They were on the way to Jerusalem. Jesus was walking ahead of them, with resolve in his stride, often a solitary figure against the horizon. The physical distance between him and the disciples illustrates how hard it is for us to follow him, to keep up with him, to walk the path he has blazed with his life.
The disciples in Mark’s story didn’t fully grasp yet who they were following and where he was going. On the way, Jesus had begun to teach them that he must undergo great suffering and be killed and after three days rise again, and they couldn’t bear to hear it. The first time Peter rebuked him for saying such things.[1] The second time, Jesus told them again that the Son of Man would be betrayed into human hands and be killed, and after three days rise again. And they didn’t understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask. Instead, they argued with each other about who was the greatest.[2] “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” he taught us then, but we’re slow learners. All we can do is try and keep up with him. A third time Jesus stopped to tell the twelve what awaited him in Jerusalem, and this time he added even more detail. He would be handed over. He would be rejected and condemned by the temple authorities. He would be mocked, abused, tortured, and killed. And after three days he would rise again. That’s when James and John came forward, the sons of Zebedee. They had been with him since the early days of his mission in Galilee.
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Perhaps you wonder if they had heard at all what he had just said. What led them to make this about themselves, this moment when Jesus had just spoken about what would happen to him in Jerusalem? How could they be so obtuse and insensitive? There remains, though, the possibility that they had actually listened to every word and heard every detail about how he would run into the walls of rejection and political convenience, and how these walls would become his grave. And perhaps their confidence in Jesus’ final triumph was so complete that they cast their vision past the darkness that lay ahead, and into the glory beyond. In their minds, perhaps they were already standing in the royal palace, with their toes touching the threshold to the banquet hall, and seated on the throne of glory they saw the Risen One.
“What is it you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked them. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory,” they replied. Were they dreaming about cabinet seats? Certainly the Messiah would need a Chief of Staff or a Chief Justice – and why not them, trusted friends who had been with him almost from day one? They knew how power works: the grand pyramid with its wide base among those in the dust, rising all the way up to the few whose feet never touch the ground because they rest on soft couches and ride in limousines or fly in personal jets. It’s a tall structure, with multiple layers, and the higher you climb, the greater the power and the more exclusive the company. James and John envisioned greatness quite conventionally, as most of us do, with the greatest occupying the pinnacle of the pyramid and God hovering over the top. They wanted to sit at the right hand and the left of the one in charge, imagining God’s reign like any kind of earthly rule, only shinier and purer, without corruption and cover-ups.
James and John knew how power and status work, we all do. Social Psychologists tell us that status anxiety accounts for much of what we do on a daily basis. We need to know where we are on the pyramid and where the people around us fit in: Are they above? Below? Somewhere on the same level? And when we’re not busy climbing, we’re busy keeping ourselves from falling. It’s hard, stressful work.
James and John were disarmingly honest about wanting to be near the top of the pyramid. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory,” they said. And Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking.” They had been two of the three disciples who witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain, who saw him robed in clothes of dazzling white and conversing with Moses and Elijah. Perhaps the brothers were imagining a similar scene with them in it. John Calvin called the whole episode “a bright mirror of human vanity,” and the writer of Matthew was so embarrassed by the disciples’ lack of understanding that he had the mother of James and John make the request on their behalf.[3] Mark wants us to look into the mirror and see ourselves; and Mark is very careful to remind us that the only ones at Jesus’ left and right when he was hailed “King of the Jews” were the two bandits who were crucified with him.[4]
The way of the Christ is the way of the cross, not a new and improved way to lord it over others. Jesus puts his own life and death, along with the lives and sufferings of his followers, in complete opposition to conventional expressions of power. “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you.” His death would exemplify the violent resistance his teaching and practice elicit from those who hold power over society, and it would exemplify a radical renunciation of that kind of power.[5] And more than a radical renunciation. In his death and resurrection, Jesus has delivered us from the constellations of power we concoct to control each other and set us free to serve one another.
“Not what I want, but what you want,” was Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane as he prepared to drink the cup of suffering, and those who follow him learn to pray with him.[6] Not what I want—not my aspirations, my ambitions, my pursuits—but what you want—your will, your purposes, your kingdom. The reign of God conquers the world not by overpowering it, but by subverting our notions of power.
Everybody wants to be somebody, and there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. But since the dawn of human history, we have been tempted to choose power over love. Jesus didn’t manipulate people to get what he wanted. He didn’t use others in the pursuit of his own personal ambitions. Jesus was in the world as one who served God and every human being he encountered. And in his company, we learn to look at others not as means to our ends or as threats to our status, but as beloved of God. On the way with him, we let ourselves be opened to the coming reign of God where love alone is sovereign.
Martin Copenhaver tells a story about a church where he had been the pastor years ago. Some of the older members could remember a time when the wealthy families would send their servants to help cook church suppers alongside those who did not have servants to send. The world changed, and by the time Pastor Martin came to the church these stories were repeated with some amusement, but similar confusions continued.
According to the bylaws of the church the deacons were charged with the spiritual leadership of the congregation, and at a deacons meeting, someone complained that instead of being true to this high and momentous charge, deacons spent too much of their time delivering food to the homeless shelter and washing dishes after communion. How could they tend to important spiritual matters when they were occupied with such mundane tasks? “I schlepp bread and wine from the kitchen to the table, and when all have eaten I take the dishes back to the kitchen and wash them,” one of the deacons complained. “I feel like a glorified butler.”
They did a little Bible study and discovered that the apostles in the Jerusalem church commissioned deacons to take food to the widows. They learned that the word deacon was the anglicized version of the Greek diakonos, and that a diakonos was a servant or a waiter. They were indeed butlers, charged with the mundane task of delivering food, and they were indeed glorified because that simple act of service was an expression of the love of Christ the servant.[7]
Here at Vine Street, just a few days after our big anniversary weekend, the new season of Room in the Inn will begin. Every first, third, and fifth Thursday, from November to March, we will come together to prepare and serve meals, to make beds and set tables, and to open the doors of this house and welcome our unhoused guests.
Call us glorified butlers, if you want. Call us waiters or servants, we’d be honored, for we’re serving in the company of Jesus; we’re learning from the master.
We’re aware that our desire to be affirmed as persons of importance is deeply rooted in us; we all want to be somebody. But in the company of Jesus we practice affirming one another in our shared dignity as members of God’s household. We’re participating in the revolution that undermines the love of power with the power of love. Because we all are somebody.
[1] Mark 8:31-33
[2] Mark 9:30-37
[3] Mt 20:20-22
[4] Mk 9:2-8; 15:27
[5] With thanks to Matt Skinner http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=435
[6] Mk 14:36
[7] Martin Copenhaver, Christian Century, October 5, 1994, 893.