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    Mar 12, 2017

    Challenged

    Passage: Mark 10:35-45

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    Series: Gospeled Lives

    Category: Discipleship

    We are challenged to understand God's reversal of power when we draw near to Christ

    Do you remember where last week took us? Jesus asked the blind beggar, “What do you want me to do for you?” Hold that thought!

    When she first married, my sister became a military wife. The happy couple came home from their honeymoon and immediately moved to Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma – at least a world away. They very quickly found a church home.

    It wasn’t long, though, before the wonderful pastor that they met when they arrived announced his retirement and the process began for a new appointment. When the new pastor got there, he met with groups of church folks, about 20 at a time. After inviting folks into a big circle, the pastor asked them to share, one at a time, what they expected from him.

    You know, his question was the pastoral equivalent to Jesus’ What do you want me to do for you?

    They went around the circle, one at a time, each person sharing what they expected of their pastor. There were 20 different answers. At the end of this process, the pastor more or less flipped the script. He pointed out that they had described a very tall – if not impossible – order. I’m guessing that a summary might have sounded like this: preach like Billy Graham, walk on water, be available 24/7, feed 5000 at a moment’s notice, and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

    Then he said something like this:

    I will do my best to be your pastor. As you have heard, you all have very different expectations of me, some of them in tension with others. While I promise you my best, I know I can’t possibly live up to all those expectations. I’m very aware of my human frailty, and we all know that trying to please everyone is a formula for disaster.

    My sister told me that he was an excellent pastor who led the church forward and nourished their individual and collective spiritual life.

    James and John approached Jesus one day and told him, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” No matter who you are – parent, pastor, teacher, supervisor, even friend – you know you’re in trouble when somebody starts a conversation that way! But in my mind’s eye and ear, I see Jesus as being unflappable and hear him ask calmly, “What is it you want me to do for you?”

    I have to say that I have to wonder why I see him as being unflapped. I would have been totally suspicious and my reply would have been totally dripping with caution! I AM a mother, after all! “Wellllll, just what is it you want me to do for you?” You know, I’ve been trained to ask questions with curiosity, and I’m guessing that’s what Jesus did, but there is no way I could have drawn on that training to address that question!

    “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Hey Jesus – we just want the best seats in the house – and your full attention, and the power that comes from being closest to you.

    Then Jesus flips the script! He warns them of the true nature of their request and then he tells them it is not his place to grant their request.

    Wait. What!?! You’re the One! You’ve made people well, made the blind to see, even raised the dead – and you can’t give us this one little favor? Of course you can! Okay, I know the scripture doesn’t actually say that. The scripture does say Jesus tried to warn them about what they were really asking, and they replied that they were able to do whatever he had to do. WE know NOW that there would be many times in the course of their ministry together when they had to realize what a foolhardy statement that was. We are able! Really?

    Then the rest of the disciples heard about their outrageous, selfish request, and they were steamed. As so often happened, Jesus seized the opportunity for a teachable moment – and challenged all of them:

    Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ (Mk 10:43-45)

    Talk about flipping a script! Jesus is challenging both our human tendency to put ourselves first and the very definition of what it means in the Kingdom of God to BE first. John Indermark eloquently expresses what it means to be people of faith:

    The path of faith is not the exercise of personal prerogative. The true nature of that path is revealed in Jesus’ challenge to the whole community that has been disrupted by this episode. Jesus challenges the church to have a view and practice of authority that is precisely opposite to the wider culture of that day and our own…Power and privilege reside in service. (pages 43-44)

    The script is totally flipped, moving from “we want you to do what we ask” to a new twist on the same question that Jesus asks Bartimaeus, “what do you want me to do for you?” In this story, the question is the question of discipleship. In other words, called to be servants means that disciples are to sincerely discern the other’s need – not press their own agendas.

    Challenged. Our author says: gospeled lives are profoundly affected by Jesus. (page 11) In the biblical story before us today, the disciples’ lives were profoundly affected when Jesus challenged them. Jesus found ways to turn common thought and behavior upside down:

    • Love your enemies.
    • You have heard it said, an eye for an eye. No more! Instead, turn the other cheek.
    • Blessed are you when people revile and persecute you.

    What do you want me to do for you? Be honest now. Isn’t that often what we come expecting? Jesus, the church, schools, teachers, wait staff, public servants, employees – I want you to do something for me – and I want it done to my exacting specifications.

    But Jesus shows that we’ve got it upside down. Our demands to be first or best are out of line with the Way of Jesus – the Way of the Cross.

    “What is it you want me to do for you?” On our lips, that question changes relationship with God from bargaining for what I can get into offering what I have been given. On our lips, that question transforms our participation in Christian community from “shopping around” for the best deal into entering a covenant to live for the sake of Christ by living for the sake of others and all creation. (page 44)

    The question today is the same question that Jesus asked Bartimaeus in last week’s reading related to call. Jesus’ call to Bartimaeus requires the blind man to go deep and name his deepest need so that he is able to respond to Christ’s call. Without our knowing what our own deep need is, we are fundamentally unable to reach out. Without knowing – recognizing – our own need for grace, our calling, says Indermark, becomes a doing for others what we somehow deny about ourselves.

    Today’s story takes this question to the next level. Call is enticing. To recognize a call from God makes us feel chosen – special. But, as James and John show us, call can deceive us or lure us into a false sense of our own importance when we become satisfied or begin to rely on our own celebrity, our own definitions, our own desires.

    Challenge helps us clear our heads. Challenge forces us to examine our attitudes and ideas and assumptions. Challenge forces us to question behaviors. Challenge drives us to study the scripture. And then, of course, challenge just might make us mad.

    In 1844, as the country struggled with rationalizing slavery as an acceptable economic system instead of an immoral subjugation of God’s children, the Methodist Church split into 3 separate entities. Just as the country was on the brink of civil war, our church split because many people saw that slavery was wrong while others could not (would not!) see that a system in which they had lived their entire lives was immoral and evil. People of faith disagreed and challenged each other. Even bishops held slaves in the south. The vitriolic arguments on the floor of the General Conference were – well – awful.

    Scripture was hotly debated – interpretive positions absolute. One side: What about those scriptures that imply that slavery is acceptable? Others saw that a central theme in scripture was God’s love and regard for ALL, making slavery unacceptable – deeply sinful at its very core. Committed Christians on both sides of the issue were convinced they were right. People today on both sides of human rights issues are deeply convinced that they are right. “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”

    Had our brothers and sisters – in the church and in the community – not challenged the system that was a “given” in the south, who knows how long slavery would have been accepted and practiced in this country?

    Life as Methodists could have just gone on, unquestioned, unchallenged – gathering together for Sunday worship and the occasional church fellowship dinner, enjoying each other’s company and disregarding the neighbors that were in deep need. Beloved, it was Christ’s challenge that led us to recover our souls and reframe our understandings of Godly behavior, the very family of God, and what it means to love God and neighbor.

    What do you want me to do for you? Where does that question challenge you today?

    Reference:  Gospeled Lives: Encounters with Jesus, John Indermark.  Copyright (c) 2008 by John Indermark.  Published by Upper Room Books.