Mark 10: 35-45

20 Pentecost / Proper 24 / Year B

22 October 2006

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Wareham, Massachusetts

 

Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson

 

“Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” [James and John] replied, “We are able.”

 

Politics as usual. As we approach another election, less than three weeks away now, with all the negative ads and character assassination going on, it is intriguing to see the members of Jesus own inner sanctum playing political hardball. Backroom dealings, blind ambition, and a calculated willingness to do whatever it takes to get to the top are not modern-day inventions. Such behavior can be found even among those we might at first believe to be insulated from such conduct; in this case, two common fishermen.

The problem with James and John, however, is that they appear to have no idea what they are asking for. And that is in itself pretty surprising since Jesus has made it crystal clear what his kingdom is all about. I want to read you the few verses that immediately precede the story we read here this morning:

 

He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him and kill him; and after three days, he will rise again.” (Mark 10:32-34)

 

For the third time in Mark’s gospel, Jesus takes his disciples aside and predicts his passion with clear words and graphic images. It couldn’t have been more clear if he had taken a stick and drawn pictures in the sand. Yet on the heels of this prediction, James and John approach him and say to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Understandably, Jesus turns to them, scratching his head, and says, “You do not know what you are asking.” Jesus is moving toward his final agony while the disciples, at least two of them, are still talking of power and glory.

Throughout Mark’s gospel, from beginning to end, the disciples routinely misunderstand, misconstrue, and misappropriate Jesus’ teachings. As one commentator has said, the disciples, as Mark portrays them, are either incredibly dumb, or they really do understand what Jesus is trying to convey and they are simply choosing to ignore it.

This morning, however, I want to add a third choice to this list of possibilities. Perhaps James and John are simply distracted. You and I living 2000 years later, we know something about being distracted don’t we? It wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that James and John had simply been blinded by the power, or the charisma, or the resolve, or even the unpredictable nature of their master. It wouldn’t be hard to believe that James and John are distracted by the prospect of having power themselves, real power, political power.

Now, you may think that this interpretation is a bit of a stretch, yet I would argue that we are still distracted, 2000 plus years later. We still don’t understand the nature of the Kingdom that Jesus was ushering in for we are still looking to sit at his right and at his left in his glory. This is really what is at issue as the theological and cultural battle lines are drawn within our own tradition and between believers of every persuasion. We are all waiting, hoping, for the Messiah to return and set the record straight, we are all waiting, hoping, for good to overcome evil, for justice to overcome injustice. And we are all waiting, hoping that we will be vindicated. All we need is for Jesus to return and sit in the seat of power.

Our fundamentalist brothers and sisters believe in something called dispensationalism. This it is the notion that when Jesus returns, he will do so wielding great power and with that power, he will usher in the final war of Armageddon, the war between good and evil. It is at this point in time when Jesus will establish his kingdom and set the record straight separating the good from the bad, the just from the unjust, the saved from the damned. The political wrangling of the Christian right in our own day and time is an effort to lay the groundwork for this great and epic battle. Those on the ideological and theological left may not be motivated by Armageddon, but their quest to see that good overcomes evil and justice conquers injustice is every bit as intense and their belief in a political solution is no less real. The stakes are high! The backroom dealings, the blind ambition, and the calculated willingness to do whatever it takes to win is still prevalent. It is no different in our own day than it was for James and John.

As human beings, we long for political solutions, we long for our view of God and the world to be vindicated, we long for Christ to return in power and glory. This is nothing different than what the disciples were experiencing. They wanted to be free from the tyranny they lived under, a tyranny brought on by the pagan government in Rome. I believe that they could very well have been distracted, that their quest for vindication and freedom gave them the ability to look past all the doom and gloom that Jesus was preaching about himself and focus on the coming of a political solution, one that at least James and John wanted to be thoroughly identified with.

As the other disciples learned about the request that James and John put in with Jesus, they were understandably angry. Perhaps they felt betrayed, perhaps they felt used, perhaps they were angry because they didn’t beat James and John to the punch. Whenever there are backroom dealings, whenever there is blind ambition, or a calculated willingness to do whatever it takes to get to the top, there is division, there are in injured parties. So Jesus gathered them all together and explained yet again what his kingdom is all about. It is not about glory or power; it is about servanthood and sacrifice.

Jesus, I believe, makes it clear in this teaching that politics won’t save the world. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t spend our lives advocating for justice and for those whose humanity is truly attenuated by our broken world. But we are destined to fail if we resort to the tactics of the politician. Jesus asked James and John, “Are you able to drink from the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They answered, “We are able.” In the midst of their attempt to manipulate Jesus, they had no idea what they were saying. The cup that Jesus drank from was the cup of sacrifice; the baptism that Jesus was baptized with was the baptism of servanthood. All of the disciples soon learned what Jesus meant by this as all of them were ultimately martyred for their convictions.

As James and John and the rest of the disciples eventually figured out, there are no shortcuts. There are no easy political solutions to corral the waywardness of the human heart. We make our stand one person at a time, one day at a time. It is through sacrifice and servanthood that we find our true humanity and take our place at the right and the left hand of Jesus.

 

In Jesus Name! Amen.