Isaiah 53:4-12 If he offers his life in atonement, what the Lord wishes will be done
Hebrews 5: 1-10 Jesus
became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him
Mark 10.35-45
The Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many
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The
gospel today sets before us the all too human tendency to rivalry and jostling
for position.
It
then sets out the antidote to that jostling, which is life lived in the life,
passion and death of Jesus Christ.
Rivalry
starts early in human beings and plays out in all areas of our lives: in a family;
at work; amongst neighbours; in churches; in politics; in economics; in
international relations - it’s everywhere and it’s now.
But
when we vie for prestige and power in whose eyes, ultimately, do we want to
find favour?
That’s
a deep question for each of us.
Who
are you trying to impress?
Who
do you want to win over?
Whose
opinion or love do you most value?
Ultimately,
wisdom suggests that all roads lead back to God, usually via our parents or someone
we have set up as an ultimate authority figure in our lives.
In
the Biblical witness Cain and Abel were the first jostlers against each other.
Each
wanted to find favour in God’s sight and when Cain did not receive the approval
that he felt was his due, his path was to murder: he killed his brother Abel.
There
is something in all of us that wants approval and status and respect.
We
may not be moved to physical violence or murder, but there is a violence of
thinking and being that comes from our quest for love and approval.
We
should not be surprised that even amongst Jesus’ chosen Twelve human rivalry
kicks in.
James
and John, bound by ties of biological brotherhood, short circuit the fraternity
of Jesus’ chosen Twelve by seeking their own advantage over the others.
They
frame it in terms of heavenly glory.
They
try to flatter Jesus - as if flattery would work with him - by suggesting that
all they want to do is share is the glory that will come to him.
But
their opening line is extraordinary and belies what drives us when we seek approval
and power: ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ (Mark
10.35b).
‘We
want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’
How
audacious, how impudent.
What
a far cry from Jesus’ own prayer in Gethsemane, ‘Father… let this cup pass from
me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will’ (Matthew 26.39; Luke 22.42);
or from the response of Mary to the archangel, ‘let it be to me according to your
word’ (Luke 1.38).
How
far from what Jesus teaches in prayer to the Father, ‘Thy will be done, on
earth as it is in heaven’.
We
all go looking for approval and status and respect, but we go looking in the wrong
place, thinking that exerting ourselves over others gives us what we seek, as
did James and John, and the other ten who their talk had angered – they weren’t
innocents, they wanted status too!
That’s
the diagnosis, but what is the prescription?
Jesus called them and
said to them, ‘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; but 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.’ (Mark 10.42-45)
Jesus
is pointing to the washing of feet and the piercing of his hands and feet by
the nails that hold him to the cross: this is the place to look for approval and
status and respect.
That’s
diametrically opposed to the rivalry, the jostling, the squabbles - petty and
huge – the quest for respect and approval that we all indulge in.
So,
it’s not just the approval of God
that we seek: we want to be God, as
we perceive God to be, lording it over other people; to impose our wills on
their will.
‘But
it is not so among you’. That’s a command not a description.
The
scandal of Christian division continues into our day, because it is the scandal
- the stumbling block - of human
division.
Disunity
comes when we place our own wills above that of Christ’s will, and see
ourselves as rivals not as fellow servants of the Most High.
We
are to be united in his Body, the living organism of the Church in which, yes,
there is hierarchy, which means, in
its purest sense, ‘a sacred order’ - for God is not a god of chaos but God, who
gives order, pattern and structure to Creation.
But
we disrupt God’s sacred order into pyramids of power and tyranny, and call them
‘hierarchies’; making sacred our power grab from God.
We
are not to be like that because God is not like that: God is not the tyrant we project
onto him.
At
the Last Supper God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, adopts the posture that he
commends to the Twelve.
If
you wish to be great then be a διάκονος,
the New Testament Greek word for ‘servant; if you would be first then be a δοῦλος, the New Testament Greek word for ‘slave’.
That
is shocking on so many levels.
If
you think greatness and being first is to be god over others, then what Jesus says
is shocking.
But
in our own day to suggest the way to greatness is service, and all the more so
slavery, is almost abhorrent.
The
slave carries no approval or status or respect in the eyes of the world.
And
we are rightly sensitised to the wickedness of chattel slavery and the transatlantic
slave trade, not to mention slavery in the ancient world and modern slavery and
the trafficking that goes with it.
It
is said that the Cross, a Roman execution device, was so sensitive to early Christians
that it took centuries for it to be the emblem of the Faith.
Slavery
carries that force today.
To
be honest, I am hesitant even to mention it.
So,
with our horror today of what slavery is, it is all the more radical for Jesus
to suggest that one might choose it to find greatness.
Let
us be clear there is nothing good in forcing a person to be a slave or trading
a person as a slave.
Slavery
is idolatrous because it places one person as a tyrant over another.
All
this St Paul articulates in his letter to the Philippians:
Do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let
each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let
the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in
human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2.3-8)
We should glory
in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;
for he is our salvation,
our life and our resurrection,
through him we are saved and made free.
Amen.
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