On the Right and On the Left

21st Sunday after Pentecost
October 21, 2012
Isaiah 53:4-12, Mark 10:35-45

I’d like to begin with a poem by a well-known theologian. You might not categorize him as such, but I think Shel Silverstein has a lot to say about theology. This poem is called God’s Wheel:

God says to me with a kind of smile,
“Hey how would you like to be God awhile
And steer the world?”
“Okay,” says I, “I’ll give it a try.
Where do I set?
How much do I get?
What time is lunch?
When can I quit?”
“Gimme back that wheel,” says God.
“I don’t think you’re quite ready yet.”

I think that pretty well captures the gospel reading for today. Jesus has invited James and John into his inner circle. They have given up much to follow Jesus. They are grappling with what is about to happen to Jesus as he describes again that his glory will come by dying on the cross. And whether it’s from fear or from a very human desire to sort out one’s place in the power scheme, they want to sit at his right and left. And lest we only blame James and John, let’s remember that when the other disciples heard it they started their own argument, perhaps because they hadn’t thought to ask first.

So Jesus takes this opportunity to explain what taking leadership in God’s kingdom is about. It’s about servanthood. All well and good, right? We like service projects. We like to do good things. We like to help people, we like to see that we’ve made a difference, however small, in someone’s life. Sometimes even a small kindness can mean literally the difference between life and death for someone. We can be servant leaders. But to be honest, what that usually means for us is that we lead from the world’s model of power and enjoy that we are able, from that place of power, to do good for others. We focus more on the leader part than the service part.

When we are kids, we try to imagine ourselves in adult roles, real or imagined. We dream of being a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer. We dream of being kings and queens and knights in shining armor. But most kids don’t pretend to be servants. And if they did we’d probably send them to the school psychologist. Perhaps there is something wrong with us if we don’t aspire to the highest positions of power?

Even pastors who are supposed to be models of servant leadership, we’re often times more like James and John or like the one who takes God’s wheel. We fall again and again in the trap of wanting to follow the world’s way of power, wanting direct reward for work accomplished. I spent the better part of two days this week interacting with pastors and heard on both occasions admissions of not being able to follow Jesus’ command in this week’s gospel passage. Admissions that we pastors aren’t any better than anyone else at being the kind of servant leaders Jesus talks about.

James and John they want to, at least they say they do. They want to drink the cup and experience the baptism, they want to be able to do what Jesus is asking of them, and Jesus concedes that they will. They will face hardship and persecution, and James ends up killed for his following Jesus. But all of the disciples fall short of what Jesus is really asking. He is not asking them simply to put themselves at the service of others. He is not asking them to be nice people who care for others, though that would be a good start. He is asking them to change their whole mindset and give up their entire lives in service.

Last week Jesus told the young man to give away all his possessions to the poor. This week he asks the disciples not just to serve others but to become slaves. That’s not to say be a doormat for others, but it is to say forget the way the world thinks about power. Forget that the goal is to come out ahead, to rank oneself according to how much you’ve served or how humble you are or how much you’ve given up. The point isn’t to gain a more advantageous position through serving others. The point is change the goal from power to service.

However, if we take Isaiah’s description of the suffering servant as an indication, this path not appealing in the least. Despite the slight comfort of a vaguely promised redemption for giving up his very life, the picture is mostly suffering, diseases, oppression, affliction, and injustice. No wonder we so often revert to the world’s view of how to become great. Or we try to tame this passage by assuming that it describes Jesus, thereby letting us off the hook. It does describe Jesus. Even a scholar of Hebrew scriptures who normally avoids jumping to Jesus as the answer for every Old Testament promise agrees, yes, this is about Jesus. But not just about Jesus. It’s not a prophecy that foretells exactly what will happen to God incarnate in 1^st century Palestine. It’s a prophetic word that names what happens when servant leaders in God’s kingdom emerge in a world that refuses to give up its comfortable hold on power. It’s a call to us to embody the upside down way of being that puts others first and where power doesn’t even come into play.

But when God sees and feels the pain of those suffering servants over generations and when God sees ultimately our failure to transform our whole lives to live as servants in God’s kingdom, God does not give up and walk away. God comes to us, not just to serve us but to embody service for us. And it is not service that makes us indebted servants in return, but rather it is service that makes us whole again as people called to serve alongside one another.

Jesus does not turn James and John out of the band of the disciples, or even smack them upside the head for not understanding what Jesus has said over and over again so plainly. Instead Jesus invites them into the redemption promised by Isaiah. Invites them to see the way God has given up the realm of power to become the one who bears all our infirmities. Jesus invites them to the reality that when we fail, even before we fail, God gives up for us any power that is claimed at the expense of others. God gives up the chance to sit in the comfortable throne of power surrounded by the best and brightest disciples. God gives up that seat for the cross surrounded by criminals. The places to the right and left, at least according to Marks’ account are reserved for criminals who only mock God’s model of leadership. God’s power, in fact God’s very being, refuses to be God without us and without the criminals to the right and left.

God’s holiness, God’s otherness, is wrapped up in this profound reversal for our sake. In a moment we will sing a hymn* that names God as Holy. But unlike many hymns that do that, it does not tell of gilded heavenly thrones and seats of glory. It names God’s incarnation, God’s service to us, and ultimately that most profound reversal of the world’s power, God’s transformation of death into life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*Hymn of the Day: Holy God, Holy and Glorious (found in Evangelical Lutheran Worship #637, Text by Susan R. Briehl and Tune by Robert Buckley Farlee)