The 21st Sunday after Trinity
James, John, and the Centre of the Universe
The Rev’d Devin McLachlan
21st Sunday after Trinity
20 October, 2024
Text: Mark 10.35–45
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away — well, thirty years ago, in Cambridge Massachusetts, when I was an undergraduate, I took an introductory course on astronomy [1]. It was so long ago that lecturers used overhead projectors with transparencies.
And the teaching assistant had done a brilliant thing. He took a transparency of a map of the night sky — a clear plastic sheet, covered in fuzzy black dots, each one a star. Then he xeroxed it (don’t make me explain Xerox machines too), magnifying it by 5%.
So here was the star field. And here was the star field a little bigger, as if the universe had expanded, as indeed it does.
And now comes the trick: He put the expanded transparency on top of the original, lining up one star in the same spot. Radiating out from that one star, you could see all the other stars moving away from it — every star a little further out from the underlay where they had been, making circles of two-star rays pointing outward Then he shifted the top transparency, lining it up with a different star — say, Alpha Centauri. Now all the stars were radiating away from that new central spot, every star 5% further, just as before, but centred on this new spot, this new centre of the universe.
Both illusions were true.
From star A, the expanding universe was expanding away from star A, evenly radiating outwards. From star B, the expanding universe was expanding away from star B, evenly radiating outwards.
My little Folklore & Mythology degree mind was blown. Wherever you stand in the universe, you can clearly see that you are the centre of the universe.
Whoops.
So I feel for the sons of Zebedee. We’re wired to think of ourselves as the beating heart of the universe. As an aside, this is one of the reasons I work to be religious, not just spiritual: Because it takes community and tradition and accountability, and Jesus, to keep me from centring myself instead of centring God.
And if you heard how Jesus sounded a little snippy in response, it might be because it was pretty obvious that no one has been listening to him. What was he saying right before — right before — the sons of Zebedee make their request for the corner office? Today’s lectionary clips this out, but the verse directly before is Jesus 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.” [2]
At which point, James and John go, ‘Yeah, yeah, cool. Awesome. Look, we have a favour to ask…’
Whoops. Centre of the universe thinking, right there.
James, John, the other disciples, all of us — We do centre of the universe thinking all the time. How does the meme go? ‘When they discover the centre of the universe - many people will be disappointed they are not it.’
Centre-of-the-Universe thinking is the worm at the heart of racism, of nationalism, of homophobia. It’s the pyrite myth of privilege, the fool’s gold of empire. It’s the self-justification when bombs fall and hospitals burn, and it’s even the hurtful gossip and the angry gesture on the road.
On the right hand, smug pride and grasping greed; On the left hand, violence and destruction. On the right hand, the glittering illusion of being all that at the centre of the cosmos; and on the left hand, the violence and terror we employ against any who would threaten the narrative that places us at the centre of the universe.
So when James and John pipe up, is there a bit of a Jesus smack-down? A little.
“Are you able to drink the cup I drink, to be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with?"
Yet when James and John respond with courage, with their “We are able!” Jesus’ heart goes out to them:
You will drink from that bitter cup. You will know the baptism of suffering and rejection and loss in this world. But to sit at my right and my left? Oh, my brothers, the universe is so very much bigger than you, bold though you are, and those places have been prepared since the making of the cosmos.
So be kind to yourself; the human mind is wired to think we are the centre of the universe, and it is oh-so-easy to misinterpret the data all around us in order to reach that conclusion. Thanks be to God, however, that we are not the centre of the Universe.
A little lower than the angels for now we might be, “but 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.” [3]
After all, in the end who did Jesus say would be with him in Paradise? The thief crucified next to him at Golgatha, who cried out: “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” [4]
Our job is not to be the centre of the unvierse. Our job is not to hold it all together.
Our job is not to be the strongest, the toughest, the richest, the smartest, the best.
Ours is to serve, to love, to lift up and to tend, that at the cross we too might sing— Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom. [5]
[1] It’s the joy of the American liberal arts degree. I took courses from astronomy to jazz, geology to Gaelic.
[2] Mark 10.33-34, NRSVa
[3] Mark 10.43-543
[4] Luke 23.424