially the photos of earth from the early Apollo space missions revolutionized our view of our place in the universe. Think of how revolutionary data technology, the internet and social media have been for folks like me who began our careers keeping books on green fourteen-column ledger paper – can you even buy that stuff anymore? - who grew up getting news from three big networks – ABC, NBC, and CBS – and who, if we moved from one place to another, resigned ourselves to losing contact with our old friends.  It’s not just an incremental change, but rather it’s a paradigm shift, an extreme makeover of one’s world view, a complete transformation in one’s basic assumptions about reality. 

The Book of Job gives us a sense of what a religious paradigm shift looks like.  Job, despite his innocence and moral rectitude, has been allowed by God to experience great loss and affliction. Job’s friends become increasingly locked into a position of insisting that, well, God is punishing Job, so Job must be guilty of something.  Job becomes increasingly locked into a position of self-justification, of defending his innocence and daring God to come down how and explain Godself to Job.  And then God steps into the picture and expands Job’s field of vision, giving him a God’s eye view of the world, rattling off one after another the wonders of creation – “see that strange and wondrous creature – I made that…here’s another strange and wondrous creature – yeah, I made that too – cool, huh?”, reminding Job that God commands a huge cosmic reality of which Job is only a minute part.  Job had been complaining of matters far above his pay grade, so to speak.  Faced with this change of perspective, Job says, “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand upon my mouth.”

 In our Gospel reading, Jesus’ words present just about that drastic a paradigm shift, just that drastic a change in perspective about social reality. Jesus’ words are an accurate critique of the social order of the Roman Empire.  Social relations in the Roman Empire were very hierarchical.  There were a small number of very wealthy, powerful people at the top of society, the emperor and his family, the elite, who acted as patrons to a somewhat larger circle of folks who were clients of the emperor, part of the emperor’s retinue or entourage.  For example, King Herod and his family, whom we read about at various points in the Gospel, were clients of the Roman emperor. These clients depended on the generosity of the emperor, and when the emperor snapped his fingers, the client jumped.  These members of the emperor’s circle of clients, in turn, acted as patrons to other, still less influential clients, and so forth down the line, until at the bottom was a large peasant class, barely hanging on.  One person at the top could pull the strings of people all the way down the social pyramid.  One’s livelihood, the survival of one’s family, depended not so much on what a person knew, but on who a person knew. Power was about having the right connections. And so people were heavily motivated to connect themselves to more powerful people, to try to gain the protection of a more powerful person and in return act in that more powerful person’s interests.  And so from that point of view, from that paradigm, it’s easy to understand why James and John behaved as they did.  They saw Jesus as a person who would some day be powerful, to whom they would cozy up in order eventually to gain power for themselves.  It wasn’t that they were uniquely bad people, but rather that they and the other disciples literally couldn’t think beyond what they knew to imagine any other way of behaving. They knew how the Empire’s game was played, and they could imagine no other kind of game. And of course the other disciples were angry with James and John for what the two of them had done – only because James and John had thought of it before the rest of them had.

 Jesus turns this paradigm upside-down – and again, while we may be familiar with Jesus’ words, for the disciples of Jesus, this must have left their jaws dropping and clattering on the ground.  “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be the first among you must be slave of all.” Jesus taught that among his disciples, one did not become great by ingratiating oneself to a Roman senator or a member of the religious hierarchy, but by welcoming a child in Christ’s name.  One did not become great by barking out orders, but by offering a cup of cold water in Christ’s name.  One did not become great by lopping off peoples’ heads, but by washing their feet.  One did not become great by cozying up to the powerful, but by serving the powerless. 

 This ethos of service carries into the church today – at least in rhetoric, and sometimes even in reality.  One of the self-descriptions of the Popes has been “Servant of the Servants of God” – though most servants don’t have quite the range of fashion options the Pope has.  Likewise in the more hierarchical Protestant churches, those in the religious hierarchy see themselves as serving their constituent churches – though the folks in the pews may sometimes experience their actions differently.  In the United Church of Christ, we’re somewhat allergic to titles – those who preside over the local and regional judicatories during their terms of office carry the title moderator rather than president, and see themselves as serving – not commanding – the congregations that make up the wider church.

At a very basic level, in a world in which everyone around was and is asking “What’s in it for me,” in our Gospel reading, the message of Jesus to his disciples in today’s Gospel reading is, “Get over yourselves!  It’s not about you!  It’s not about your ego, not about your need to take credit and be recognized, not about your need for security and control.  It’s about humbly loving God and humbly being of service to others, and humbly following where the Spirit leads. It’s about the church acting like the church and not like the world.”  And Jesus not only spoke, but led by example – in his own words, Jesus came, not to be served, but to serve, and to offer his life a ransom for many.  Jesus knew that right from the outset of his ministry. By contrast with the disciples’ request for special seating at Jesus’ right and left hands in glory, on the cross, Jesus had no control even over who would be crucified at his right and at his left, but acted even in that moment as servant and ransom, saying to one of them, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  For us, it’s a much slower process, a lifelong process.  I thought that old, but unfamiliar – unfamiliar to me at least - hymn we sang gave us a picture of what the process looks like.  I think we all start out life focused on “All of self and none of thee”.  Perhaps by God’s grace we move to “Some of self and some of thee” and maybe even to “Less of self and more of thee.”  This side of eternity, I don’t think any of us ever quite get to the place of “None of self and all of thee” but if we get ourselves out of the way, if we can, as the saying goes, “let go and let God,” we will find ourselves more and more receptive to the leading of the Spirit – with lives that may be unpredictable, that may feel at moments like walking on thin ice, but with much more freedom than we can possibly imagine when we insist on being in control.  It’s not about being a doormat – indeed, we may be called to stand boldly and speak God’s truth to entrenched, corrupt power.  It is, though, about realizing that our lives are inescapably connected to the lives of those less fortunate, no matter how we try to forget – and that since our lives are connected, we must be sensitive to the leading of the Spirit in how to live out those connections as children of God. To the extent we are willing to serve others, we partner with God to create a world that’s better for everyone, including ourselves. This is perhaps some of what Jesus meant when he said, “Those who want to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for my sake and the sake of the good news will save them. 

Outside the church, Jesus’ message continues to be a radical witness to the world.  Of course, our society is very different from that of the Roman empire – though perhaps not as different as we might think.  Our country wields global power on a scale Rome couldn’t imagine.  Our society is becoming increasingly stratified by class, with the wealthy living in gated communities while the poor are being foreclosed out of their homes and tossed out on the streets.  We live in a country of coin-operated politicians across the political spectrum and coin-operated media all across the dial, who spend their days delivering the messages and serving the interests of the fabulously wealthy who fund them.  We even have coin-operated religious leaders who, in order to gain funding for their religious enterprises, comfort the overly comfortable no matter how much affliction is brought on the already-afflicted.  When, in the words of the song from the musical Cabaret, “money makes the world go around”, Jesus points the way to a different reality, the reign of God, where the coin of the realm is not “a mark, a yen, a buck or a pound” – but love and service, doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. 

Last Sunday after the Bible study, on the way out the door, I handed out copies of an interview with Shane Claiborne, founder of the Simple Way, an evangelical community with locations here in Philadelphia who model their life on the description of the early church in the book of Acts, what Claiborne calls a “new monasticism”, sharing their possessions and living among the very poor.  I have a few copies downstairs for those who weren’t here, which you’re welcome to take along.  I’d like to end my sermon with the question that was used as the title of the interview, a haunting question in light of today’s Gospel reading:  “What if Jesus really meant all that stuff?”  What if?  May we in our common life as the congregation of Emanuel Church act on the basis that, indeed, Jesus really did mean all that stuff.  And may we act in ways that not only tell our neighbors, but show our neighbors, our answers to the question, “What would Jesus do?” Amen.