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.”

I often feel like Jesus regrets some of the things he says sometimes. Like that time he said, “Ask, and it will be given to you…” Or when he said, “everyone who asks receives...” Or, that time he promised, “I will do whatever you ask in my name…”

Because James and John, the Sons of Zebedee, really take him up on that kind of thing this morning, don’t they? They sound like a couple of the most spoiled-rotten kids you ever met, in this Gospel, right? They are selfish and entitled and not even trying to hide it. They’re the kind of entitled that has no shame. They don’t even know they should try to hide it.

And I want to be mad at them for that, like the other ten disciples were, but maybe I shouldn’t blame them. Maybe they were just taking Jesus up on his offer, holding him to his word when they ask, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” There’s no hemming and hawing… there’s no beating around the bush… there’s no bargaining, even, as far as we can tell. “Teacher, we want you to do for us … whatever we ask of you.”

And we can’t tell it from here, but I imagine Jesus must be a little exasperated by it. “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.

See, when Jesus says they will “drink the cup” that he drinks, and “be baptized with the baptism with which he’s been baptized,” he’s not talking only about the cup of wine they’ll share at the table of the Last Supper sometime soon – as if they could have known that was even coming. No, the cup he’s really talking about is the one he prays about in the Garden of Gethsemane 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 he 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 his cousin, 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 had forgotten about – the temptation 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 heard last week, in the scripture just before this one, when Jesus tells the disciples that “many who are first will be last and the last will be first.”

Because 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; sharing more than you ask for yourself; not being served, but serving. Those sitting at the right and at the left of Jesus, “in his glory,” remember, were a couple of criminals – convicted, crucified, and condemned to die, just like he did, on the cross at Calvary.

I just recently read about a man named Maximilian Kolbe who was born in Poland in 1894, and who, after experiencing a vision of the Virgin Mary at the age of 12, signed up for a life of humility, purity, holiness, and martyrdom. (What were you doing when you were 12?)

Anyway, Kolbe eventually became a Franciscan friar, earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy, and built monasteries in Japan and India. And when the Nazis invaded Poland, Kolbe was told he could earn enhanced rights and social privileges – that he could get a better seat, move to the front of the line, you might say – in exchange for signing a document that acknowledged his German heritage, which he refused to do. He also refused to stop publishing religious texts, books, and essays, which were critical of Hitler and the Nazis and their evil, oppressive regime.

Eventually, he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Auschwitz, where he continued to live out his calling to purity, love, compassion, and all the rest – for which he suffered mightily.

In July, 1941, ten prisoners escaped from Auschwitz and, in order to deter more of that in the future, ten other prisoners were chosen to be deliberately starved to death in an underground bunker. When one of those ten protested that he had a wife and children, Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to take his place – and to receive his punishment, instead.

According to witnesses, Maximilian Kolbe led the condemned men in regular prayer throughout their punishment, starvation, and demise in that bunker. And Kolbe, himself, lasted for two weeks of that torture and was the last of the condemned men to die, requiring, ultimately, a lethal injection which – again, according to witnesses – he accepted peaceably with courage and grace.

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 for ourselves.

What Jesus shows us, and what people like Maximilian Kolbe 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 find victory in loss; to become a slave, a suffering servant like we heard about from the prophet Isaiah a minute ago.

What Jesus shows us, and what Maximilian Kolbe learned and lived in ways I can’t fathom, is that to sit at the right hand of Jesus isn’t just a position to which we will be promoted someday. To sit at the right hand of Jesus 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. 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 at times, 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.

And that’s Jesus invitation to James and John – and to each of us, too – as we live in the strange pull between the Kingdom of God and this world that surrounds us. And there are a million ways we can practice answering the call of our baptism that don’t look anything like starvation and martyrdom in a Nazi death-camp, 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. 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 cleaning the bathrooms at church, mowing the lawn at church, and 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 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, “to whom?” … like Jesus did when he climbed onto a cross and out of a tomb and into our hearts 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, without hope for worldly gain, recognition, or reward – we might experience God’s kind of glory most fully ourselves – and for the benefit and blessing of somebody else, in Jesus’ name.

Amen