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Pentecost 21, Proper 24 B
In the name of God: our
Creator, the Word of Life, and the Wisdom of All. Amen.
Well, I hope y’all were listening
closely this morning. This gospel is one
of those passages that you won’t be hearing very often in this church. And even though an almost exact copy of this
lesson appears in Matthew’s gospel and an abbreviated version appears in Luke’s
gospel, the church, in its wisdom, has seen it fit to share this story with us only
once in our three year cycle of readings.
Sure, you could hear it every year if you attended a celebration of the
Feast of St. James the Apostle – but let’s be honest, how many of us go out of
our way to celebrate that festal day each year?
[Don’t worry, I won’t ask for a show of hands.]
Whenever we encounter
these rare texts, a part of me can’t help but wonder why we seem to be avoiding
certain stories. Are we hiding from
something? Obviously the gospel writers
and those early church leaders who assembled our canon of scripture must have
felt that the story was important enough that it should be included in some fashion
in three of the four gospel accounts that found their way into our final
collection. But why don’t we follow
their lead and incorporate this lesson more fully into our spiritual practices
of reading and reflecting?
I’ll admit that there is
something a bit unsettling about this text for me, and I could see how it might
be equally unsettling for the leaders of the church. It seems very natural for us to seek
attention and favor from those whom we love and respect just the way James and
John did. A little nepotism never really
hurt anyone, did it?
Honestly, who among us
would not be pleased if we learned that a coworker, who just happens to be a
good friend, was promoted to a position of authority over us? The frustrations of the workday would likely
be eased if the boss regularly had dinner with you and your family, or joined
you for Happy Hour every Friday.
In the political realm,
it’s a common practice for our elected officials to thank their most devout
supporters by offering some sort of favor associated with the power of their
office. In my home state of Louisiana
we’ve developed a system of political kickbacks and favors into a “good ole
boy” network that seems almost artful in its design.
And even in the church we
can occasionally find ourselves guilty of these kinds of problems. Whenever the church is in the process of
choosing new leadership - whether it be at national or diocesan levels - I have
occasionally heard people supporting this candidate or that for no other reason
than because they have a “close” relationship with so-and-so. The subtext seems to be something like, “This
bishop will make my job easier because we had sushi together last week.” You can almost imagine backroom conversations
where someone says, “Gee Rev. Joey, I think you’d make a great bishop and I’m
gonna tell all my friends about you….
Don’t you think I’d be a good Canon in your diocese??”
So perhaps it’s just a
little easier for the church if we turn a blind eye to those stories that make
us look a little too much like those powerful religious leaders in the Temple
that Jesus is always fussing about.
And it’s not just in the
world, and certainly not just in the church that people hope to earn the favor
of the powerful. Even, on a deeper level,
in our own lives, we often find ourselves seeking a kind of God who will step in
to carry out the plans that we’ve already made.
We often do this with the best of intentions. When our loved ones are dying and we plead
for just a little more time. When we
feel genuinely called to some work or relationship or transition in our lives
and we pray that God will make the people who make decisions about our futures
recognize those things which seem so obvious to us. Even when we don’t come to God with a clear
path in mind, there can seem to be, in the core of our existence, a proclivity
among us to wish for a God who will just automatically fix whatever bothers us. We’ve all done it. You see those familiar red and blue flashing
lights in your rearview mirror and say, “Oh God, I hope he’s not coming for
me.” You’re being grilled by a boss or a
client for some mistake you’ve made and you quickly pray that God will somehow
give you an answer to solve the problem.
And even in those deeper moments of woe: when our hearts are unsettled
because of instability in our relationships, when we feel lonely or alone, when
we share the sufferings of those whom we love; we often pray that God will just
push some button in heaven and make everything okay.
I think most of us know,
at least intellectually, that God doesn’t tend to work that way. But it can be very tempting to fall into that
kind of wishful thinking.
“[Jesus], we want you to
do for us whatever we ask of you.”
But before we judge James
and John (or even ourselves) too harshly, let’s think about this. I mean really, didn’t Jesus bring this on
himself? During his ministry he was
always running around doing pretty big favors for people. If he wasn’t helping blind people to see he
was helping disabled people to walk.
Once, when he was at a wedding and they ran out of wine, he just took
some water and made some more. Remember
the story of Jesus healing that twelve year old girl whom everyone thought was
dead: Jesus only allowed a few people to witness this, and among those few were
James and John. They had seen him do
some pretty amazing things for other people who really had no significant
qualifications beyond proximity and faith.
They had both proximity and faith; so shouldn’t they get a little
kickback like the others? They weren’t
asking for anything too big – just positions as second in command to this
Messiah whom they thought would be the ruler of the world. Is that really so much to ask between
friends? [It puts a whole new spin on
that whole “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” theology, doesn’t it?]
But James and John missed
a couple of important points.
First of all, they failed
to recognize that Jesus had at least ten other friends who might be put out by
their desire to move to the top of the ladder.
Mark says, “When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James
and John.”
But moreover, in their
desire for a higher place than the rest, James and John had subverted the real
ministry of God moving among us – the deeper ministry of drawing us - all
of humanity - into a closer relationship with God. If Jesus had merely granted their wish like a
genie in a lamp, the presumed hierarchical division between God and humanity
would have been made more severe, not less.
If we listen to the ways
that God is calling us into deeper unity with Godself, we will recognize that the
truest understanding of communion with God is best expressed through the ways
that we live into communion with each other, our partners in creation.
This is a hard lesson to hear. We
all want to be the best and most favored.
But Jesus tells us time and time again, that our understandings of
greatness are skewed. We become great
when we allow ourselves to be called into service. We live into our relationship with God most fully
when we live into our relationships with each other.
To me, that’s one of the
central functions of the church. Our
acts of worship are of central importance; but building this community and
living into these relationships make us truly and fully worshipful. They give us a clearer glimpse of God -
clearer than any of us, as individuals, could possibly achieve on our own.
Our best expressions of
love for God are in those most genuine, often even painful expressions of love
for each other. The central feature of
our relationship with God is less about who is in and who is out, and more a
recognition that in God, through Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit all are in – none more and none less than
any other. Even me. Even you.
Even those troublesome bosses and clients and coworkers. All are in. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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