Are Ye Able?

By

Reverend Litton Logan

October 22, 2006

Scriptures:

Mark 10:35--45 (NRSV)
³⁵ James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” ³⁶ And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” ³⁷ And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” ³⁸ But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” ³⁹ They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; ⁴⁰ but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

⁴¹ When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. ⁴² So 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. ⁴³ But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴ and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. ⁴⁵ For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Sermon:

Have you ever wanted something so bad that you didn’t stop to count the costs and just plowed ahead to pursue your goal and find out later that the costs were too high? We often hear this called selling one’s soul for a pound and receiving only a penny.

We’ve all heard stories or seen movies about people selling their souls to the devil for riches, power, and fame only to find out that in the end the costs were far too high. I am sure we have also heard of people trying to sell their soul to God, only to realize the costs were more than they had anticipated also.

Which, reminds me of the story of the minister and lawyer who were in car accident and showed up at the pearly gates together. The minister arrives at the pearly gates fully aware of receiving a great reward for all his years of devoted service.

St. Peter greets them at the pearly gates and takes them to the homes where they will spend all of eternity. They get into St. Peter's holy golf cart and head on down a gold road, which turns into a platinum road, which turns onto an even grander road paved with diamonds, to a huge mansion where St. Peter turns to the lawyer and says, here is your home for the rest of eternity, enjoy! And if there is anything you need, just let me know.

The minister can’t imagine any place grander than what he has seen but if there is he is sure he is going to get it.

Then St. Peter took the minister to his home, back down the diamond-studded boulevard, down the platinum highway, down the street of gold, down an avenue of silver, along a stone alley and down an unpaved footpath to a shack. St Peter says, "Here you go" and goes to leave when the minister says "Waitaminute!, how come the lawyer gets the big mansion and I get this shack?"

St. Peter says, "Well, ministers are a dime a dozen up here, we have never had a lawyer before."

Our human sense of justice and divine rewards are not necessarily God’s, are they?

Last week we heard read a story from Mark’s Gospel wherein Peter and the disciples learned that the Jewish concept of wealth being a loan from God as a way of benefiting the poor as well as personal sacrifices to follow Jesus are not in and of themselves assurances of great rewards in God’s kingdom to come.  Kingdom citizenship is God’s and God’s alone to grant no matter what we may think. However, Jesus assures the disciples that those who sacrifice to follow him will not go unrewarded, only that God’s rewards are not subject to human standards.  A good example of what I am talking about would be seen in the story about a certain rich man.

There once was a rich man who was near death. He was very grieved because he had worked so hard for his money and he wanted to be able to take it with him to heaven. So he began to pray that he might be able to take some of his wealth with him.

An angel hears his plea and appears to him. "Sorry, but you can't take your wealth with you." The man implores the angel to speak to God to see if He might bend the rules.

The man continues to pray that his wealth could follow him. The angel reappears and informs the man that God has decided to allow him to take one suitcase with him. Overjoyed, the man gathers his largest suitcase and fills it with pure gold bars and places it beside his bed.

Soon afterward, the man dies and shows up at the Gates of Heaven to greet St. Peter. St. Peter seeing the suitcase says, "Hold on, you can't bring that in here!"

But, the man explains to St. Peter that he has permission and asks him to verify his story with the Lord.  Sure enough, St. Peter checks and comes back saying, "You're right. You are allowed one carry-on bag, but I'm supposed to check its contents before letting it through."

St. Peter opens the suitcase to inspect the worldly items that the man found too precious to leave behind and exclaims, "You brought pavement?!!!"

In today’s scriptures, we see two members of Jesus’ inner-circle, James and John; expose their lack of understanding of Jesus’ ministry and his announcements about what awaits him in Jerusalem.

I think Mark tells this story about James and John, who by the time of his writing had been martyred, as a way of helping those early Christians, as well as the Church of today, understand the possible costs of discipleship.  Not only this, but also this story helps Christians across the ages understand that in the final analysis God alone grants salvation and kingdom rewards.  Therefore, to enter into a relationship to God through Jesus Christ is not to be taken lightly especially if we insist upon using our egocentric understandings of God’s justice or rewards.

At the heart of most of Jesus’ teachings on discipleship, we find the concept of self-denial.  One of these forms of self-denial is denying a demand for honor, power, and status as a follower of Christ.  The true disciple must reject their ingrained ideas of honor and dishonor, power and weakness. 

I can just imagine Jesus walking down the road, staring down at the ground, shaking his head as James and John ask their question. I can hear Jesus thinking to himself—will these dummies never understand. (Well, that’s what I would have said.)  Nevertheless, Jesus being Jesus, said, “You have no idea what you’re asking.…”

Jesus tells these men that they haven’t a clue of what is ahead for him.  Jesus is going in to harm’s way and there is a distinct possibility that he will have to drink down to the dregs of the cup of suffering and sacrifice.  He indicates that he may be immersed in the baptism of disaster in his commitment to God’s will for his life.  He asks these two, “Are You Able” to pay the price of my glory with its uncertainties.

And, the two disciples, “Sure,” they said, “Why not?”, or in NSRV, “Lord, we are able.”  Not a second’s hesitation.

In retrospect, Mark has Jesus saying, “Come to think of it, you will drink the cup I drink, and be baptized in my baptism.  However, be-that-as-it-may, awards and decorations are still not my business.  Such things are like kingdom citizenship—God’s business by God’s standards.

I hasten to remind us that through out Mark’s Gospel Jesus turns people’s sense of the expected upside down.  The least shall be first, the great will be last.  The Kingdom of God belongs to the little children.  Here today Jesus says that his disciples must reverse their order of thinking about greatness and trust such things to God. 

Jesus goes on to teach those in Mark’s church and ours that those followers of Jesus who would be great should not be like those godless leaders who lord it over others and who become drunk with power and throw their weight around.  No, the great leaders among Jesus’ followers will be determined first of all by God.  However, God’s beginning standard of greatness is found in a disciples’ willingness to give up their traditional understandings of power, prestige, and honor and become like little children, servant slaves.  Remember Jesus placing the little servant child before his disciples and teaching them about receiving the least and most vulnerable?  Jesus now tells his disciples that is how they are to become—children servant-slaves, the least, the vulnerable.

Just as Jesus went among the marginalized, disenfranchised, and powerless masses with God’s healing powers and with words of grace and salvation as a lowly, meek servant, so must the disciples.

Therefore, Mark, looking back through the lenses of Calvary and the martyrdom of many of the Apostles, addresses a situation that was common to the early Christians and to us today—following Christ without a clear understanding of the possible costs and the true nature of what it means to be Christ-like.

I will tell you that the Spirit of Christ reaches across the ages and tells us very clearly that Jesus never intended to end up on a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem.  Rather, Jesus commitment was to do God’s will for his life wherever it led him, and in the Garden of Gethsemane, we see him struggle with that commitment.  As disciples of Christ, it should also be our purpose to do God’s will knowing through Christ’s example the possibility of death or being asked to give up all we have in service to God. Here again my caveat—make sure such a radical call is from God and not the voice of one’s guilty conscience or the manipulations of others.  In the Book of Ecclesiasticus, written two hundred years before Christ, but not included in the Old Testament, we hear “When thou wilt do good, know to whom thou doest it.  Give unto the good and not unto the sinner.” (Ecclus. xii 1-4)

Jesus was called to give up his sense of self, right down to and including his sense of ministry—his final sacrifice.  We hear this in his cry from the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” He was called to surrender all of himself to the circumstances that conspired to claim his life just like all of us might be called to do

Are we able to live for Christ daily and to drink the cup of Christ-like sensitivity to human needs that may bring real pain and death to our egos—are we willing to loose our lives, our sense of self, in order to find our truest selves? Are we able to face the possibility of physical death because we champion God’s causes?  Are we able, to become immersed in the conflicts that victimize and oppress God’s humanity and creation?  Remember, Jesus was not crucified for saying, “Consider the lilies and how they grow,” but because he said, “Consider the thieves in the temple and other high places and how they grow, steal, exploit, and profane my Father’s will and name among the people.” (Source lost)  Consider those hypocrites who make the law a burden instead of a pathway to hope, blessing, and joy.  Sad that so few of us ever get past the smelling of the lilies or wandering around in the vain teachings of human beings.

Here are some of the costs of Christian discipleship. First, we must ask God to help us get rid of our notions of power and security.  Secondly, we must ask God to help us develop a Christ-like trust in God.  Finally, we must be willing to lose ourselves in God’s will.  When we do this, life will not revolve around our aches, pains, disappointments, and political or social correctness but around our Christ-like servant-hood.   In summary, we must be willing to pay the price of becoming totally God-centered as Jesus did and not self-centered.

Having said this, let us not forget the last verse in today’s scriptures.  ⁴⁵For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Mark understood that in some mysterious and divine way God was in Jesus’ life and death ransoming—liberating--us not only from the eternal consequence of human sin but freeing us from the debilitating guilt of sin in this life when we fail to be all we can be in this world.  Christian friends, we ain’t ever going to be perfect. God knows our limitations and has in Jesus Christ addressed our imperfections.  What God calls us to do is to be willing to pick up our various crosses and be in the process of perfecting God’s will and ways in our lives no matter what our failures.  We are to do likewise in the life of our Christian community.  It is in our faithfulness to the process—second-to-second, day-to-day--of striving to be Christ like in our servanthood to one another, to a suffering humanity, and to a morally and spiritually decaying world, that is the mark of the true disciple.  Are you able to do this?  Are we able to live our life immersed in the divine processes, no matter where it takes us?

How many times have we all said this, “Yes, Lord we are able… Yea, the conquering Christian’s answer to the death we follow thee,” only to learn that we are not really willing to surrender ourselves, relinquish our pride, our sense of prestige, our petty vices, or to give sacrificially when God calls on us to do so.

No matter, hear the Good News.  Today is a new day full of new opportunities to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ.  Let us allow God’s Holy Spirit to help us recommit ourselves to living in the daily processes of achieving Christ-likeness.  Are Ye Able, are you willing to do this?