Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 18th of October, the 21st Sunday after Pentecost, Year B.  The Gospel reading for the day was Mark 10:35-45, though I added in verses 32-34.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

If you watch any TV, you’ve probably seen the commercials where there is this older woman who is trying really hard to understand and be a part of modern technology, but in spite of all of her efforts, it’s just not right.  She invites her friends over to her house to show the various pictures that she has taped, or posted, to her wall.  She sits at her kitchen table smashing hard candy with a hammer while shouting the various exhortations from the game Candy Crush and at the end of each commercial is one of her friends getting exasperated and saying ‘That’s not how this works!  That’s not how any of this works!’

And over the past month or so we have heard three different tales of how the disciples hear from Jesus what it means to be the Messiah and how following Jesus means following Jesus to the cross and all of the trials that entails.  Yet in spite of however many times the disciples hear this story, they just don’t get it.  I keep expecting Jesus to start saying, ‘that’s not how discipleship works!  That’s not how any of this works!’

In today’s reading, we hear the third instance where Jesus is telling the disciples about what it means to be the Messiah, and subsequently what it means to the be followers of the Messiah.  This is pretty serious stuff that Jesus is talking about.  This is talk of being dominated and humiliated by the powers that reign in this world.  Yet through this, Jesus also promises to not only endure, but to rise again.

And then later Jesus better describes what it means to be a follower of Jesus in terms of being a servant.  And make no mistake, what Jesus is describing completely flies in the face of the Roman assertion of what power looks like.  For the Romans, to assert power was to not just defeat an opponent, but to utterly humiliate them.  This is part of what crucifixion was all about.  It wasn’t just to signify the defeat of a person, but to hang them naked on a tree to suffer and die was done in order to humiliate the person and demonstrate the power of the empire over the individual.  It was a means to assert dominance.

But Jesus tells us something very different.  Jesus tells us that real power comes not in dominance, but in service, and often in the suffering.  As a friend of a mine said, suffering is not just a byproduct, but is an inherent and crucial part of being the Messiah and thus of being a follower of the Messiah. 

And I think that even for us to day this is some pretty hard stuff to hear.  But it’s the reaction of the disciples that still baffles me.  I mean, immediately after hearing, ‘they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the gentiles.  They will ridicule him, spit on him, torture him, and kill him.  After three days, he will rise up’, James and John step up to say, ‘Teacher will you do whatever we ask of you?’ 

Seriously?  This is your response?  Again, I say, that’s not how this works!  That’s not how any of this works.

James and John are looking at power in Roman terms.  They come from a place of oppression and they want to dominate those who are oppressing them now.  They are asking for the same type of power that they see the Romans exercising. 

And this notion of what power is is something that we still see all around us.  We so often seek power in dominating and humiliating our enemies.  Look at a lot of the recent controversy around Kim Davis in Kentucky when she wouldn’t fulfill her constitutional duties to issue marriage licenses.  Her supporters resorted to ugly homophobic language and her opposition took up nasty language about her appearance.  Both were inconsequential to the debate, but they all exhibited the symptoms of thinking that real power came from humiliating an opponent. 

But Jesus is telling us something different about what real power is and where it comes from…

True power is not about entitlement; it’s not about lording over people; it’s not about domination; it’s not about humiliation. 

True power is about servanthood. 

And the disciples then had a problem understanding that and we still have a problem understanding that today.  We read this scripture and we still seek out power, we still desire it.  We still think that the path to true power is to crush all who are in out path.  But that’s not real power.  That’s just fear and anger being made manifest in this world.  What Jesus is saying is that power doesn’t come from fear and anger, but that power, real and true power, comes from love.

Yet we still seek power through violence, through subjugation and humiliation.  We still call those voices that seek to find peace ‘weak’ and ‘cowardly’.  We miss the point of Jesus and yet we still feel entitled to have wealth and power as if somehow the teaching of Christ doesn’t apply to us in the same manner.

We are all modern day James ‘s and John’s. 

But even when after all of this misunderstanding, when presented with this crazy request, Jesus doesn’t respond with utter disbelief like I, and probably many of us, would have.  I mean, I think that by then my grace tank would have been on empty.

And it is to our own benefit that Jesus didn’t respond like we would because God is grace-filled and merciful and when we don’t get it.  God keeps coming back to us as many times as it take for us to finally understand. 

When the disciples ask to sit at Christ’s right and left hands, Christ denies this request.  As we know, it is his fellow inmates who hang on their own crosses who are granted seats at Christ’s side.  Yet Jesus asks them if they can drink of his cup and receive his baptism.  And when the disciples say, yes, Lord, we can!  Jesus doesn’t cast them aside, but grants them their desire.   Jesus takes these messed up disciples and changes them for a life a service. 

God doesn’t dismiss the claim, the desire, the unmitigated ego, of the disciples.  In stead God hears them out!  Jesus says, ok. And grants them to drink of the same cup and to receive the same baptism. God chooses all of these disciples who just don’t know how it all works or what it all means and God entrusts the beginning of the church to them! 

What is striking about this is that Jesus reminds them of what power looks like in the world, but then says something very striking, and this is verse 43 for those following along, ‘But that’s not the way it will be with you.’

See, what God has done here is to promise that these disciples who are so lost and confused will, eventually, get it.  And they get it because God keeps walking with them.  God keeps seeking that relationship with them and gives them the strength and the ability to share in Christ’s ministry. 

And it means that God is doing the same thing with us.  God doesn’t wait for us to ‘get right’, God comes to us as the messed up folks we are and God changes us and God keeps changing us.  And because of that, we too can share in Christ’s ministry of healing and reconciliation and love.

In the cross God transforms what true power is so that true power is shown to be service.  It is shown to be love and not dominance. 

Because Jesus died for us we can live for each other.

That’s what this all means.  We are freed from the ways of the world, we are liberated so that rather than being self serving, we can serve others.  And understand that by serving, Jesus isn’t talking about acts of charity that require little of us.  Jesus is talking about entering into relationships that can be costly.  Caring about people that others have said aren’t worth caring for.  Inviting in people that others have rejected.

So last weekend, I had the opportunity to be part of Atlanta’s Pride celebration and to be a clergy representative at the ‘Georgia Lutherans Welcome You’ booth, the pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group in our synod.  It was actually my fourth time at the booth and it is always a beautiful experience because we are there to be with people, to hear their stories and to remind them that God loves us just as we are, just like God loved James and John and all the other disciples. 

It is, sadly, a message that not many of them have heard, but like so many of us, it’s a message that the people I spoke to were craving.  People opened their hearts to us and when they said they were seeking a faith a home, we told them about the congregations in the Atlanta-area that would welcome them with love.

Christ died so that we might be liberated and Christ called us into God’s continuing work of liberation in this world.  Part of that work is being a welcoming place.  Part of being a servant is opening our doors to people who many in the world say we shouldn’t open our doors to.  We risk being shunned by the world so that we can share the gospel with those who need to hear it.

And the beautiful thing is that Emmanuel is a welcoming congregation.  Emmanuel is a congregation that has broken barriers in the past and stood fast, empowered by God to be a place of reconciliation and of love.  A place of refuge and of hope. 

So Pastor William and I have had a lot of conversation about this and we want to begin a conversation as a congregation about how we are feeling called to continue moving forward as a welcoming congregation.  We want to talk about how we all see ourselves called to be servants in light of the ELCA statement of human sexuality.  As our bishops have said, we are open to the conversation about welcoming our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters that needs to take place and we are open to hear the different voices within the congregation. 

And we want to have this conversation because we believe that the same God that chose the disciples; the same God that used them to start the church, is the same God that chooses us to be a part of God’s kingdom here and now, part of God’s ongoing work of love and liberation for all people; because God never gives up on us and God’s love is bigger and wider than we can imagine.

Will you pray with me?

God of grace, we give you thanks for taking us in, for caring for us, for loving us in spite of the numerous times when we just don’t get it.  You always welcome us and you always love us.  Be with us as we begin to look at what it means to be a reconciling congregation.  Open our hearts to hear each other and to respect that we might find ourselves in different places.  Lord, you invite us all and you love us all.  Help us to love each other and to serve each other, through Jesus Christ, who taught us what true servanthood looks like.  Amen.