Mark 10.32-45
I was thinking recently about the questions to be answered
on entering full communicant membership of the Church
Questions on the basic commitment of a Christian.
The first one is about personal trust in God.
1 Do you believe and trust in God:
in your Creator and heavenly Father,
in Jesus Christ, your Lord and Saviour
and in the Holy Spirit, your Sanctifier and Guide?
The other 4 are about Christian discipleship
how we live out that trust
2 Do you promise to join faithfully with your fellow Christians in worship on the Lord's Day?
3 Do you promise to be faithful in reading the Bible and in prayer?
4 Do you promise to give a fitting proportion
of your time, talents and money for the Church's work in the world?
The fifth is the hardest and yet maybe expressed in soft way
5 Do you promise, depending on the grace of God,
to be ever ready to declare without shame that you are Christ's,
to serve him in your daily work,
and to walk in his ways all the days of your life?
I am thinking of going to our General Assembly some year
and proposing that we rewrite the questions to make them harder
in some way to bring out that following Jesus is difficult and unpopular.
Speaking out for him can be a lonely experience,
like Peter when Jesus was arrested, we’d rather be somewhere else
and like him when confronted we often bottle it.
Living like Jesus, becoming more and more like him
which is the call to be holy isn’t congenial.
Does anyone here find it easy to be a Christian in our time?
Even Good Friday is becoming like any other day.
Many moral values generally accepted 20 years ago have changed
and we who try to follow what the Bible says
are increasingly mocked and marginalised.
Worse than that, voices are raised telling us to keep quiet,
you can have your strange views we are told if we keep them private,
don’t dare offend other people, don’t upset them
by telling them that they might be wrong.
We are allowed to comfort people but never ever disturb them
even though it has been well said that the gospel of Jesus
should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.
I wish some times I could just preach a message of comfort
and never disturb people.
If I could just say to people that God loves them
and it doesn’t matter how they live their lives
that there’s no hell, only heaven
and we’ll all get there in the end.
With such a message I might become very popular
but I would also become very unfaithful.
The message we share disturbs as well as comforts:
it speaks of hell for those who reject Christ
as well as heaven for those who trust him
In this reading we are presented with an uncomfortable Christ.
In v 32 we see Jesus 'leading the way' to Jerusalem
and his friends follow him, astonished and afraid.
It was becoming increasingly clear what would happen to him;
'The Son of man will be betrayed to the religious authorities
They will condemn him to death
and hand him over to the secular authorities,
who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him’
and after that, resurrection'
But James and John were not really listening.
Or had the fast forwarded to the last bit about rising on the third day?
They wanted to by pass the cross and get to the glory
they had a mental or spiritual block about the cross,
but 'if you will not bear a cross you can't wear a crown'
These Boanerges brothers Sons of thunder as Jesus called them
wanted to be a big noise, wanted a good place,
wanted to be high and mighty
but there is no such thing as a high and mighty Christian.
That is simply a contradiction.
Do we want the friendship of Jesus
but go easy on the suffering and service?
We cannot fully read their minds.
Did they want to pull a stroke over Peter.
They had shared the profound experience of transfiguration with him.
Did they want to keep him out of the ultimate spiritual high?
Because their father Zebedee had a good going fishing business
did they think they deserved a good place?
Whatever their motives Jesus' challenge is, are they ready for suffering?
38 'Can you drink my cup or be baptised with my baptism?'
To drink someone's cup meant to share that person's fate;
it also meant to experience the punishment
God would pour out for human sin.
To 'share the baptism' meant to go through the same experience
that Jesus was going through
to be submerged in the same floods of suffering.
Jesus was saying:
'Can you bear to go through the terrible experience
which I have to go through?
Can you face being submerged in hatred. pain and death as I have to be?'
In effect he was saying If you will not bear a cross, you can't wear a crown.
The problem for us is we have sanitised the sacraments.
The problem with the water of baptism
and the bread and cup of the Lord's Supper
is that they are too nice.
We pour on our baptismal water and make sure it's heated in winter
We polish a silver chalice and iron a white tablecloth.
We enjoy the peace of Christ and the beautiful promises which are there
but we soft pedal the humiliation and suffering which are also there.
Christ was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles;
he was crucified on a cross, a common scaffold, between two thieves. (George McLeod)
James & John had little idea of how true glory comes:
glory is found in self giving sacrifice, not in status, power and prosperity.
And the other ten were not much better.
If James & John were out of order in seeking such privileged position
the others showed by their indignation that they were insecure too.
They wanted to be first.
It's the old problem which you see in children's games
Everyone wants to bat no-one wants to bowl.
I vividly remember my very first game of soccer
We charged around the field all trying to kick the ball at the same time.
No-one wanted to be goalie, or play in defence.
No-one had an idea how to pass the ball.
None of us understood how it might be a good idea
if we could sacrifice your starring role for someone else to score.
That’s ok when you are 4 or 5 learning about sport.
It’s not so amusing and cute when you grow up a bit
and you still don’t want to let anyone else have the ball
Against all our craving for glamour and number one ness
Jesus says those four short crisp words in v 43 'Not so with you.'
Every time we are dazzled and seduced by human power and prestige
we will do well to say those words to ourselves
or even write them on our cheque book cover or in with our credit cards
or stock them above our TV screens
Not so with you.'
How much of our efforts and energy are spent in gaining
a secure position in society, not caring about those less privileged?
How much of our time is spent as masters rather than as servants?
But Christians are supposed to belong to the 'upside down kingdom'
'Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant
and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.' (43-44)
When Daniel writes about the Son of Man (45) (Daniel 7.14)
this divine figure is to be worshipped and served,
but here Jesus makes it clear in his life on earth it's the other way round.
Jesus is come not to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.
It is of course only Jesus' suffering that sets us free;
he pays the price for our sin and bears our punishment.
But as we drink the cup and share his baptism of service and suffering
we open the way up for people to consider Jesus Christ.
(as John Stott challenges)
'Where are the Christians who are prepared to put
service before security, compassion before comfort,
hardship before ease?
Thousands of pioneer Christian tasks are still waiting to be done,
which challenge our complacency and which call for risk.
Insistence on security is incompatible with the way of the cross.
What a breach of convention and decorum
that Almighty God should renounce his privileges
in order to take human flesh and bear human sin!
Jesus had no security except his Father.
So to follow Jesus is always to accept at least a measure
of uncertainty, danger and rejection for his sake.'
James and John coveted honour, power and comfortable security,
while the whole career of Jesus was marked
by sacrifice, service and suffering. ...
It is the glory of Christ's cross which shows up their selfish ambition
for the shabby tatty threadbare thing it was.
It also highlights the choice for the Christian community always,
between the way of the crowd and the way of the cross.'
This is the choice for us this Holy Week:
not the culture of the crowd but the culture of the cross
living the way Jesus lived on earth
serving as Jesus served
and accepting suffering as Jesus accepted suffering.
When we come to the Lord’s table here this Sunday
there can be these two themes of service and suffering:
We serve each other as Jesus set the example of serving.
It's important that the minister and elders who have authority in the fellowship
serve the people first and themselves afterwards
as a reminder of how it should be in the body of Christ.
And of course the bread and the cup remind us of his suffering for us
the body broken in our place
the cup representing the blood of the new covenant
that Christ's death seals God's promise
that because his Son has died for us
he will take away our sins
and nothing can ever change that.
The next time you come to Christ’s table
try to think what it means that Jesus serves you
think what it means that Jesus suffered for you.
Think what it means that you can serve others in his name
Think what it means even to suffer for his name.
Lord, let us not criticise James & John.
Their weakness is our weakness, their desire to be first is ours too.
Show us what it means to serve, help us to take the way of suffering.
Help us to look lovingly and prayerfully at the times we live in:
may we give thanks for whatever is good and lovely and wholesome
may we offer comfort to the disturbed
but by putting Jesus first and being willing to serve and to suffer
may we challenge everything in us and around us
that would promote self above Jesus.
Let us this Easter time no longer block out the cross
but show by the way we live and treat each other
that we are humble followers of one who gave his life for us
and set us an example to follow in his steps
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