May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Needless to say, my Kindergarten class field day was a long time ago, but I still remember well something unusual that happened. We had been told for weeks that there would be races and games and ribbons and prizes and I couldn’t wait. As the afternoon’s activities began our teacher explained to us how some of the races worked. There would be the usual dash race to see who was the fastest girl and the fastest boy. There would be three legged race, the wheelbarrow race, the potato sack race, and others, but she also told us that in the last running race of the day, the last place finisher would get the first-place ribbon and second and third place ribbons would go likewise to the second and third last to cross the finish line.
As the afternoon wore on, we were all caught up in the excitement and I like some others had won a few ribbons and was wearing them with pride. When it came time for the last race, we all lined up and eyed the finish line and with the word, Go, we were off. The earlier instructions were the last thing on my mind and apparently on the minds of everyone else, because when we crossed the finish line ahead of almost the whole field we were shocked to look back and see the slow pokes getting the ribbons. Then I remembered, “Oh yea! She said the first would be last and the last first.”
We were good kids. We weren’t bullies or brats, but even so, that day we got so caught up in having another ribbon and being first again that we completely forgot what we had been told about the last race and in effect taught at home and church and school about paying attention and caring and serving. As I ran, I was only thinking of myself getting ahead. Looking back, I am glad there was a race that allowed others to share in the winnings. It’s only fair.
I thought of that race when I read about John and James approaching Jesus to ask him to do what they wanted. Over and over again Jesus had taken the disciples aside and spoken to them about greatness being discovered through losing ourselves in the service of others who are in need. Jesus had told them that in his kingdom, the first would be last and the last first. Still on that day, James and John asked not what they could do for Jesus and the Kingdom, but what he could do for them. “We want you to do what we ask for Jesus.” Jesus might well have dismissed such a self-serving request, but he gave them a chance, “What is it you want me to do for you?” They might well have said, “You fed the 5,000, can you please end world hunger now,” or can you do what the prophet foretold and please make wars to cease to the ends of the earth.” But no, instead it was a clear case of me, me, me. “Can you grant that in your Kingdom we will be seated one to your immediate right and the other to your immediate left.”
Were they for real? Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem to suffer and die and they were currying favor in anticipation of a great military and political coup. In the next passage he is in Jericho and the next is the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and five days later he will be dead. And yet they are only thinking of themselves. No wonder the others were upset, but then again they were frequently involved, all of them, in jockeying for position among themselves arguing about who was the greatest.
Recently I had a long drive ahead of me one night after a long week at the church. I was tired so I kept changing the radio station to find something to keep me awake and eventually I came across a popular preacher who was unapologetically telling his listeners that we need to ask God for what we want and expect God to give us what the preacher called, ‘preferential treatment.’ He told stories about asking God’s favor while shopping and ending up with amazing discounts, or others who had put their demands into God and been able to jump the queue and another even got a promotion. “Ask for what you want and expect God to give you preferential treatment” were his words. The preacher was basically saying that we are entitled and he said it with a smile which burst through the radio. He was convincing too. Part of me wanted to believe him. He was so believable.
James and John were asking Jesus for preferential treatment. They wanted to be right up there with Jesus, closer than anyone else. So much for losing yourself to find yourself. So much for Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather in humility value others above yourselves.”
William Carey coined a phrase that called a generation to sacrificial service in mission when he said, “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God,” but he wasn’t meaning that we were playing some kind of heavenly Let’s Make a Deal with God as the deal maker. Carey went off to India in the service of Christ giving everything up, losing more along the way, experiencing setback after setback and disappointments. There were no signs of preferential treatment, but his faith was in Christ and he was caught up in being part of something so much bigger about serving and not being served.
“Are you able to drink the cup from which I drink?” asked Jesus. His was to be the cup of suffering. He had already told them more than once that he would die on a cross for the redemption and salvation of the world, but they wouldn’t hear of it. The suffering savior made no sense to them. They lived in a world where Lord and Saviour as he said in the gentile world meant powerful ruler, but Jesus was a Lord and Saviour who identified himself as a lowly servant ready to wash the disciples feet and reach out and offer preferential treatment, to the poor, to the marginalized, to the hungry and homeless and to the sick and sorrowing. Jesus identified with the broken and the enslaved and the powerless. The greatest among you is the servant of all.
It’s not that God can’t intervene in miraculous and wondrous ways, of course he can, but we trivialize and cheapen his love and concern for this world when we cash it in for a discount on designer clothing. When George McLeod led the movement to rebuild the ancient Abby on Iona and re-establish a religious community there in the midst of the Depression of the 1930’s, he soon had many remarkable stories to tell of God providing them with just what was needed at exactly the right time, but it was always for the advancement of the kingdom not for the replenishment of his wardrobe.
George McLeod himself had peerage. He was Lord McLeod a baron who had every legal right to be entitled, but as he organized the community life in Iona, he had every one participate not only in the daily prayers but also the daily tasks and he assigned himself day after day to one of the most lowly tasks – cleaning the toilets. He was following the One who came not to be served but to serve.
Mohammad Ali once said, “Service to others is the rent we pay for our room here on earth.” That is a much healthier approach than living as if we are entitled to preferential treatment from God, but even still when Jesus called us to a life of service it wasn’t to pay the rent. He had already paid the ransom. Christ’s call was to immerse ourselves in the pure joy of loving others. Rent is an obligation and a duty to serve and love as Jesus does is pure grace. So often we enter into a task of service thinking we are doing someone worse off a favor, but we soon discover that it is in giving that we receive. We are blessed by it. When Jesus called us to serve he was reconnecting us to our deepest purpose as human beings – to love.
As I was thinking of McLeod cleaning the toilets, my mind was drawn back to an article I read some time ago about zookeepers. Apparently they are often underpaid and required to work weekends and some who were interviewed reported that there are days when they spend 90% of their time scrubbing, sweeping, mopping, and disposing of the feces of dozens of species of animals, and yet a paper published in the Administrative Science Quarterly reported that these workers are among the most fulfilled in the modern world. The report said it is the closest thing in the secular world to a calling. When the zookeepers speak they are passionate about being part of a work that can save some animals from extinction while rescuing others from injury or abuse.
Before I finished reading the article it suddenly hit me. They were just like Jesus. Talk about mopping up messes all the time. Isn’t that the story of Jesus? The very next story in Mark ten is about a blind man crying out to Jesus in Jericho and everyone trying to stop him and shut him up. Then there are the authorities accusing Jesus of this and that and the other and all kinds of questions trying to trip him up and plots to kill him. And then there are the disciples arguing about who will be the greatest and wanting to sit at his right and left. They clearly don’t get it. Why didn’t Jesus walk away? I hear of people quitting all the time because of the nonsense, garbage. What Jesus went through was far worse than cleaning a cage with a hose. The zookeppers can’t quit. They are saving an animal from extinction and rescuing another from abuse and neglect.
Jesus didn’t quit on the disciples and he doesn’t give up on us when we are so intent on getting ahead and in always being right. He doesn’t quit on the radio preacher either or on his followers who have bought into believing they deserve preferential treatment and can even apply it at the nearby mall. Jesus just keeps on cleaning up after us because he too wants to save us from extinction and rescue us from abuse and neglect. And one of these days he is going to tame that wild beast in me and in this world, as only he can. Thanks be to God in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.