Sermon based on Mark 10: 35-45
Back in 2006, there was a bestselling book that caused quite a stir. It was called “Three Cups of Tea” and it was written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. It was about Greg’s life, a life-threatening experience in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan and how it came to be that he began building schools. If you remember this was about five years into the US invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11th attacks in late 2001.
That book touched a chord with many leading to numerous fundraisers including a program called “Pennies for Peace” where pennies were dedicated to building schools especially ones that included girls.
Four years later however, we came to find out in an expose by the TV news program called Sixty Minutes and a book published shortly later by Jon Krakauer called “Three cups of Deceit” that the monies raised and donated to the non-profit created by Mortenson called the Central Asia Institute was being inappropriately used for personal use by Mr. Mortenson. Furthermore, come to find out that Mr. Mortensons’ story about his journey in the mountains, befriending a Pakistani tribe and building schools had a lot of holes and was less than accurate.
Well, after several lawsuits and investigations, Mr. Mortenson returned over a million dollars and resigned from the board of the institute, but the repercussions continued in subsequent years. For example, co-author David Oliver Relin committed suicide in 2012. And in 2016 a documentary was distributed called “3000 Cups of Tea” which initially was intended to refute the allegations but ultimately led to only more concerns. Story
That lingering story came to mind after I re-read today’s gospel, an incident between Jesus and two disciples, brothers James and John and later the other disciples. According to what we are told, they responded to Jesus query, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” James and Joh responded not with sorry, we take back our request to sit on the right and left side of you Jesus in glory, instead they answered: “We are able.” When Greg Mortenson published his book, I am sure he intended to put himself in the most flattering light as many of us would do, not knowing what was going to happen and the impact on his later decisions. When James and John answer, “we are able” and to which Jesus says, “…you will be baptized…” we see the coming together of the best of human intentions and failings.
So much like James and John. Because all of us know --- since we have heard the stories many times --- what will happen. Jesus is on a journey to the cross. Within a year, the disciples scatter hither and yon in the garden after his arrest and absent upon his death on the cross. Later we hear how the disciples gather behind locked doors in grief and fear, confused by the message of the women, and then experience the shock of Jesus’ resurrection and accession. And on one fine morning are filled with Holy Spirit, become fluent in other languages and are off into the world as missionaries.
Tradition has it that James was martyred in what we now call Spain and that John, lived the longest, is the only one to die of natural causes after having written several books found in the New Testament. Yet, today, they say: “We are able.”
Their story is our own, because like it or not, we are implicated when those two disciples and all those who follow answer with “We are able!” James and John are nothing if not bold --- boldly wrong at what they were saying perhaps, but bold nonetheless. Just like we and countless others before us have boldly confessed our faith, bold in our affirmation, but without too much time passing act far more like Peter when he proclaims he will never deny Jesus, then promptly does.
We could of course argue, as I indicated earlier they will later receive the Holy Spirit. Although that is accurate, lingering in the air like a bad smell, is that unspoken challenge that we associate with those who we assume are disciples of Jesus. For we join the ranks who begrudgingly affirm “we are able” but speaking for myself, the reality is usually a highly uncomfortable, “It is a work in progress.”
Not that we can’t come up with good excuses as countless others have done before us. Let us focus on one: It’s the fault of the Holy Spirit! But that of course would go across the very essence of faith; that we all have received the gift of faith by the power of the Holy Spirit in baptism. As Jesus himself tells us today: “with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” We could as many want to do, “well it is because we didn’t get that Holy Spirit in the first place.” At that we may either smolder or search for the right mix of religious leader, community and music that will have us “experience it,” until life creeps back in ….
Thankfully today’s event does not end with the promise of James and John, for later we hear how when getting wind of what happened the other disciples are angry. Was it because James and John voiced in their request a secret longing of all to be recognized? Or was it because they are as conflicted between affirming that they are ready, yet struggling with what that means and their own inadequacies?
We don’t have to think too deeply to see what Jesus is trying to explain to all the disciples, too us. Go back to Mark 8:29-30, where Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus doesn’t disagree. Start reading from there, straight through to today’s passage. It appears that once James and John and the other disciples understood that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, they stopped listening to anything else. As commentator André Resner Jr. points out, in the intervening verses 1. Jesus tells his disciples that following him means thinking of themselves as people who deny self for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of the gospel, risking and accepting worldly shame (8:34-38); Jesus reminds them that they are to listen to his words above all others (9:7); Jesus reminds they to remain humbly dependent on God’s power to do God’s work (9:14-29). Jesus reminds them do not play the games of competitiveness, one-upmanship or glory grasping but choose the role of least of all and slave to all (9:33-37). Jesus reminds them to relinquish control for who does what and how they are to help build the kingdom; in other words, giving up the need to be God’s quality-control experts --- think control freaks --- for anything that’s done for God (10:38-41). Jesus teaches them to keep children at the center of their work, even when it appears distracting (9:36-37, 42-48; 10:13-16); and as we were reminded last week not become overburdened by possessions but receive the gift of the hundredfold promise (10:17-31).
What does that mean? Return with me to the story of Gregg Mortenson. I do not know much of what has happened since, however, I marvel at the irony of it all. Because if you were to read that initial book, that started it all “Three Cups of Tea,” the whole premise is that in the process of being rescued and then living with these mountain tribesmen, he discovered that the cup of tea is filled with humble tea. On that mountain he learned to be humble. Ironic because if he learned it that is what not happened later in his life.
Likewise, it’s not too difficult to see the irony of the request of James and John, from the perspective of what they should’ve known by that point: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Because, if you read it in context, of what I reminded Jesus had said up to this point, that the way of cross was NOT toward any glory.
I am thankful that if we hold to tradition James and John faithfully lived out their promise “we are able.” Because whether James made it to Spain or this John is the same John with the vision on the island of Patmos, today’s event is a healthy reminder that we disciples are called to drink a humble cup of tea that the Lord puts in front of us, seeking not to be served but to serve.
Granted, however it's strange because it is the superhuman that we hold to be the model, not the way of Christ. The way of Christ goes against every human instinct because in the process of evolution, it has favored the strong, the powerful, and the paranoid. Those are our own ingrained “default positions.”
When Jesus, in a radical reversal, says that true life comes from denying one's evolutionary instincts and following instead the “way,” it means that as we follow it is not based on how much Holy Spirit we think we have, how much courage or faith the size of the mustard seed produces, rather in following we affirm the whole of our human experience, pain and brokenness, whether it's in our knee, or family or in our neighborhood. In following we acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers and the ones we do have run counter to all our human instinct. In following the way, we realize we walk with others in the same boat and all that separates us from someone else is very thin indeed. In following we become open to reconciliation --- open to the humbling restoration of our relationship with God, with others, and with our own true self not because of anything we are, have done or will do, but because the restoration we have is a gift from God.
Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way: “Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.” Rather to follow the way of Jesus, means doing as Jesus did, giving of one's self to be “slave of all.” And what is a slave? A slave is a human being with limited power and no resources and all one has come by the master. The truth is that none of us is “able,” but we serve a Great God. With Christ's forgiveness and inspiration filled “with a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
That was true for James. True for John. True for any one of us who drink humble tea, who live out our affirmation: “We are able.” Amen.
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