Powerless before Glory

Mark 10: 35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Professor, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 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?” 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; 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.” When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 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. 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.”

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I’ve been thinking about power and powerlessness a lot this week. Some of you know I’ve been sitting with a family in ICU for the last week while they wait for their son to wake up after a terrible car accident nine days ago. The family is of course powerless to wake him up, the doctor and nurses are keeping him alive and taking good care of him, his healing process will be long, everything about his family’s life has changed. Many friends and relatives have been spending their days in the lobby waiting, just waiting, and hoping, and chatting, and of course running the gamut of emotions through the stress and grief and fear and anger. I don’t want to say he’s ‘not one of ours,’ since God doesn’t do that whole ‘us and them’ separation, but just so you don’t think you’ve missed something, he’s not a member here, I just get to do this sort of thing with people who ask for a pastor because I’m local enough to get there, and sitting powerless with other people is uncomfortable, holy time. Of course there’s nothing I can do to fix anything, I don’t have any answers, I can’t explain why these things happen, I just get to sit in the awkward powerlessness with other people and pay attention to God in the midst of it.

This morning’s Gospel reading skips over a few verses from last week’s reading. I don’t know if that’s for the sake of cutting out repetition of verses we’ve already heard twice recently, or because the lectionary folks wanted us to focus differently, but I can’t help but back up to the end of last week’s reading and go on directly from there to today’s, so, from verses 32-34: 

And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”

For some reason, after this third prediction of his betrayal and death, James and John come up and demand to sit at his right and left hands in his glory. It’s so insensitive of them. But on the other hand, it sort of makes sense. They don’t want to hear about suffering, don’t want to think about it, don’t want things to change, don’t want Rome to burst their bubble of hope yet again while they remain powerless to do anything about their oppression. Rome, remember, can just come in a steal any woman they please, use her up and throw her away. Rome, remember, is an empire that keeps the peace by making public witness of humiliating anyone who expresses a desire for equal protection under the law. In our recent American history, we might say that Rome is in charge of the most public state-sanctioned lynchings, and here Jesus is saying that his own people are going to hand him over to just such a lynching. Terror and powerlessness. He’s letting his disciples know that he knows this is coming, and he’s reminding them again that it won’t be the end of him, because he will rise after three days.

So, say James and John, let’s just jump right to the glory then, okay? We’ve got to be able to do something more than just sit by and watch, than just stand around and wait. Being powerless is such an awful feeling, especially when you’re powerless to save someone you love and hope for.

But, yet again, James and John have missed the point of who Jesus is. God has been watching us live with the consequences of our free will for generation after generation, calling to us, crying to us, through prophets and signs and miracles to turn around, to repent, to just be kind to one another and stop with the self-centeredness and the killing and the shaming and the isolating and the imprisonment and the abuse. We have turned our backs on God over and over throughout history, claiming we know better how to live in the glory we want. Our fight for glory only turns our world and our communities into broken bits of debris, adrift in the chaos. Then when we’ve made a real mess of things we turn in desperation to God and demand God fix what we have broken. God created this world out of chaos, so we claim in one of our creation stories, so we know God can do it again, but we’d rather God get out of our way, until we need God to swoop in with all of the power and bring us glory. This is how people have lived generation after generation. Heartbreaking.

So God isn’t getting the message across with the prophets, it seems, isn’t mending fully what we have broken, not even with the many sacrifices of the priests. Certainly we aren’t keeping order and justice with any consistency through the kings. We can’t fix this ourselves, so God comes in the flesh, descends into the chaos and the suffering and the madness and the gore. God comes deep down inside our powerlessness, to show us what real power, what real glory, what real salvation, is.

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I know a few bedsides in the ICU with empty couches. 

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I know a few prison inmates who could use a penal. 

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I heard there are schools with ‘buddy benches’ in their playgrounds for the lonely kids.

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, look to your left, to your closest neighbor.

Because this is who God is, among us, with us, in our suffering and our everything. We can’t escape the realities of living in a world where our actions have consequences, and God doesn’t pull us out of it so much as crawl into it beside us. When Jesus talks about the cup he is to drink, remember that cup he poured out for us when he sat at that Passover supper with his disciples the night we betrayed him, that cup of his blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, the cup of salvation, of cells and plasma that flowed in his veins and has been given freely for us. When he talks about the baptism with which he is baptized, remember that day when the heavens opened and the voice of God said “This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased,” and remember how God has claimed you and named you in baptism, too. When we talk about the glory of God, we talk about this passionate love which has been flowing throughout all of history and flows among us and within us in the here and now as much as it did two thousand years ago.

For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. And to give his life as a ransom for you.