A Meditation on Mark 10:35-45: "When people get a little power: how quickly it goes to their heads! It's not going to be that way among you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant."
Cracked Picture Plates
I don’t know about you – but I’m moved by that poem, “This Error is the Sign of Love.” I’m moved, I’m reassured, I’m stunned by its reminder that grace is in play. Always. “The speechlessness of lovers that forces them to leave it alone / while it sends up its first pale shoot like an onion sprouting in the pantry.” Grace is in play. “The crack in the picture plate a young girl fills with her secret life / to survive grade school.” Grace is in play. “The rain-damaged instrument that taught us the melodies of black emotion.” Grace. These errors are signs of love. I’m really moved by this poem.
I want to suggest this morning that this is what happens to James and John, Zebedee’s sons, in the Gospel Lesson from Mark. That their own bumbling – and their jaw-dropping willingness to bumble out loud – triggers some of Jesus’ most important and redemptive teaching. He takes their foolishness and makes of it a teaching so lovely, so patient, so revolutionary. This error becomes, yes, a sign of love. Like the hail storm in a South Dakota town that started the Farmer’s Cooperative in 1933.
“Teacher,” they say, without hesitation it seems, “we have something we want you to do for us.” The ego. The wanting ego, the wishing ego, the grabbing ego. The hail storm. “We have something we want you to do for us.”
And Jesus, loving them, asks: “What is it? I’ll see what I can do.”
And James and John look at one another excitedly. They’ve finally got his attention. “Arrange it,” they say, “so that we’ll be awarded the highest places of honor in your glory—one of us at your right, the other at your left.” When this kingdom thing goes down, they say, we want some power, some responsibility, some say-so. A supreme court appointment. Front row tickets at the symphony. A bonus from Goldman Sachs. Ego. The wanting ego, the wishing ego, the grabbing ego. Right here on the road with Jesus. Right here in the story with Jesus. Right here in the community of Jesus’ friends. The hail storm. “We have something, something we want you to do for us.”
Now it’s easy to use James and John as foils in Jesus’ story, as foolish foils to Jesus’ wisdom and kindness and sacrificial heart. I’ve done this myself – at least a dozen times – over the years. It’s like Mark dares me to set them up and knock them down. But I’m seeing something else in them, something else in James and John, this morning, and maybe I’m seeing a little bit of me, a little bit of us, a little bit of our stuff. They are so human, just human. And they bumble their way into Jesus’ most spirited teaching. Egos and all. Missing the point. They stumble across his passion for sacrifice and generosity and a servant’s heart.
And, I don’t know, but this is so often the case for me too. I don’t go looking for it; but grace somehow finds me. I don’t go seeking Jesus out; I somehow stumble across Jesus and he lifts me. “You want to be great?” he asks me, asks you, asks us in the church. “You want to be great? Become a servant. Become a servant. Pray for a servant’s heart. Look at your neighbor, look at your adversary, look at your lover, look at the poor guy in the street. And see the face of God. Become a servant,” Jesus says. “And pray for a servant’s heart.”
Strange Signs of Love
It takes a lifetime to learn this stuff. There’s always more. Always more of the ego to wrestle and forgive. Always some pride to acknowledge and set free. Jesus isn’t a four-year-degree-program so much as a lifetime commitment. And more often than not, we’re stumbling into his most provocative teaching, his most liberating counsel. Our errors: so often strange signs of love.
For instance, five years ago, as the city of San Francisco opened the door to marriage equality, I found myself living in a kind of heady moment of ministry and public life. We had a bunch of gay couples here getting married, celebrating. We were putting together plans for a huge county-wide wedding reception: 35, 40 gay and lesbian couples coming for blessing, and honoring, for dancing and feasting. Newspapers were printing my op-eds. TV stations were coming by for interviews. A kind of heady moment for all of us. And for me too.
One Sunday during that time, I did some preaching about the mistakes I felt other churches and other pastors were making in resisting the tide of social change and marriage equality. I went after these guys pretty hard and came across, frankly, as a bit of a know-it-all, OK, as a buffoon. (By the way, preachers did say some silly and unimaginable things in opposition to marriage equality; and homophobia is, honestly, all too common in Christ’s church. But the point is, I was kind of snide and uppity about it – and offered no sense of outreach or love or tenderness toward the Christian friends I blasted. It wasn’t my finest moment.)
Well, a couple days later, I received a note, an articulate note, from a friend who’d heard the sermon and wanted to think some more about it. To be honest, what he wanted to do was invite, in me, a measure of empathy, kindness, generosity lacking in the previous Sunday’s service. But he did this with such love, with such tenderness. I can’t say I’ve often been changed by a letter or an email. But I was by that one. Looking back now, I can honestly say that my pomposity in worship occasioned one of my life’s most treasured letters. Words of invitation that called out in me a deeper faith, a kinder faith, a more prophetic one.
I’d like to quote just a bit from this remarkable note. Kind of like an epistle to a 21st century liberal: “I came to realize,” he wrote, “that there was something I wanted to hear on Sunday, something that I felt was missing. What I thought was missing was the fact that, though two groups may understand the Bible differently…, God is still asking us to seek unity, not strife, to see people not as ‘on the other side,’ but to see people as neighbors, to see brothers and sisters. This, I think, is the good news of Jesus Christ – love your neighbor as yourself, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. If we deepen the divide,” he wrote, “we deepen the wounds. I want to pursue the truth, but I also want to reach out to my brothers and sisters in Christ, who feel divided from me on this issue; where there is fear, we need love; where there is darkness, we need light; where there is division, we need unity.” My correspondent and friend, by the way, is Aaron Solomon, Brother Phap Man from Plum Village, who is, to my great delight, with us this morning. His note still resonates in my soul: “Where there is fear, we need love; where there is darkness, we need light; where there is division, we need unity.” Isn’t this who we want to be?
Now I make a deliberate connection here with the Gospel Lesson from Mark. In a very gentle way, in a Christ-like way, Aaron was helping me surface and recognize my own proud ego. Like James and John, I was – in blissful ignorance – ready to rule the world and tell off my adversaries. And Aaron was helping me understand that words – my words – were deepening a divide between folk who should be and could be listening to one another, praying for one another, struggling together for the liberation and dignity of all.
And even more, Aaron invited me back into the heart of Jesus’ teaching, into the soul of Jesus’ own ministry. He trusted that I too would want to reach out to brothers and sisters, divided perhaps in politics or religious practice, but brothers and sisters just the same. He trusted that the Jesus we love gives us just this courage: to reach out to adversaries, to believe in the promise of reconciliation, to create communion. And isn’t this the gospel itself: that we who are divided can be reconciled, that we who are at war can be at peace, that we who are fearful of one another can live together as family?
See the Face of God
So I want to take this risk and encourage you this morning. As you stand with us, and with Jesus, at this table, to think of someone, somewhere with whom you differ on something. Maybe your disagreement is religious or spiritual; maybe it’s political, the public option in health care or marriage equality. Think of someone, somewhere with whom you differ on something. And for Jesus’ sake, imagine building a bridge. For Jesus’ sake, imagine yourself as a servant of love, as a servant of grace, as an instrument of peace. Conjure up that face. Imagine serving. Jesus doesn’t ask you to buckle and give in. Jesus doesn’t ask you to ignore differences of opinion or perspective. What he asks is that we learn to serve one another, that we bring grace and peace to one another, that we believe in his promise of healing and reconciliation.
Now if you’re at all like me, you kind of stumble into the Gospel Lesson this morning. You stumble into all this. You’ve got your ego, you’ve got your pride, you’ve got your sense of right and wrong and all the folks out there you’d like to change. If only. And Jesus looks you in the eye, not with judgment, not with despair. Jesus looks you in the eye with so much love. “You want to be great?” he asks. “You want to be great? Become a servant. Become a servant to the folks out there. Pray for a servant’s heart. Look at your neighbor, look at your adversary, look at your lover, look at the poor guy in the street. And see the face of God. I’m here to serve,” Jesus says. “And I want you to do the same.”
It’s not an easy thing, to walk this way with Jesus. If we love as he loves, we will find ourselves drinking the cup that he drinks. If we serve as he serves, we will find ourselves baptized in all the ways he is baptized. It’s no easy thing to build bridges over difficult divides; it’s no easy thing to carry light into the darkness and trust in that light. But there is no journey so rewarding; there is no life so liberating; there is no guide so loving. “You want to be great? Become a servant. Look at your neighbor, look at your adversary. And see the face of God.”
