Trinity 19

Sermon preached by Sarah West

There is one sentence in today’s Gospel that has stuck with me this week – Jesus says, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’. It is the question Jesus asks us whenever we pray. It is the question that the hospitality industry knows well and asks customers all the time. But I don’t think it is a question that we ask each other often enough. And I wonder also if it is a question that we don’t ask ourselves enough either.  

In the context of our reading, Jesus and the disciples are on the road going up to Jerusalem. Jesus is up ahead, resolute, his face turned to the path he obediently follows, fully trusting the Father.

The disciples follow with a sense of foreboding and fear. His disciples were amazed, and the people who followed him were afraid. So, Jesus takes the 12 disciples aside and tells them again about his coming death and resurrection.

And the disciples still do not seem to hear him. James and John say to Jesus, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you”. In the face of Jesus’ self-sacrifice, the request seems audacious, self-serving and insensitive.  Although, I wonder if sometimes this is what we ask of God when we pray? Do for us whatever we ask. And then find it difficult and disappointing when God does not show up in quite the way that we wanted him to. It is not easy to give everything into God’s hands – to trust that you are known, and loved – to pray God’s will be done.

Jesus simply asks them: ‘what do you want me to do for you?’

James and John ask for places of honour at Jesus’ right and left hand when he comes into his Glory.

The disciples desire to be with Christ in his Kingdom, and are quick to claim the benefits, but have not really understood what it will take to get there. They understand that Jesus is the Messiah, but they don’t hear, or don’t want to hear, that the path to Glory is through his rejection, humiliation, death and resurrection.

Jesus asks James and John: ‘can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with?’ Ever loyal, they are eager to affirm that yes of course they can! But they don’t really know what they are saying – the cup and the baptism to which Jesus refers is his suffering and death for the ransom of many. God desires to be with us. It is this desire that leads Jesus to the cross, to the place where our sin puts us, so he can bring us home.   

They cannot exactly drink the cup that belongs to Jesus, but as Jesus implies, they to will give everything for the cause, they will suffer and be persecuted and for most of the disciples this will lead them to martyrdom.

The lesson that we might all want to gloss over is the most difficult. To follow Jesus is no easy path. To be baptised is to share in Jesus’ death and resurrection – to die to sin and rise up to new life with him. Jesus is saying if you want Glory, learn to be with me – and you will drink my cup… It can be a dangerous path to take up your cross and follow Jesus.

In Mark’s Gospel, We hear about the disciples trying to prevent others from performing exorcisms in Jesus’ name (9:38-41), about them sending the children away from Jesus (10:13-16), about them arguing over who is the greatest (9:33-37) and now asking for places at Jesus’ right and left hands when he comes into his Kingdom.

Each of these examples creates the opportunity for Jesus to teach them about the ways of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God does not measure greatness in terms of wealth or status. These things will not make you more worthy. Jesus’ teaching is counter cultural. It turns the world’s ideas of Glory and Power upside down and, just like us, the disciples found it challenging - and they had Jesus in their midst.

Jesus uses their Gentile rulers as an example of what the disciples are not - they do not Lord it over others, but instead serve them. The way of Jesus’, that we are called to follow, does not use power or status or domination, but love and compassion. 

Jesus says to the disciples: “It is not so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant”. The kingdom of God is an alternate society that operates under different values, and uses a different currency to the society that we live in.

In each example used by Jesus, he devalues the things used to measure greatness in the world. In a society where children were seen as useless, and needy, with no ability to make themselves worthy, Jesus responds that whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it (10:15).

In a society where money and self-sufficiency is the measure of success, Jesus responds that it is impossible for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God (10:25). When Jesus encountered the man, who had kept all the commandments, but was rich, he ‘looked at him, and loved him’. Jesus is compassionate to the man’s plight, and reassures the disciples that even so ‘all things are possible with God’.

In a society where status and position are all important, Jesus responds that ‘the son of man came not to be served, but to serve’ (10:45). Dr Martin Luther King, Jr said: ‘this new definition of greatness means that everybody can be great because everyone can serve…’.

What do you want me to do for you?

We want everlasting life, we want abundance, we want forgiveness and redemption. We want heaven. But do we sometimes see Jesus as just a means to get these things? Rev Sam Wells often quotes the prayer that, ‘if I love thee for hope of heaven, then deny me heaven; if I love thee for fear of hell, then give me hell; but if I love thee for thyself alone, then give me thyself alone.’ It is a difficult prayer to pray, but forces us to explore our motives and the things we desire.

Is our desire focussed on God’s Glory or our own?  We are all a little like the sons of Zebedee. We may not want to admit to our more self-centred yearnings, but we too still strive for the best seats, the top spots, for our children to be top of the class. However, it is only through facing our own tendencies that we to terms with our humanity and thus enter the new life of discipleship.

We must learn to seek the things that God desires. To follow the way of Jesus… to love as he loves us… to stand up against injustice… to be with those that society places in the margins… to be counter cultural.

Jesus teaches that striving for our own Glory, in the sense of power, domination or status, will not make us more worthy. Remember the small child that Jesus takes into his arms and affirms that ‘whoever welcomes one such as this, welcomes me’? Jesus says that it is in our littleness, not our achievement, that we are welcomed into God’s embrace.

Jesus says that greatness is to be found through serving others – not through doing for others what we think is best for them – but by asking the question: What do you want me to do for you?