October 22, 2006, Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 91; Mark 10:35-45
The Latin root of the word religion means both to bind together and to go
back over again. We need religion to bind us and hold us together in a world
where we sometimes fail to love our neighbor and where things fall apart. We
need religion to lead us back over eternal truths again and again in a world where
we can get lost and forget the sacred way.
If your life is perfect, maybe you do not need religion. But if you struggle
and suffer, or if you have compassion for the suffering of others, then religion can
help you hold together and find your way to peace.
Sometimes people go through life with no use for religion, as if their life
were perfect and everything under their own control, only to have an awakening as
they face their death. They suddenly realize how foolish they have been.
But until some challenge or revelation comes along and teaches us
humility, religion is what looks foolish. The wisdom of the world seems common
sense, the teachings of Jesus seem nonsense, unless we have fully admitted to
ourselves how lost and out of control the world and we truly are.
This is why earlier in the service, I asked you to reflect on whether you
trust in God. Trust is important because the religion of Jesus Christ asks us to do
things that it takes deep trust to believe and do. Sometimes we have to face death
or hit rock bottom before we become convinced to let go of our old ways and trust
entirely in the foolishness of Christ.
If you are part of a Twelve Step group like Alcoholics Anonymous, you
know all about this. You know you can’t change until you see your problem. You
know that the key to success is coming to trust that God’s higher power can
restore you to well being, a trust so complete that you make the decision to hand
over the care of your entire life and even your will to that higher power. There is a
saying in Twelve Step groups that goes something like this: “It’s easy—all you
have to change is everything.”
This is essentially what Jesus was saying to his disciples in today’s gospel
passage. James and John asked if they could be Jesus’ right and left hand men
when Jesus came into his glory as Messiah. They did not mean in heaven. James
and John clearly thought Jesus was going to become the Messianic king of Israel,
sitting on the throne in Jerusalem. They were asking to be his Vice President or
Secretary of State or White House Chief of Staff. When the other disciples heard
what James and John had asked, they were upset—not because James and John
asked for the wrong thing, but because all the disciples wanted the same thing.
They were jealous. They all wanted the power and glory of sitting nearest the
throne.
Jesus responded first by saying that the positions of honor are not given out
according to whom you know or how you do, as they are in secular society—they
are given out by the will and wisdom of God. From what we saw of God in the
life of Jesus, that probably means that those who are last and least in our society
are most likely to be favored in God’s realm.
Then Jesus went even farther. He said that the entire paradigm, the entire
pattern on which society is based is backwards and upside down. If we want to
follow the way of Christ and dwell in the goodness of God’s realm, we have to
change our entire way of thinking and living. Instead of trying to get ahead and to
be in control, the point is to serve, to be the slave of all. Jesus showed this way
with his life and death, as well as his words. And he asks us just as he asks James
and John, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the
baptism that I am baptized with?” Are you able to change everything? Are you
able to crucify your self-concern in order to be free to serve?
Most of us, most of the time, do not realize how much of our life is aimed
toward gaining what we want. Most of the time it is hard to see the harm in our
daily little pursuits of gain or pleasure or self-advancement. They seem innocent
enough. But a 5th Century Christian teacher named Mark the Ascetic saw great
danger in them. He spent forty years challenging and observing these impulses in
himself and others and wrote many teachings on them that are still valued today in
the Orthodox church. He said that self-concern and the desire for sensual pleasure
and the strivings for gain that they inspire all serve to make our spirit blind. We
lose sight of spiritual wisdom and perspective when we are in a self-concerned
mode. We fail to see what the love of God or the love of neighbor would have us
do. We ask not how we can serve but how can we be served.
Mark the Ascetic saw that greed, lust and pride—all the desires arising
from our selfishness—lead from neglect of others to jealousy or envy, and then to
anger, and eventually to the extreme of war—the kind of war that is a grabbing of
what others have and a shoving of others out of our way, or the kind that is
revenge for our hurt pride or injured self-interest. Wars between nations begin in
our smallest individual anxious scrambling to put ourselves above others.
The society that Jesus came to create is non-violent. It is God’s realm on
earth—the realm of mercy and justice, sufficiency and peace for all. The only way
to create such a society is to turn our old ways upside down, and instead of trying
to get ahead of others, seek to serve them. “Ask not what your country can do for
you, ask what you can do for you country,” as President Kennedy said. Or ask not
how the world can serve America, but how America can serve the world. This is
the kind of society the church is called to be and called to try to create around
itself.
But even within the church we can find our long established habits at work.
An anonymous minister has written about his own experience. Once when he had
gone back to get his doctorate between churches, he went to a Good Friday
service, just walking in off the street to a random city church. He noticed after a
few minutes that he was feeling tense and a sense of dissatisfaction. Part of his
mind was trying to be moved by the suffering and self-sacrifice of Christ, but he
saw that another part of his mind was busy making judgments, naming and
scorning the faults of the clergy leading worship.
And that wasn’t all. He realized that another part of him was jealous. Part
of him wanted to be the one up there leading this grand, well-attended urban
cathedral.
But that wasn’t the worst. He saw with horror that another part of him
really wanted to have the whole service be about him. It wanted nothing less than
to be Jesus himself, the Son of God, the object of worship.
He was horrified, but as he walked home through the cold streets he also
saw what a gift he had received at that service. It had shown him exactly the part
of him that Jesus was asking him to crucify. He saw the largely unconscious
impulses that he had to let go in order to be truly like Jesus Christ, the humble,
suffering, all-sacrificing servant of all.
William Sloane Coffin’s wife, Randy, used to get mad at Bill because every
vacation he would get increasingly grumpy. Finally she realized what the problem
was and she was able to laugh about it. Bill was suffering from “applause
deprivation,” as she called it. Bill was one of the kindest, humblest, and most self-
giving of Christ’s servants, but even the saints struggle to live in this world by the
absolutely selfless standards Jesus asks of us. The saints teach that there is always
more we can do to empty ourselves of self-concern and make ourselves more fully
available to love and serve God and neighbor. This truth is at the core of our life-
long spiritual practice. It is called continuous metanoia, or the continuous
changing and reorienting of our heart, mind and spirit.
Jesus described the typical society where people try to get ahead of one
another, and then he said, “It is not so among you.” He said to his disciples, ‘You
do not live by society’s rules.’ Was he joking? Was he being sarcastic? His
disciples had just proven how sadly it was so among them. What did he mean, “It
is no so among you?”
Maybe he meant to give them an emancipation proclamation. “It is not so
among you.” You are free. I release you from the pressure, the obligation, the rat
race of greed and lust and pride, of winning and ruling, of being in control. I
release you into the freedom and joy of servanthood.
We end the sermon as we began, asking, do we trust Jesus? Do we trust
him enough to accept this freedom and this joy? Do we trust that the way to the
realm of God, the path to the realm of peace and unconditional love—the path to
the best possible life on earth—passes through the door of selfless servanthood?
Do we trust enough to try that? If so, all we need change is everything. All we
need to do is turn our entire life and will over to God’s care, and let go and let God
lead.
Don’t worry about how huge or impossible that sounds. The wisdom of the
Twelve Step movement has another famous saying: “One day at a time.” One
moment, one thought, one action at a time. That is all we have to change. Just
everything in this second. For this second we release all our old, fretful self-
interested ways and focus entirely on the servant way of Christ. Just for this
second we let the way of Christ be everything to us. That’s all. And then we do it
again. And again. And again, every moment of our life. That is the spiritual path
Christ calls us to take—the sacred way to freedom and joy and a world at peace.
Let us pray in silence, turning our hearts and minds in love and acceptance
and trust to Jesus Christ, asking how we may change and how we may serve, and
listening for his answer in our heart. See if you can feel the peace of God’s realm
that comes when we hand our entire life and will over to God even for a few
minutes. Let us pray…
Sermon 10/22/2006