Servanthood

Mark 10:35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”

Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and to be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” They answered him, “We are able.” He said to them, “You will drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism with which I have been baptized. But to sit at my right hand or my left is not mine to decide. It is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they regard as their rulers lord it over them; and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. For whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve; and to give his life a ransom for many.”

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Their nerve is laughable. To ask Jesus, so boldly … with so little shame … to get the best seats in the Kingdom? I’m as embarrassed for these jokers, James and John, as the other 10 disciples were angry at them for it.

But you might say it’s as endearing as it is surprising to know they would be so bold. Endearing – maybe – because they’re doing that “faith like a child” thing Jesus mentions in some other Gospel stories we’ve heard, lately. You know, “whoever doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a little child, will never enter it.” James and John sound to me like those little kids in school who ask to be first in line; who beg to get the best snack; who shoot their hand in the air and bounce around in their seat, hoping the teacher will call on them to do – or to get – whatever the next best things might be.

And we can’t know for sure, but I imagine Jesus might have been both endeared and exasperated by it, too, like any good teacher. “What is it you want me to do for you?” he asks them back. And when they request the best seats in the kingdom – when they tell him they want to be front and center on the other side of God’s heaven – Jesus tells them they don’t understand what it is they’re talking about; that they really have no idea what they’re asking for.

Because, when Jesus says they will “drink the cup” that he drinks, he’s not talking only about the cup of wine they’ll share at the next wedding in Cana, or at the table of the Last Supper, even. The cup he’s really talking about is the one he prays about in the Garden of Gethsemane just before his arrest and crucifixion. (“Father, if it be your will, let this cup pass from me.”) It was a cup full of suffering and struggle Jesus wasn’t sure even he could drink, in all its fullness.

And the baptism he’s talking about isn’t just that holy moment in the river with John the Baptist, when he came up from the water, when the dove descended, and when the voice from heaven declared him to be God’s beloved Son. All of that was and would be part of it. But James and John didn’t know, they couldn’t imagine – or they had forgotten about – the temptation in the wilderness that followed the beauty of that moment in the river and, of course, the promised suffering and death that were to come along with that baptism, too.

Just like James and John, none of this is what we always want to hear. None of this is how the world operates. All of this is summed up in the promise we’ve heard so many times before – and in the way Jesus wraps it all up for the disciples this morning: “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. …the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve; and to give his life a ransom for many.”

A front row seat in God’s kingdom means becoming a servant. Glory is achieved by becoming a slave. It means heading to the end of the line. It means giving more than you take; it means sharing more than you ask for yourself; it means not being served, but serving. And it’s not about making a reservation on the other side of heaven. It’s all about sharing and experiencing the Kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven, first.

I’ve been fascinated and captivated and heartbroken to follow the story of Hersh Goldberg-Polin over the course of the last year. He was one of the Israeli-Americans captured and held hostage by Hamas over in Israel, a year ago, October 7th. He was at that Nova musical festival when the attack started and he took cover, with a group of others, packed into one of the cement bomb shelters that are surprisingly common-place in Israel; they sit like park benches or bus stops along the side of the road.

Anyway, Hersh’s parents have been some of the more outspoken advocates for their son and the other hostages in Gaza. Maybe you’ve seen them. I think his mom, aptly named Rachel, is the one who started the trend of wearing a piece of tape on her shirt to mark the number of days since the attack and to count the number of days that her son and others were being held captive. (Rachel, in the Biblical narrative, remember, is the matriarch who wept for her children taken captive by the Babylonians.)

Dmitry Solovyov / NBC News

Well, this Rachel’s 23-year-old son Hersh is a hero by all accounts because, just before his capture on October 7, 2023, he was trapped in one of those bomb shelters with a handful of others and, as the attackers lobbed as many as 11 grenades into the shelter’s open door, one after another, Hersh risked his life over and over and over by grabbing and throwing the grenades back until one exploded and blew his arm off below the elbow. He was ultimately captured and hauled away to Gaza.

And it was heart-wrenching over the course of the last year to see his parents interviewed and marching, giving speeches and making appeals to governments and politicians, each day marked by the climbing numbers scrawled onto the masking tape that they wore so faithfully in his honor. Hersh was found dead on day 330 – about a month shy of one full year in captivity.

We want to be first, but we think that means being the fastest. We want to know peace and comfort, but we think that means having more power and money and stuff. We want to walk more closely with Jesus but we’re not always willing to follow where he leads. We want to be successful, but we use all the wrong measuring sticks to determine what that means.

What Jesus shows us, and what people like Hersh Goldberg-Polin lived, is what it looks like to serve rather than to be served; to choose others over and above ourselves; to give instead of take; to become a suffering servant like we heard about from the prophet Isaiah a minute ago.

What Jesus shows us, and what Hersh-Goldberg-Polin lived in ways I can’t fathom, is that to sit at the right hand of God isn’t just a position to which we will be promoted someday. To sit at the right hand of God is a position to which each and every one of us is called to experience, somehow, right where we live, on this side of heaven, not just the next. This is where we are called to drink the cup. Here is where we’re invited to live out the calling of our baptism.

And as hard as that is sometimes. As much courage and faith and generosity and sacrifice as that may invite us to, we are blessed with this God – in Jesus – who never calls us to something God hasn’t already done, first, for our sake: to give generously … to sacrifice … to suffer … to die, even.

(I’m in no way suggesting that God ordained or orchestrated the suffering and death of Hersh Goldberg-Polin or any of those captured or killed in the October 7th attacks in Israel, or since. I am saying that Hersh responded like a saint … like a selfless servant … in that bomb shelter, likely inspired by the Jewish faith he shared with the likes of James and John and Jesus.)

And that’s Jesus’ invitation to James and John – and to each of us, just the same – as we live in the strange pull of God’s Kingdom … on this side of heaven and the next. And there are a million ways we can practice drinking this cup and answering the call of our baptism that don’t look anything like the struggle and suffering of a hostage in the war-torn middle east, thanks be to God!

I think it means giving away our money. I think it means helping refugees. I think it means building homes in Haiti, helping the SonRise Bible Study, serving as a Stephen Minister, working in the food pantry, spending time with the Agape ministry’s sex workers downtown.

I think it means cleaning the bathrooms at church, mowing the lawn at church, doing yard work around the church. I think it means working in the nursery and teaching Sunday School at church, too.

I think it means saying “I’m sorry,” and proving it. I think it means saying “I forgive you,” and meaning it.

I think it means sitting with the lonely kid in the cafeteria or picking the last kid, first, on the playground some of the time, too.

Because we are called to be servants. We are called not to ask “what can I get?”, but “what can I give?”, instead, and “how much?” and, “who needs it most?” … like Jesus did when he climbed onto a cross and out of a tomb and into our hearts, minds, and lives so that we would share the grace of God in as many ways as we can manage – and so that, through sharing it – humbly, selflessly, generously, bravely, even, without hope for recognition or reward – we will experience God’s kind of glory most fully ourselves – and for the benefit and blessing of somebody else, in Jesus’ name.

Amen

Divorce Is Hard

Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid hands on them, and blessed them.

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First off, like last week, there are several sermons to be preached from this batch of verses from Mark’s Gospel. Also like last week, we don’t have time for all of them on one Sunday morning. So my little prelude and disclaimer about what’s to come is that these verses seem to speak to a traditional version of marriage – the one between a man and a woman – that I don’t believe precludes or dismisses or needs to deny the notion that other versions of faithful marriage exist, as we know, in our day and age.

And notice I said “traditional” view of marriage, not “Biblical” view of marriage, because Jesus doesn’t say boo here about the plural marriage, or the concubines, or the surrogate slave birth mothers that are described without apology throughout Holy Scripture.

And, preaching from the assigned lectionary means I have to play with the cards I’m dealt sometimes. So my hope is we can see that, whatever your experience with marriage may be – if any – there’s a lesson and inspiration here for us all. Now, for some Ted Lasso.

There isn’t enough Ted Lasso in the world, in my opinion. If you haven’t seen the show, I couldn’t recommend it more highly. It’s a series about an American football coach who (accidentally I think?) signs up to be the coach of a European soccer team. Rebecca, the woman in this clip, is the owner of that soccer team who, if I remember correctly, acquired the team as part of her divorce settlement. In the short scene I’ll show you, she’s about to confess all the terrible things she has done to make the team fail – all and only as revenge against her ex-husband, from whom she has endured a very bitter divorce.

[Video Clip]

Again, if you haven’t seen it, do. Next time there’s a deal on Apple TV, subscribe just long enough to binge Ted Lasso and then cancel your subscription. You won’t regret it.

But, all of this is to say, I think Jesus is at least as sympathetic, gracious, and forgiving as Ted Lasso when it comes to whatever leads to divorce between married people, and toward whatever might come as a result of it. Divorce is hard, plain and simple – even when it goes well. And God knows it.

So this morning – as usual – we're allowed to see more in this Gospel than just a conversation about men and women; or marriage and divorce; and certainly more than fear, condemnation, or apocalyptic judgment about any of that. Like we find – more often than not – when we're willing to open our hearts and minds to all that Jesus is up to, he has more to say today about love and grace and mercy than we might notice at first glance … and more than too many people have offered up on his behalf and in his name over the years, where things like divorce are concerned.

Right away we know the Pharisees are up to something. Right away we're told they're interested in testing or tricking Jesus. Because they knew questions about the Law, like the legality of divorce, were tricky ones to answer. They knew Jesus' answer – whether he defended the practice of divorce or denounced it – would get him into trouble with one side or the other. They knew that if Jesus spoke about what was legally right or wrong; about what was legally acceptable or not; about what was legally good or bad – according to the black and white letter of the Law according to Moses – Jesus was between a rock and hard place.

He asks about Moses. He lets them know he sees where they're coming from. And he either sympathizes with them or chastises them when he explains how the Law of Moses addressed their hardness of heart. The Law of Moses spoke to their stubbornness. Like so much else, when it came to divorce, the Law of Moses addressed the hard reality that people – children of God, like you and me – just can't seem to get it right enough of the time. The Law of Moses addressed the sad truth that the brokenness of marriage would come because of the brokenness of those who would be married in the first place.

And, Jesus knew better then to be pulled into their little game of tug-of-war. Jesus knew better then to fall for their transparent little tricks. And, Jesus knew he could use their lame little "Q and A" to share grace instead of judgment; to offer hope instead of fear; and to teach about God's promises rather throw stones about God's condemnation.

Last week, I mentioned that we are allowed and encouraged to read the Bible LITERATELY, rather than LITERALLY, and I’m grateful for that. (It’s why we don’t lop off our hands or pluck out our eyes if they cause us to sin, remember.) Well, I’m going to add to that this morning something I’ve been convicted about and convinced of over the years. I think we’re also called to read the Bible, not just LITERATELY, but LOVINGLY, too … searching for and finding, without apology, the kind of grace we know, believe in, and hope for in Jesus.

And that’s what I find when Mark’s Gospel includes this moment with Jesus and the kids, just after what sound like harsh, hard-to-swallow words about marriage, divorce, and adultery.

See, when he’s confronted by the Pharisees, Jesus steers the conversation away from the issue of divorce and moves it toward the promise of marriage. Jesus moves the conversation away from who God may or may not punish when they get it wrong, to what God hopes and dreams for us in the first place. Jesus moves the conversation away from what breaks the Law of Moses to what breaks the heart of God.

And, what breaks the heart of God – like any loving parent – is whatever breaks the hearts of God's children.

Which is why that moment with the children is so instructive, and loving, and full of hope, when we consider it just after this difficult conversation about divorce and adultery and the Law and all the rest.

“Let the little children come to me,” he says. “Do not stop them; for it is to such as these – these naïve, squirrelly, sinful little rug rats – that the kingdom of God belongs.”

“And he took them up in his arms, laid hands on them, and blessed them.”

This is a sign of hope and show of love and invitation to grace for all of God’s children – that there is room for us all in the lap of God’s mercy, no matter what.

“It is to such as these – divorced, adulterous, selfish, vindictive, vengeful so-and-sos – that the kingdom of God belongs.”

“It is to such as these – abused, traumatized, afraid, ashamed, exhausted, alone, uncertain souls – that the kingdom of God belongs.”

“It is to such as these – regretful, remorseful, broken-hearted ones – that the kingdom of God belongs.”

And he took them up in his arms even though the disciples tried to chase them away. He laid hands on them, with love, even though his followers thought they weren’t worthy. And he blessed them, even though some believed he shouldn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t.

Divorce is hard. God knows it. So did Jesus.

God intends for us to live together and to love together and to choose grace and joy and forgiveness for each another. God intends for lovers to find each other and to learn to share a love that lasts. God hopes for relationships that strengthen and uplift and inspire and fulfill – and God's heart breaks when we can't seem to make that happen at every turn, even as much as we wish we could.

So, just like Jesus does, the grace of God gathers broken, hurting children – like you and me – up into waiting, loving, merciful arms. Just like Jesus, the grace of God lays hands on heavy hearts. And just like Jesus, the grace of God blesses lives with forgiveness, hope, joy, and second chances.

I like to wonder about what immediate effect Jesus’ teaching and preaching – and the loving and blessing of all those kids – had on those who witnessed all of this that day. Maybe one of those Pharisees went home and put the pieces of his own broken marriage back together. Maybe a mother who was there went home and hugged her kids differently at the end of the day. Maybe a disciple or two apologized to those kids or to someone they’d shamed with their misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Scripture.

Maybe each of us will hear something of love – not judgment – in this gift we call the Gospel; and maybe tomorrow, your world and my world and God’s world will be different when we do.

Amen