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+In the Name…
Jesus said, “…whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would first among you must be slave of all” (St. Mark 10:43-44).
Just shy of a month ago on the 16th Sunday after Pentecost (September 20th), you will remember that we heard in the Gospel reading how after Jesus had predicted His death and resurrection which the disciples did not understand, and about which the disciples were afraid to ask Jesus, He catches them in a walking discussion on their way to Capernaum focused on who among them was the greatest.
Jesus didn’t scold them, nor did He sigh in frustration with them, but He immediately made them sit down and put their attention on Him in order to hear Him say in a no uncertain terms, “If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” You will remember that He drives home this teaching home by taking a child in his arms and saying, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
It should be noted that this had been the second time that Jesus had made this prediction of His death and resurrection.
This morning the Gospel passage begins immediately after Jesus has made the third prediction of His death and resurrection, but this time He elaborates on what will occur before His death and resurrection which we can be sure was not easy or pleasant for Him to speak of. He says to His disciples, “…the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him…”
One would think that finally the disciples’ minds and hearts would be awakened to the what their Lord and Master would face, suffer, and endure; and that that would plunge them into silence, and then possibly questions like, “Can this be stopped? “ or “What do you want us to do?” or “Lord, what will happen to us?”
But we hear no such questions. Rather we hear a very disconcerting request from two of them – James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who along with Simon Peter had been graced and called by Jesus to a special place and relationship with Him. With that calling and privilege of accompanying Jesus to certain healings and to the Mount of Transfiguration where they beheld a theophany of Jesus in a glorified state with Moses and Elijah standing with and talking to him, one would hope that they would have been humbled by such gifts; but that’s not the case. It seems that the honored roles they had been given by Jesus which they shared with Peter which the other nine Apostles hadn’t been given had gone to their heads – preventing them to see what such a calling, such an honor, and such a relationship with their Lord and Master entailed and required – being the primary call to be like Him in perspective and destiny.
James and John stepped forward to Jesus while the words of His third prediction hung in the air. They, with shocking boldness, self concern, ambition, and arrogance said, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
If I was Jesus, I would have said, “What did you just say?” or “Could you please rephrase that!” But Jesus as both God and Man exhibits curiosity about this bold request and expectation. He asks them, “What do you want me to do for you?”
“And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’”
Remembrances of the Transfiguration event when great men of the past, Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the consummate Prophet, stood next to Jesus, and was it now time for the great men of the past to step back and off stage to make room for the great men of the present? Or something like that? And to think that these two brothers desired such places when they had yet to really do anything! Moses had taken on Pharaoh and then led the children of Israel out of the Egyptian captivity and had endured the complaining and rebellious children of Israel for forty years!
Elijah had taken on the wicked King Ahab and his equally wicked wife, Jezebel, and the 450 prophets of Baal, exposing their god as false, then killing them all, and then running for his life!
Their request opens the door for Jesus to put things in the proper perspective by challenging and correcting such confused thinking and ministering to such spiritual immaturity.
Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to Him, “We are able” – which was a statement of truth, because they eventually experienced the full cost of discipleship.
Jesus then tells them what lies in store for them on the one hand, but gives them no clear assurance of places of honor on the other hand as He states, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.; but to sit a my right hand or at my left hand is not mine to grant, but it for those for whom it has been prepared.”
And then He concludes the conversation with the same teaching that He gave after His second prediction, and after their walking conversation of who among them was the greatest, “…whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life his life as a ransom for many.”
That final statement of Jesus contains our (unofficial) parish motto which came to Bennett Hill as an inspiration in the Centennial Year of this building’s life in 1994: non ministrari, sed ministrare – “not to be ministered unto, for to minister” (King James Version).
Whether it be the Apostles or us, our calling is to follow Jesus; to do what He calls us to do as His servants and servants of one another; to say what Jesus said we should say in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, “…when you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (17:10) – knowing the truth of the Morning Office’s daily collect- “whose service is perfect freedom.” And please take to heart what Thomas Merton once wrote: “Duty does not have to be dull. Love can make it beautiful and fill it with life.”
Can you imagine how different the Church would be (here and in all places) if servant hood defined its life and witness second only to the worship of Almighty God with the duty of servant hood expressing genuine love? It would be dramatically different, and there would indeed be much good fruit borne and many wonderful blessings experienced and shared!
So, let each and every one of us renew our commitment today to serving as Jesus served- fulfilling His expectation of us as His disciples, engaging ourselves in that which pleases Him and which edifies the Body of which He is Head – with both the attitude and spirit stated by St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians, “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves” (2:3).
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