And that’s exactly how the other disciples
feel when, on the road to Jerusalem, the Zebedee brothers, James and John, take
Jesus aside and ask him to let them go to the front of the line – “Grant us to
sit,” they say “one at your right hand and one at your left, in your
glory.” Not that Jesus had ever said
there was gonna be any glory, mind you . . . but he’d just got finished
predicting his death and burial and resurrection, and maybe they figured that
anyone who’s raised again’s gotta have some clout somewhere . . .
But Jesus knows what they haven’t
yet figured out – Jesus knows what following him will mean. “Are you able to go all the way?” he says, “Are you able to do what it takes? to drink the cup I drink? to be baptized with the baptism I am
baptized with?” And they say yes, of course
they’re able, and Jesus says “OK, you will . . . you will drink
the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized
. . .” and we need to understand it’s not an accident Jesus is speaking
about the sacraments . . . the Christian life is a life immersed in his,
a life defined by him and by his mission . . .
Following Christ is sacramental, it
is sacred. sanctified . . . bounded on one end by baptism, the new birth
in Christ, and on the other by the cup, the new covenant in his blood . . .
at baptism, we are made new, decisively marked as God’s children, heirs – as
Paul would say – to the promise. And
along the way, throughout our Christian journey, we partake of the life-giving
cup of the covenant – our lives as Christians are defined by the cup, to
which we return again and again, for food and encouragement and power. And through our walk with Christ, God works
to mold us and conform us to God, to draw us into a sweet, mystical
communion with God . . . in a sense, the
Christian life is a sacrament, performed by God through us, by which we
are gradually transformed into the likeness of Christ . . .
But of course, there’s a darker side to
Jesus’ words – you will drink the cup that I drink . . . because just as
Christ was sacrificed for them, just as he gave his life for them, so
are they expected to give theirs for him . . . and indeed, we are told
in Acts that James, at least, was martyred by Herod Agrippa fourteen years
after our passage takes place . . . and
Jesus knew it right there on the way to Jerusalem that they would drink
the cup he drinks, be baptized with the baptism he is baptized with.
Note that Jesus is saying his life is exemplary
in the literal sense, as an example that the disciples are to follow . . .
James and John ask him for a place of privilege, to sit at his right and left
hand in his glory, and Jesus tells them instead what it means to be his
disciples, to be his followers . . . it means to imitate him, to use his life
as an example for theirs. Jesus is about
sacrifice his life for them, and he’s saying it will come to that for
the disciples as well. Here he was,
heading to Jerusalem,
heading for the cross, for his passion, and he's telling them that they
must experience it in their own lives.
Every night, before they go to bed, the
monks at Benedictine monasteries around the world pray the office of
Compline. It's sometimes called the
“dear office,” because it's the most personal, private prayer-time . . . it's
the only one that's prayed alone, not in the chapel with the whole monastic
community. The prayer begins with “Into
your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit . . .” and if it sounds familiar, it
should . . . Jesus says it on the cross in Luke, just as he dies. And so Compline helps those who celebrate it
to remember Christ's death every night, as the darkness comes, and the light
has long since faded . . . what's more, it helps them relate their own
approaching “little death” of sleep to Christ’s. Finally, at Compline's close, they pray the
Song of Simeon: “Now you set your servant free to go in peace as you have
promised . . . these eyes have seen the savior whom you prepared for all
the world to see . . .” and simultaneously with identifying with Christ's
death, they look forward to their own, and remember that during their waking
hours, during that very day, they've seen Christ, they've experienced him in
every place, in every face, and deep within their own hearts . . . and so
Compline helps place those who pray it deep within the life of Christ, deep
within his death . . . it helps them drink the cup that Christ drinks, and be
baptized with the baptism of Christ . . .
And now the other disciples have
gotten wind of the Zebedee brothers' request, and they aren't happy, to say the
least, and so Jesus – I imagine with a heavy sigh – gathers them around for a
little chat. It seems he's going
to have to spell it out for them, after all.
“You know those Gentiles,” he begins, “their rulers, their top dogs
lord it over them, their great ones are tyrants over them, for Pete's
sake . . . they take credit for all their workers’ hard work and pay themselves 300 times more than
them. They put their name first in the
papers, take the twenty-seventh-floor corner office with a Central-Park view,
and when everything goes South, do they take the blame? When the bottom falls out of the dot-coms, do
they take the hit? Of course not! They strap on their golden chariots, and ride
away into the sunset, leaving the little guys out in the cold, laid off without
work or health-care or retirement. Well,
it isn't like that among you, among my followers . . . it isn't
like that in the Kingdom
of God! In the kingdom of God,
whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant. That's right!
Your servant! And further,
whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” And why?
Because of that imitation thing, because Jesus' life is an example, and
that's in the end what he came to do – serve.
“For the Son of Man,” he says, “came not to be served but to serve,
and to give his life a ransom for many.”
As the last, greatest example of his service, he would give his life.
And I'll bet James and John were kicking
themselves, I'll bet they were wishing they'd never even brought it up, because
this wasn't exactly what they wanted to hear.
They wanted to hear that they were going to be rewarded for following
Jesus, that they were going to get seats of honor in the great by-and-by, where
they had the ear of the master for all eternity, where their names would be
above all others – except God and Jesus, of course – in perpetuity. All this
talk about being slaves and losing one's life wasn't what they wanted to
hear at all.
It's certainly not what a lot of us want to
hear these days, either . . . we lionize those Gentile rulers, those captains
of industry, those Pharaohs of the boardroom.
And for many of us – especially us male worker bees – we strive to get
to the top, or at least to a little higher rung on the ladder . . . a bit more
prestigious position, a few more people to supervise . . . in the case of
pastors, it's often a little bigger church in a little better
neighborhood. In almost every occupation
there's a hierarchy of workers, sometimes based on merit, but sometimes only on
something as trivial as time spent on the job, that determines status, that
determines who’s the top dog. But the
Kingdom’s standards aren’t the standards of the world. In the kingdom, the last shall be first and
the first shall be last. And in case you
didn’t get just how last, Jesus is telling us right here: to be first
among us we must be slaves of all.
Bummer.
But, you know it’s true . . . just
look at Mother Theresa, beatified just seven short years after her death, on
the fast track to sainthood, a status she’s liable to receive in record time,
and all she had to do is to spend her life living down in the muck and mire of
Calcutta, down on the streets with her charges, and she’ll reach a place none
of those Cardinals gathered in the Vatican this week will likely get to, even
with all their playing the game of power, the worldly game of climbing the old
ladder, even if it is in the church.
Theresa wasn’t perfect, she could be severe with her nuns, she was
criticized for taking money from the shady characters that perpetuate the
grinding poverty on the streets . . . but Jesus didn’t say we have to be perfect,
just that we have to serve, and be a slave to all.
And he used his own life as an example, as
an exemplar. After all, he became that ultimate slave, who willingly
served us all by giving his life . . . and can we drink that cup, can we
be baptized with that baptism? That
question is just as relevant to us, here today, as it was to the disciples.
But you know what? The life and death of Jesus isn’t the only
thing in the equation, is it? Think
about the baptism image for a second . . . Jesus went into the water – that’s the
death part, the going into the grave, into the ground – but he came back up out
of it as well, in a glorious resurrected body . . . we go every night to the
little death, to the sleep that renews us, and in the morning we awaken to a
new day, a fresh chance, new hope that breaks in upon us from above . . . and
in fact that’s the good news,
that life does come after death, daily in the cycle of our planet, and
hourly, minute-by-minute, after all our little losses, our quiet mortalities,
the failures and humiliations we suffer every day. Through the presence of the risen Lord, we
are afforded life after these deaths, and we are promised, and have in
Christ a sure hope, that just as he rose out of the waters of death, just as he
was raised from the dead, so shall we, for we are assured that if we
participate in his life and death, we shall participate in his resurrection as
well. We shall not perish, but have
everlasting life. Amen.
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