WHO GETS THE BEST SEATS?
A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

October 18, 2009

Job 38:1-7; Mark 10:35-45

I have not always been the best of fathers to my children. I figure it is easier to confess this reality than invite my children to comment publicly on my lack of sensitivity to their emerging lives that have left them eternally neurotically scarred. I have tried at times to be perfect or at least to compensate for my lack of parenting zeal at key moments in their lives.

I remember standing in line one cold November afternoon with my son Aaron. It was blowing snow and rain and ice and there we were a whole long line of guilt ridden fathers waiting in line with young six year old sons back in the mid-1980's waiting to see the premier showing of the latest Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.

I should have learned my lesson that one can never win as a parent. But, no, with my second child my fatherly punishment was taking her to the first American Idol Concert that was of course spearheaded by winner Kelly Clarkson. She not only wanted to go, but she wanted good seats.

We were on the main floor of the Chicago Stadium downtown where the Bulls and Michael Jordan played. We were in the front sections on nice little cold steel chairs. I thought to myself, this isn't too bad. And then it started. I looked around and I was the only dad present. This was an event that mom's took their daughters to attend. Okay, I thought to myself, I'm a cool dad in living in post-modern America. When the music started there was a sea change in the arena. Every mother and daughter stood and they commenced to screaming. Do you know what 10,000 screaming young adolescent girls smell like? It is some mixture of watermelon-bubble gum lip gloss.

If I stood up to see the stage, being as I am a tallish adult male, I could see over all of them. But, every time I stood some suburban mother from behind me would push me down and castigate me for standing and blocking her watermelon smelling daughter from seeing. I sat in some nearly catatonic fatherly fetal position for two hours and could not hear well for three days. I tried in vain to be a good father, but even sank so low as to have taken my darling daughter to two American Idol concerts.

I don't want really good seats every again. When I opened my Bible up this week and started reading our lectionary story from Mark's Gospel and the two brash disciples, James and John started out by asking Jesus for a favor, anything they wanted, and then they asked for the best seats in heaven; my mind went straight to, “Oh, no don't do that, guys. The best seats in the house come with some hidden costs.”

We've been following in our lectionary Scripture readings the Gospel of Mark for several weeks now. The whole book is a mere 16 chapters and we are now in chapter 10 and they are stilling missing crucial insights into who Jesus is and what it is that we who follow in his footsteps are to be and do. What is crucial to remember is that in Mark's Gospel they never do catch on. As the rooster crows Peter is still denying he even knows anybody by the name of Jesus and Mary goes to the tomb expecting to find a dead body. The author of Mark's gospel has a story line and it seems to be, “We just didn't know who this Jesus was.”

A month or so back, if you've been reading along, you might remember that Peter said, “Jesus you are the Messiah.” If you remember the story the disciples were sort of taking a multiple choice exam and the answer that Peter gave was like the last remaining option. They had already guessed A, B and C. They were wrong on all those guesses and we should not be so sure that when Peter answered, “Ah, I guess D. You are the Messiah,” we should not assume that Peter was doing anything other than saying, “There are no other choices, Jesus, what do we do about that.”

Jesus was not looking or sounding like any Messiah they had ever heard of before. Jesus was looking to the people who knew him throughout the Book of Mark about as much like a Messiah as many thought Sarah Palin looked presidential in the last election cycle.

I cannot be very critical of Peter and James this morning, because I only see myself in them. I have had dreams of what life should look like could be like if I were setting next to the king of the world. I grew up in the midst of a generation that placed so much hope in the charismatic leaders of 60's only to have them assinated, buried and to the best of my knowledge, apart from Elvis, I've seen none of them return.

James and John believed Jesus when he said he was going to die for the glory of God. There was no doubt in their mind that with the crowds that were following Jesus, with his primary teacher, John the Baptist, beheaded; there was no doubt that Jesus was on that path to being a martyr just like John. You know how it is. You know how the game of life is played. If you want to be insured that you are in somebody's will, the time to put the plug in for yourself and what you want is before they die. These two men believed that Jesus was going to bring the nation of Israel back to her former glory like in the times of King David and King Solomon and they wanted to ask for seats on the cabinet next to the new Messiah. They were thinking, James and John, “We knew this guy Jesus before he was famous, we've stuck with him through some sticky situations, good times and bad, we loved him before he was someone and we want some of the good stuff that is going to come down when Jesus restores this nation to her glory and kicks the Roman oppressors into the sea, legion by legion, like the ugly swine that they are.

If you were to page ahead in your Bibles this morning, you would see that in Mark's story line we are but a few mere verses from Mark's triumphal entry where Jesus comes into Jerusalem on a cute little donkey, not at all Messiah like on a big white war horse. Mark's gospel painstakingly walks us from chapter 1 through 16 demonstrating that none of the disciples seemed to understand what kind of Messiah they were following.

Do we? Do I? Of the many remarkable things about Jesus of Nazareth, one is that his understanding of what is really important in this world, in our lives is upside down from nearly every normal expectation. Jesus took the concept of conquering Messiah and flipped it over and said, “It is really about being a suffering servant and empowering society to be just and fair for absolutely everyone and being willing to suffer for God's justice for the poor.” In Jesus' day and ours the most common belief is “Blessed are the rich for they have got it made in the shade.” Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.” Everyday, the spirit of the Christ, the Messiah, keeps turning my world upside down and asking me to reorient my priorities and to not only listen but to adequately and meaningfully respond not only to ugly politics with a witty repartee, but to ponder what it means to drink the cup that Jesus drank and to be baptized as Jesus was baptized. James and John said, “Yes, we are able to do just that.” History and legend records that all but one of those early apostles, John, died early and violent deaths for what they believed to be true about Jesus' call to be a servant, a slave to all.

Who lives that way? Today we recall folks like Dietrich Bonhoeffer the Lutheran pastor and resister in Nazi Germany, purposefully executed by Hitler's order the day before Hitler committed suicide. We remember Oscar Romero gunned down as he shared communion with the masses in El Salvador along with several women missionaries in the same country who were killed because they were standing with the poor and the oppressed because they believed that was what Jesus called them to do.

Who does that today? What are we to do with us, folks who are struggling with earnest to live faithfully, but who will most probably not lose our lives for taking Jesus seriously? Marcus Borg talks about this in his book, Jesus: A New Vision. He says the gospel of Jesus is still calling us to die. He challenges us to ponder how faith in Jesus is still calling us to “die to the self as the center of its own concern and calling us to die to the world as the center of security and identity.”

Jesus keeps pushing us, this upside down Messiah, and asks those who follow his way, who will risk transformation in Christ's spirit, to die to the self and to the world, the two great rival centers to centering fully in God. I really don't intend to be traditional sounding when I suggest that what we are called to do is convert, to find conversion, a radical re-centering of our lives where we stop hoping for peace and we live peace, where we stop expecting others to be just and we live justice, where righteousness is a lifestyle and mercy and compassion are more than mere words both personally, nationally and globally, not only between persons, but toward the very earth. We are called by that Jesus who turned his world upside, to turn our world upside down by living boldly our faith.

James and John ask for seats of honor and privilege and honor. Jesus says to them I will grant you, if you follow me, to share with me the suffering and shame, but the seats of honor are reserved. Jesus does not tell them, these two rather obnoxious boys to not have ambition for the cause. Jesus is still teaching them about the cause.

Dr. King preached on this text back in 1968 soon after he was in the Birmingham Jail and just before he was shot to death in Memphis. Dr King says, “One would have thought that Jesus would have condemned them. One would have thought that Jesus would have said, "You are out of your place. You are selfish. Why would you raise such a question?"

But that isn't what Jesus did; he did something altogether different. He said in substance, "Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you're going to be my disciple, you must be." But he reordered priorities. And he said, "Yes, don't give up this instinct. It's a good instinct if you use it right. (Yes) It's a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. (Amen) I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do."

And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, "I can't give you greatness. And really, I can't make you first." This is what Jesus said to James and John. "You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give; they belong to those who are prepared." (Amen)

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that ‘the one' who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”

The best seats go to those who have centered themselves in essence of God, who have become servants of a love, of a way that many have prematurely died for standing for, May they have any seat they want. I pray that you and I will simply become leaders in humbly living as we give our lives over to the ever present spirit of Christ who will lure us to phenomenal experiences of suffering, joy and love for all the right reasons.

Are we able to drink to the cup that Jesus drank?