Cost!: A Lenten Sermon on Mark 10:17-45
Scripture
Mark 10:17-45
Message: Cost!
March 13, 2016
Rachel Witkovsky
Cost
March 13, 2016
Rachel Witkovsky
Jesus was upfront with the disciples from the very beginning. He told them then and has told them over and over again what this journey is and what it will lead to. He told them there would be suffering and that he was going to die. But he also told them of the resurrection. The literal journey becomes a symbol of discipleship, of following Jesus. The disciples sometimes imagine that the journey will lead them to glory, but Jesus keeps clarifying, “Not without first going the way of the cross (Geddert, p. 196)!”
The disciples are not quite sure what to make of it all, but they are along for the ride. They may not have grasped the magnitude or the truth in his words yet, but they are walking with him on this rode regardless. And they’re about to come to a milestone on this journey. They are about to reach Jerusalem. (Geddert, p. 196)
In his Believers Church Bible Commentary of Mark, Timothy Geddert writes, "In this text [the disciples] discover for the first time that the destination of this journey is Jerusalem. Previously they have experienced with Jesus the opposition of those from Jerusalem. Now as they approach the stronghold of Jesus' enemies, they fear that his recurring predictions of death just might actually come true (Geddert, p. 249)."
Before they reach Jerusalem, however, Jesus has some more teaching to do.
It all starts when a wealthy man approaches Jesus.
He’s done everything right. He has followed the commandments and he’s made quite a life for himself. Jesus loves him, instantly. He asks Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus tells him there’s just one more thing the man needs to do. Leave it all behind.
“Go. Sell. Give. Then, come. Follow.” Jesus gives him five simple steps to get to the kingdom of God.
And the man knows, he can never do that, so he hangs his head and walks away.
"This incident is not merely about honoring Jesus, obeying the law, or seeking eternal life,” Geddert tells us, “It is not even ultimately about concern for the poor. It is about the seductive power of wealth to hold people captive. It is about a man who seems to have done everything right, but to have done it all in service of the wrong master, himself (Geddert, p. 244)."
The lesson is clear here and the disciples witnessed it all. Jesus ties it up nicely for them, saying, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” But they still don’t get it.
“Children,” he calls them when he has to repeat himself a second time. Then he presents them with another visual to seal the deal.
Here’s a metaphor they can’t be confused about, surely. A camel and a needle. Doesn’t work. We good?
Not good.
Peter steps up and says what, I’m sure, is on everyone’s mind. Pretty much, he says, Jesus, you’re preaching to the choir. We already did that. So, we’re in, right?
Yeah, you’re in, alright, but do you really understand what that means?
Obviously, they don’t. Because after predicting his death for a third time—this time more detailed than any before—they still ask the wrong questions.
They’re finally thinking about the big picture, but it’s the wrong one. They want to sit next to the king.
"On this journey, the disciples of Jesus have not fared well,” Geddert tells us, “Each time Jesus has predicted his death and resurrection, they have blatantly betrayed their misunderstanding, their blindness to the things of God (Geddert, p. 243)."
It’s only human to want glory, to want to be the greatest. It’s human to ask the little questions without seeing the big picture. I imagine Jesus wanting to smack his head against a wall hearing the disciples and even us, now, going over it and over it again. His words ring in my ears. The words we heard on a previous Sunday. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things,” he told Peter, “but on human things.” And that is what trips us up time and again.
James and John fall right into the trap of humanity.
Before, when arguing about who would be greatest, "they at least were embarrassed that Jesus knew it. This time [the] two of them unabashedly appeal directly to Jesus to make them greatest (Geddert, p. 249-50)."
Jesus is standing here, predicting his death for a third time and what do they do? Act like the children that Jesus just called them. They call dibs. James and John hear that Jesus is going to die and they want to call shotgun. They want Jesus to do what they ask and they want to be at the places of glory next to him. They want to be on top. The man standing in front of them is their ticket to front row seats in the kingdom of God.
"Their request is both outrageously selfish and utterly human," writes Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm in her book, Preaching the Gospel of Mark (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 184).
"It is remarkable to note how Jesus relates to his disciples throughout this section,” she says. “Despite their self-centeredness and persistent misunderstanding, he continues to teach them what it means to be his disciples. He responds to James and John without condescension, yet he corrects their errors. Their faults are real, yet he never rejects them. Perhaps that is why they continue to follow him, even when they are blind to his meaning or fearful of the journey ahead. Jesus' tenderness and forbearance toward his disciples is good news for those of us today who hear his words yet do not fully understand what he means, or who struggle to relinquish our own plans for success (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 187)."
Jesus asks them if they have any idea what they’re asking. He asks them if they are ready to drink his cup and go through his baptism. Without truly considering the consequences, the brothers answer with an almost arrogant ‘yes.’
This scene makes me think of the person in the movies and in books who had to drink the poisoned cup for the emperor or monarch. But, more than just in the cinema, there was actually a position in many prominent households known as a cupbearer. This is a person that inspects and ingests drink or food to be served to someone else to confirm that it is safe.
If the cupbearer becomes ill after testing the drink, they know it was tampered with. In the event that the target (emperor, monarch, etc.) should fall ill or die, the similar illness or death of the taster provides evidence of deliberate poisoning. Being a cupbearer was a great honor but also a great risk (Wikipedia).
Only the most trusted of servants could be a cupbearer and the cupbearer had to be willing to die should it come to that.
How much of this did James and John know they were agreeing too? Maybe they were indeed willing to die for Jesus. But death was not the only thing they would have been agreeing to.
Discussing Henri Nouwen’s book, Can You Drink the Cup?, Ottoni Wilhelm tells us that it’s a reflection on the “experience of holding, lifting, and drinking the cup of Christ, which contains both sorrow and joy. As sorrow, the cup includes not only Jesus' suffering but that of the whole human race (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 187).”
This sorrow and suffering is the cost of drinking the cup the brothers have so flippantly said they could.
Rachel Held Evans a young, Evangelical theologian, has experienced the modern cost of discipleship. She has challenged some of the long held beliefs of her faith by “embracing evolution, feminism, LGBT equality, and other theological views that veer from the evangelical norm.” She is criticized for it at every turn from strangers and one-time supporters alike.
“Even so,” she writes, “mine has been a relatively easy journey. My parents are supportive and I have many faithful friends. I’ve found success and solidarity in my writing, and my husband has never left my side. But there are science teachers who have lost their jobs for teaching that the earth is more than 6,000 years old and biblical scholars who have been labeled heretics for suggesting Genesis 1 is not a scientific text. There are teenagers who have faced homelessness after coming out to their parents, and parents who have faced excommunication from their church for standing by their gay kids. I know women who can remember the way their hearts sank when a row of men stood up and left when they approached the podium to speak. I know writers who have lost book deals and pastors who have been run out of town. We aren't ‘giving in’ to the culture,” she says, after being accused of doing exactly that, “our culture is evangelical Christianity. We're struggling with that culture, and doing so comes with a cost.”
But Rachel knows that people with the same views as her are not the only ones paying the cost for their beliefs.
“I have made assumptions about my brothers and sisters in the faith,” she writes, “only to learn that they too have struggled through big questions, they've just arrived at different answers. I’ve spoken with twenty-somethings whose families ridiculed them when they came to Christianity and with women whose professors sneered at them when they challenged feminist teachings. Once, after I told someone he must certainly have never met a gay person in his life, he responded that his ex-wife was a lesbian and he struggles with how to raise his children with her in a gracious and loving way.”
“How little I know,” she concludes, “of other people’s stories. How swift I am to judge based on where we met in the path without bothering to ask where they've come from.”
Were James and John thinking about this when they said they could drink that cup and be baptized with Jesus’ baptism? Were they thinking about the thousands who would want Jesus dead and the thousands in the year to come who would also be killed in his name? The ones who answered ‘we are able’ without ever dreaming of a specific place in glory? The ones who would die on the crosses to his left and to his right?
"Here is where the irony of the text appears,” Geddert writes. “Jesus is the only one who will faithfully go the way of the cross, at least on this journey. As the nails go into his hands and the ironic enthronement in glory takes place (The King of the Jews! Mark 15:26), we are informed that two people have been assigned places on his right and on his left (Mark 15:27; phrases exactly as in 10:40!). If James and John are truly willing to be baptized with Jesus' baptism and to drink his cup, they will faithfully complete the way of the cross. Then they might be there in positions of glory as Jesus is enthroned (Geddert, p. 250-51)."
But their ignorance and their humanity were showing in their request. And mine is showing in every second that I go on judging them for their question.
The rest of the disciples got mad too. I don’t know if it was because of the brothers’ stupidity or because they didn’t think of it first. Either way, Jesus calms them.
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them,” he tells 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.”
"Verse 45 not only links his own life of service to the vocation of his disciples as described in verses 43-44,” Ottoni Wilhelm explains, “but this saying is also the first time Mark gives any indication of the purpose of Jesus' death: to give his life as 'a ransom for many.' The term 'ransom' refers to purchasing a slave or prisoner in order to grant him or her freedom and redemption. Jesus' words suggest that humanity is held captive by powers from which we need deliverance and that his death provides the means for our freedom and redemption (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 185-6)."
Through Jesus, we start to turn our eyes toward divine things instead of human things. Through Jesus, we come to a true greatness, beyond sitting idle on a throne.
In the Disney classic, Hercules, the young god goes to visit his father, Zeus. He has been working hard saving people left and right, trying to become what Zeus called a ‘true hero’ so that he can rejoin his family on Olympus.
Zeus tells him he’s “done wonderfully” but that he’s “just not there yet.” He hasn’t proved himself a true hero.
Frustrated, Hercules tells him that he’s “beaten every single monster [he’s] come up against. And that he’s “the most famous person in all of Greece.” He’s even an action figure.
But Zeus tells him that “being famous is not the same as being a true hero.”
Hercules asks what more he can do. And Zeus replies simply that “it's something [he has] to discover for [himself].” He tells his son to “look inside [his] heart.”
Yes this is a kids’ cartoon, but this animated father gets it better than the disciples ever seemed to. To be a true hero or to achieve true greatness in the sense that Jesus is talking about here is more than just glory and honor. It’s deeper and it costs something dear. Hercules has to, eventually, be willing to give his life in replace of someone else’s in order to be a true hero. He, the greatest hero among them, must serve those around him.
"Jesus insists that true greatness arises when we offer ourselves in loving service to others, not when we seek privilege, prestige, or our own advancement," Ottoni Wilhelm writes. "...true greatness and real power is not realized through seeking our own advantage but the good of others. There never seems to be a shortage of opportunities for pursuing this kind of greatness (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 186)."
Zeus finally reveals to his son the truth. “For a true hero,” he says, “isn't measured by the size of his strength, but by the strength of his heart.”
And here’s the good news for us mortals. The humans trying to “set our mind on divine things” rather than human things. The cup of suffering we accept in order to follow Jesus and the baptism we take are not all death and destruction. The cost is high, but, as Ottoni Wilhelm concludes, still speaking of Nouwen’s book, “we must sometimes look carefully to discover the joy hidden within [the cup]: 'When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.' Yet the promise of Christ is that his cup is also our cup. As we drink it and savor the sorrow and joy within it, we will taste his gift of freedom and salvation, in this world as in the world to come (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 187)."
In service, we find the promise of God’s kingdom. In hard work, we find the glory of spending time with each other.
“I’ve been thinking,” Rachel Held Evans writes. “We fight like brothers and sisters because we are. We've all been adopted into God’s family. Maybe we don’t have to change each other’s minds to lighten one another’s load by not assuming motives, by giving each other the benefit of the doubt that we arrived at our beliefs through honest searching.”
I agree with Rachel. Every conviction we hold has a cost. “What mine have cost me,” Held Evans writes, “may be different than what yours have cost you, but the sense of loss is the same. And so is the hope that comes with breaking bread together in spite of our theological and political differences and settling into the sweet certainty that following Jesus doesn’t have to cost this. It doesn’t have to cost our love for one another.”
If we drink the cup, there will be a cost. We will all have to pay it, rich or poor or somewhere in between.
It will be a difficult road. There’s no electronic, E-Z Pass lane. We have to stop and pay the tolls. But we’re on the road together.
When there’s a cost to be paid, it doesn’t fall to the grunts while Jesus and James and John sit on their golden thrones and rule over us.
"In Jesus' final word of instruction to the disciples,” Geddert writes, “before arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus teaches about the true power structures of God's kingdom; service is greatness; to be slave is to be first; he himself will go so far as to give his life for all the rest. Soon these kingdom values will be seen in action. Soon Jesus finishes his journey to the cross (Geddert, p. 251-52).”
But that’s not today. Today we are camped just outside of Jerusalem. Today we sit with the disciples, dreaming of what is to come, worried about the cost we’ll have to pay. But we’re not in it alone. We have each other and we have Jesus. And we have the promise of Jesus that “no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for [his] sake and for the sake of the good news, will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.” Amen.
Bibliography
Believers Church Bible Commentary: Mark by Timothy J. Geddert
Preaching the Gospel of Mark by Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm
The Cost by Rachel Held Evans
Hercules by Disney
Cup-bearer - Wikipedia
Mark 10:17-45
Message: Cost!
March 13, 2016
Rachel Witkovsky
Cost
March 13, 2016
Rachel Witkovsky
Jesus was upfront with the disciples from the very beginning. He told them then and has told them over and over again what this journey is and what it will lead to. He told them there would be suffering and that he was going to die. But he also told them of the resurrection. The literal journey becomes a symbol of discipleship, of following Jesus. The disciples sometimes imagine that the journey will lead them to glory, but Jesus keeps clarifying, “Not without first going the way of the cross (Geddert, p. 196)!”
The disciples are not quite sure what to make of it all, but they are along for the ride. They may not have grasped the magnitude or the truth in his words yet, but they are walking with him on this rode regardless. And they’re about to come to a milestone on this journey. They are about to reach Jerusalem. (Geddert, p. 196)
In his Believers Church Bible Commentary of Mark, Timothy Geddert writes, "In this text [the disciples] discover for the first time that the destination of this journey is Jerusalem. Previously they have experienced with Jesus the opposition of those from Jerusalem. Now as they approach the stronghold of Jesus' enemies, they fear that his recurring predictions of death just might actually come true (Geddert, p. 249)."
Before they reach Jerusalem, however, Jesus has some more teaching to do.
It all starts when a wealthy man approaches Jesus.
He’s done everything right. He has followed the commandments and he’s made quite a life for himself. Jesus loves him, instantly. He asks Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus tells him there’s just one more thing the man needs to do. Leave it all behind.
“Go. Sell. Give. Then, come. Follow.” Jesus gives him five simple steps to get to the kingdom of God.
And the man knows, he can never do that, so he hangs his head and walks away.
"This incident is not merely about honoring Jesus, obeying the law, or seeking eternal life,” Geddert tells us, “It is not even ultimately about concern for the poor. It is about the seductive power of wealth to hold people captive. It is about a man who seems to have done everything right, but to have done it all in service of the wrong master, himself (Geddert, p. 244)."
The lesson is clear here and the disciples witnessed it all. Jesus ties it up nicely for them, saying, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” But they still don’t get it.
“Children,” he calls them when he has to repeat himself a second time. Then he presents them with another visual to seal the deal.
Here’s a metaphor they can’t be confused about, surely. A camel and a needle. Doesn’t work. We good?
Not good.
Peter steps up and says what, I’m sure, is on everyone’s mind. Pretty much, he says, Jesus, you’re preaching to the choir. We already did that. So, we’re in, right?
Yeah, you’re in, alright, but do you really understand what that means?
Obviously, they don’t. Because after predicting his death for a third time—this time more detailed than any before—they still ask the wrong questions.
They’re finally thinking about the big picture, but it’s the wrong one. They want to sit next to the king.
"On this journey, the disciples of Jesus have not fared well,” Geddert tells us, “Each time Jesus has predicted his death and resurrection, they have blatantly betrayed their misunderstanding, their blindness to the things of God (Geddert, p. 243)."
It’s only human to want glory, to want to be the greatest. It’s human to ask the little questions without seeing the big picture. I imagine Jesus wanting to smack his head against a wall hearing the disciples and even us, now, going over it and over it again. His words ring in my ears. The words we heard on a previous Sunday. “For you are setting your mind not on divine things,” he told Peter, “but on human things.” And that is what trips us up time and again.
James and John fall right into the trap of humanity.
Before, when arguing about who would be greatest, "they at least were embarrassed that Jesus knew it. This time [the] two of them unabashedly appeal directly to Jesus to make them greatest (Geddert, p. 249-50)."
Jesus is standing here, predicting his death for a third time and what do they do? Act like the children that Jesus just called them. They call dibs. James and John hear that Jesus is going to die and they want to call shotgun. They want Jesus to do what they ask and they want to be at the places of glory next to him. They want to be on top. The man standing in front of them is their ticket to front row seats in the kingdom of God.
"Their request is both outrageously selfish and utterly human," writes Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm in her book, Preaching the Gospel of Mark (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 184).
"It is remarkable to note how Jesus relates to his disciples throughout this section,” she says. “Despite their self-centeredness and persistent misunderstanding, he continues to teach them what it means to be his disciples. He responds to James and John without condescension, yet he corrects their errors. Their faults are real, yet he never rejects them. Perhaps that is why they continue to follow him, even when they are blind to his meaning or fearful of the journey ahead. Jesus' tenderness and forbearance toward his disciples is good news for those of us today who hear his words yet do not fully understand what he means, or who struggle to relinquish our own plans for success (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 187)."
Jesus asks them if they have any idea what they’re asking. He asks them if they are ready to drink his cup and go through his baptism. Without truly considering the consequences, the brothers answer with an almost arrogant ‘yes.’
This scene makes me think of the person in the movies and in books who had to drink the poisoned cup for the emperor or monarch. But, more than just in the cinema, there was actually a position in many prominent households known as a cupbearer. This is a person that inspects and ingests drink or food to be served to someone else to confirm that it is safe.
If the cupbearer becomes ill after testing the drink, they know it was tampered with. In the event that the target (emperor, monarch, etc.) should fall ill or die, the similar illness or death of the taster provides evidence of deliberate poisoning. Being a cupbearer was a great honor but also a great risk (Wikipedia).
Only the most trusted of servants could be a cupbearer and the cupbearer had to be willing to die should it come to that.
How much of this did James and John know they were agreeing too? Maybe they were indeed willing to die for Jesus. But death was not the only thing they would have been agreeing to.
Discussing Henri Nouwen’s book, Can You Drink the Cup?, Ottoni Wilhelm tells us that it’s a reflection on the “experience of holding, lifting, and drinking the cup of Christ, which contains both sorrow and joy. As sorrow, the cup includes not only Jesus' suffering but that of the whole human race (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 187).”
This sorrow and suffering is the cost of drinking the cup the brothers have so flippantly said they could.
Rachel Held Evans a young, Evangelical theologian, has experienced the modern cost of discipleship. She has challenged some of the long held beliefs of her faith by “embracing evolution, feminism, LGBT equality, and other theological views that veer from the evangelical norm.” She is criticized for it at every turn from strangers and one-time supporters alike.
“Even so,” she writes, “mine has been a relatively easy journey. My parents are supportive and I have many faithful friends. I’ve found success and solidarity in my writing, and my husband has never left my side. But there are science teachers who have lost their jobs for teaching that the earth is more than 6,000 years old and biblical scholars who have been labeled heretics for suggesting Genesis 1 is not a scientific text. There are teenagers who have faced homelessness after coming out to their parents, and parents who have faced excommunication from their church for standing by their gay kids. I know women who can remember the way their hearts sank when a row of men stood up and left when they approached the podium to speak. I know writers who have lost book deals and pastors who have been run out of town. We aren't ‘giving in’ to the culture,” she says, after being accused of doing exactly that, “our culture is evangelical Christianity. We're struggling with that culture, and doing so comes with a cost.”
But Rachel knows that people with the same views as her are not the only ones paying the cost for their beliefs.
“I have made assumptions about my brothers and sisters in the faith,” she writes, “only to learn that they too have struggled through big questions, they've just arrived at different answers. I’ve spoken with twenty-somethings whose families ridiculed them when they came to Christianity and with women whose professors sneered at them when they challenged feminist teachings. Once, after I told someone he must certainly have never met a gay person in his life, he responded that his ex-wife was a lesbian and he struggles with how to raise his children with her in a gracious and loving way.”
“How little I know,” she concludes, “of other people’s stories. How swift I am to judge based on where we met in the path without bothering to ask where they've come from.”
Were James and John thinking about this when they said they could drink that cup and be baptized with Jesus’ baptism? Were they thinking about the thousands who would want Jesus dead and the thousands in the year to come who would also be killed in his name? The ones who answered ‘we are able’ without ever dreaming of a specific place in glory? The ones who would die on the crosses to his left and to his right?
"Here is where the irony of the text appears,” Geddert writes. “Jesus is the only one who will faithfully go the way of the cross, at least on this journey. As the nails go into his hands and the ironic enthronement in glory takes place (The King of the Jews! Mark 15:26), we are informed that two people have been assigned places on his right and on his left (Mark 15:27; phrases exactly as in 10:40!). If James and John are truly willing to be baptized with Jesus' baptism and to drink his cup, they will faithfully complete the way of the cross. Then they might be there in positions of glory as Jesus is enthroned (Geddert, p. 250-51)."
But their ignorance and their humanity were showing in their request. And mine is showing in every second that I go on judging them for their question.
The rest of the disciples got mad too. I don’t know if it was because of the brothers’ stupidity or because they didn’t think of it first. Either way, Jesus calms them.
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them,” he tells 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.”
"Verse 45 not only links his own life of service to the vocation of his disciples as described in verses 43-44,” Ottoni Wilhelm explains, “but this saying is also the first time Mark gives any indication of the purpose of Jesus' death: to give his life as 'a ransom for many.' The term 'ransom' refers to purchasing a slave or prisoner in order to grant him or her freedom and redemption. Jesus' words suggest that humanity is held captive by powers from which we need deliverance and that his death provides the means for our freedom and redemption (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 185-6)."
Through Jesus, we start to turn our eyes toward divine things instead of human things. Through Jesus, we come to a true greatness, beyond sitting idle on a throne.
In the Disney classic, Hercules, the young god goes to visit his father, Zeus. He has been working hard saving people left and right, trying to become what Zeus called a ‘true hero’ so that he can rejoin his family on Olympus.
Zeus tells him he’s “done wonderfully” but that he’s “just not there yet.” He hasn’t proved himself a true hero.
Frustrated, Hercules tells him that he’s “beaten every single monster [he’s] come up against. And that he’s “the most famous person in all of Greece.” He’s even an action figure.
But Zeus tells him that “being famous is not the same as being a true hero.”
Hercules asks what more he can do. And Zeus replies simply that “it's something [he has] to discover for [himself].” He tells his son to “look inside [his] heart.”
Yes this is a kids’ cartoon, but this animated father gets it better than the disciples ever seemed to. To be a true hero or to achieve true greatness in the sense that Jesus is talking about here is more than just glory and honor. It’s deeper and it costs something dear. Hercules has to, eventually, be willing to give his life in replace of someone else’s in order to be a true hero. He, the greatest hero among them, must serve those around him.
"Jesus insists that true greatness arises when we offer ourselves in loving service to others, not when we seek privilege, prestige, or our own advancement," Ottoni Wilhelm writes. "...true greatness and real power is not realized through seeking our own advantage but the good of others. There never seems to be a shortage of opportunities for pursuing this kind of greatness (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 186)."
Zeus finally reveals to his son the truth. “For a true hero,” he says, “isn't measured by the size of his strength, but by the strength of his heart.”
And here’s the good news for us mortals. The humans trying to “set our mind on divine things” rather than human things. The cup of suffering we accept in order to follow Jesus and the baptism we take are not all death and destruction. The cost is high, but, as Ottoni Wilhelm concludes, still speaking of Nouwen’s book, “we must sometimes look carefully to discover the joy hidden within [the cup]: 'When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.' Yet the promise of Christ is that his cup is also our cup. As we drink it and savor the sorrow and joy within it, we will taste his gift of freedom and salvation, in this world as in the world to come (Ottoni Wilhelm, p. 187)."
In service, we find the promise of God’s kingdom. In hard work, we find the glory of spending time with each other.
“I’ve been thinking,” Rachel Held Evans writes. “We fight like brothers and sisters because we are. We've all been adopted into God’s family. Maybe we don’t have to change each other’s minds to lighten one another’s load by not assuming motives, by giving each other the benefit of the doubt that we arrived at our beliefs through honest searching.”
I agree with Rachel. Every conviction we hold has a cost. “What mine have cost me,” Held Evans writes, “may be different than what yours have cost you, but the sense of loss is the same. And so is the hope that comes with breaking bread together in spite of our theological and political differences and settling into the sweet certainty that following Jesus doesn’t have to cost this. It doesn’t have to cost our love for one another.”
If we drink the cup, there will be a cost. We will all have to pay it, rich or poor or somewhere in between.
It will be a difficult road. There’s no electronic, E-Z Pass lane. We have to stop and pay the tolls. But we’re on the road together.
When there’s a cost to be paid, it doesn’t fall to the grunts while Jesus and James and John sit on their golden thrones and rule over us.
"In Jesus' final word of instruction to the disciples,” Geddert writes, “before arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus teaches about the true power structures of God's kingdom; service is greatness; to be slave is to be first; he himself will go so far as to give his life for all the rest. Soon these kingdom values will be seen in action. Soon Jesus finishes his journey to the cross (Geddert, p. 251-52).”
But that’s not today. Today we are camped just outside of Jerusalem. Today we sit with the disciples, dreaming of what is to come, worried about the cost we’ll have to pay. But we’re not in it alone. We have each other and we have Jesus. And we have the promise of Jesus that “no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for [his] sake and for the sake of the good news, will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.” Amen.
Bibliography
Believers Church Bible Commentary: Mark by Timothy J. Geddert
Preaching the Gospel of Mark by Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm
The Cost by Rachel Held Evans
Hercules by Disney
Cup-bearer - Wikipedia
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