Sunday, October 11, 2020
watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym4Bstl_aMo
The truth is I want to be
great. I want to be seen as great what I
do, a person of exemplary character, a great man. This is very important, and I really want it
to be important to you too. I want my
exaltation, the recognition of my greatness to be your top priority so that
you’ll be working nonstop to promote my greatness.
How does that sound? If I were sitting where you are and heard a
preacher spew such self-serving nonsense, I’d turn off the livestream or maybe
walk out of the building. It’s self-promotion
on steroids, the very opposite of what Jesus says makes a person great. We see pastors, politicians, and people in
other arenas talk themselves up. Has
anyone ready Mark chapter 10? To promote
one’s self and seek one’s own glory is the opposite of what Jesus says makes a
person great. Do we want to go in the
exact opposite direction of Jesus?
As Hillside Church, we follow Jesus,
love others, and share hope. The
following and the loving parts demand that we reject promoting ourselves and instead
seek to give of ourselves and even give sacrificially to serve people.
In Mark 10, Jesus told the disciples
something they could not hear. “We are
going 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” (10:33-34).
Immediately after hearing Jesus say
this, the brothers James and John, say, “Teacher … grant us to sit, one at your
right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (10:35, 37). They blindly skip right over the mocking,
spitting, flogging, and killing Jesus has just described. As if he never said it and it will never
happen, they jump right to glory. Three
crosses? They see three thrones, James,
Jesus, and John.
The other 10 disciples get angry at
the request from Zebedee’s sons. I get
angry at it too. Every time I read this,
I am appalled. I imagine approaching
these guys in Heaven someday and asking, “James! John!
What were you thinking?”
The idea of sitting thrones on
either side of Jesus is exclusionary. If
James and John get those seats next to Jesus, no one else does. They’re fine with that. Jesus predicts his death for all people, his
giving of himself for everyone. These
two seek what they can get for themselves at the expense of everyone else. Jesus wants to share himself with the world;
they want to keep him to themselves, to keep him from everyone else.
Jesus sees their folly, and he sees the
misplaced anger in the other ten disciples – and in me. My self-righteous fury at James and John
masks something ugly. I’d want one of
those seats next to Jesus. I want to be
his right-hand man and I’d want everyone to see it. Hey!
There’s Rob and he’s so important, Jesus needs him right there,
close.
Jesus speaks to his disciples and to
us, his church. “Whoever wishes to
become great among you must be your servant.”
The one who shovels the snow, delivers the food to the sick, eats last,
comes in early and stays late, and never once seeks recognition. “Whoever wishes to be first,” Jesus says,
“must be slave of all.” That word,
‘slave,’ is loaded and dangerous in the tension-packed black/white world of
America. Yet that’s the word Jesus
says. Whoever wishes to be first must
be so committed to serving his brothers and sisters and fellow humans, he
slaves away at it.
In his book Exclusion
and Embrace, Yale theologian Miroslav Volf, a Croatian who saw his home
country endure one of the worst wars of the 1990’s explores the dynamic of
self-giving Jesus teaches in Mark 10.
Serbians who are Orthodox Christian, Croatians who are Catholic, and
Bosnians who are Muslim were the groups that fought the ethnic, religious war
in the former Yugoslavia. The powerful
Serbians committed genocide against their countrymen. In that environment of seething hate, Volf,
following, Jesus, developed his imagery of embrace.
The request of James and John was an
exercise in exclusion. They wanted to be
close to the victorious, glorified Jesus who sat on a king’s throne. They wanted no part of suffering. Turn to
Mark 14 and read of Jesus’ arrest at Gethsemane. Verse 50 tells us all his disciples
fled. James and John wanted thrones for
themselves, but they left Jesus to deal with the trouble himself. When what he predicted would happen actually
happened, they weren’t ready because they hadn’t been listening. They wanted to be close to Jesus, but they
bailed out when the going got tough.
We’re
just as guilty any time we seek our advance at the expense of others. We are James and John asking for our own thrones. When we turn a deaf ear to the cries of the
hungry and a cold shoulder to those who have suffered injustice, we become the
excluders.
Volf
uses ‘embrace’ as a metaphor for the serving, self-sacrificing love Jesus
demonstrates and expects from his followers.[i] Clearly, we miss literal hugs in this season
of worldwide pandemic that requires that we socially distance. However, following his prompts, we can adopt
the emotional posture of embrace in the way we relate to others. We can show relational hospitality to our
neighbors.
First,
we open the arms. This is a gesture of
reaching for the other in a way that express desire for the other’s presence
and closeness. “Open arms are a sign
that I have created space in myself for the other to come in” (p.144). And, I enter the space the other has created
for me. Jesus did this with fishermen,
tax collectors, and revolutionaries. He
did it with respectable council members like Nicodemus and Joseph of
Arimathea. And he made space for the
lowest of people.
In
the next passage, after this talk about service, he is walking toward Jericho
when he meets blind Bartimaeus who loudly, desperately calls out to him. The crowd sternly tells the poor beggar to
“hush” (10:48)! Stop bothering
Jesus! But Jesus steps to the poor man
in a posture of embrace. He’s going to
Jerusalem to die for the sins of the world, but that doesn’t mean he can’t stop
his journey to show God’s love to a blind man.
He restores his sight.
The
second movement of embrace is waiting. I
am standing here, arms wide open, and at that point, in self-giving service, I
must wait for the other’s reaction. This
is not an invasion. We cannot force the
other to receive the love we offer. This
is where embrace feels risky. Maybe we
get rejected. So crushing! But, we step out with our arms open, and then
we wait. We do this again and again, no
matter how many rejections come because our self-giving is not dependent upon the
other’s reaction. Completing the embrace
is dependent on the other. Adopting a
posture of embrace is not. We open our
arms because we follow Jesus, the one who died on the cross for us. He has made space for us and we want to live
like him.
Third
is the closing of the arms. Our gesture
of embrace has been received and we have received the neighbor’s gesture of
open arms. Volf writes that in a true
embrace, a host is a guest, and a guest is a host. If everyone in Jesus’ circle did what he said
when he was chiding the 12 for their self-promotion, the love would overflow,
and all needs would be met with extravagant abundance. “Whoever wishes to be first among you must be
slave to all,” Jesus said. When everyone
stands ready to embrace, everyone is welcomed, and everyone is held, then all
are included, served, and loved. We give
of ourselves and receive the other.
Finally,
the fourth step is opening the arms again; release. The embrace is entered voluntarily. The embrace is given and received. In the embrace the other becomes a part of me
and I of him or her, but I do not lose myself.
She does not lose herself. Our
joining does not obliterate our individuality or negate all the ways we are
different. When we let go, our arms are still open, ready for another embrace
and ready to embrace additional people.
Christ
models this posture when he goes to the cross.
Hanging there, he shows he wants us.
He wants us – he wants me – with him so badly, he’ll die for it. He’ll die for you. He’ll die for me.
The
Holy Spirit, dwells in us, prompting in us God thoughts and God longings. We choose to follow Christ, the Holy Spirit
takes us residence us, and when we live in active, attentive responsiveness to
the Spirit within us, we are constantly ready to give ourselves for the sake of
others. We are always ready for
embrace.
You
and I – we’re no better than James or John were when they asked that terrible
question about sitting next to Jesus’ throne.
If we follow the shameful path these disciples trod abandoning Jesus, we
see the horror of crucifixion. We have
to look, but we don’t stay there. We
move to the new day of resurrection.
James and John did not remain set in that self-aggrandizing
posture. From their master, the
crucified, risen Lord Jesus, they learned to serve. They became ready to embrace.
We
can learn that too. We look to
Jesus. We open our hearts to the
Spirit. We decide we will be the
servants Jesus describes. And then we
open our arms to one another, and then, to the hurting people of the world God
puts in our path. We serve them because
we know Jesus has died that we might have life.
AMEN
[i]
Volf, M. (2019), Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of
Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation: Revised and Updated, Abingdon
Press (Nashville), p.143-146.
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