A few days after I began as a new associate at a law firm here in Charlotte, the office manager came by with some artwork and told me I could pick one or two pieces for the walls of my office.  I chose a watercolor of the neighborhood known as Rainbow Row in Charleston, South Carolina.  It was painted by a well-known Charleston artist, and I loved the bright colors.  A few weeks later, a senior associate was in my office and noticed that this picture was an original painting, not a copy.  “Why did they give you this?” she asked.  “This is an original painting.  Only partners are supposed to get those.  Associates are supposed to get only prints.”

That was my first experience with the many ways status is measured in corporate America.  The exact size of your office, its distance from a high-level executive (whose offices tend to have corner views), the artwork and plants that the firm does (or does not) provide to you — these all are indicators of where you rank.  Over my 5 years at that particular law firm, I occupied three different offices.  My final one was about the size of the firm’s managing partner and had a grand view.  The day I announced I was moving to another firm, I had a visit from the woman who had first commented on that watercolor painting of Rainbow Row.  “If they had given me this big office,” she said, “I sure wouldn’t leave.”

This attention to pecking order is not unique to law firms or for-profit corporations.  The humorist Dave Barry has written,

I'm not comfortable in Washington.  Don’t get me wrong:  Washington is a fine city, offering statues, buildings, and plenty of culture in the form of Thai restaurants.  But when I’m in Washington, I always feel as though I’m the only person there who never ran for Student Council.  I started feeling this way back in 1967, when, as a college student, I got a job in Washington as a summer intern at Congressional Quarterly, a magazine that, as the name suggests, came out weekly.  I was totally unprepared for the Washington environment. . . . [W]hen I got to Washington I discovered that even among young people, being a good guy was not the key thing:  The key thing was your position on the great Washington totem pole of status.  Way up at the top of this pole is the President; way down at the bottom, below mildew, is the public.  In between is an extremely complex hierarchy of government officials, journalists, lobbyists, lawyers, and other power players, holding thousands of minutely graduated status rankings differentiated by extremely subtle nuances that only Washingtonians are capable of grasping.  For example, Washingtonians know whether a person whose title is “Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary” is more or less important than a person whose title is “Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary,” or “Principal Deputy to Deputy Assistant Secretary,” or “Deputy to the Deputy Secretary,” or “Principal Assistant Deputy Undersecretary,” or “Chief of Staff to the Assistant Assistant Secretary.”  (All of these are real federal job titles.)  Everybody in Washington always seems to know exactly how much status everybody else has.[i]

We humans have been concerned with status ever since the serpent told Eve that if she ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil she would “be like God.”[ii]  So, we really should not be surprised to find that even those within the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples had their own status concerns.  We hear about that in our Second Lesson for today.  This passage comes shortly after the one we examined this past Sunday, in which Jesus told his disciples that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child” — as one who is completely dependent upon the good grace of God — “will never enter it.”  That passage ended with Jesus telling his disciples that in the kingdom of God “any who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”  Upon saying that, Jesus took his disciples back on the road, heading toward Jerusalem.

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, 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.”

For a time I was in a gospel singing group, and one of the songs we most enjoyed performing had us asking,

Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown
When at evening the sun goes down?
When I wake with the blessed in the mansions of rest
Will there be any stars in my crown?

That is pretty much what James and John are asking Jesus — whether they are going to have crowns with stars when Jesus comes into glory.  This past week we heard Peter tell Jesus, “Look, we have left everything and followed you,” and now he and the others want to know what position they will occupy, what status they will have when the kingdom of God has arrived.  In other words, they want to know what their payoff is going to be for all that they have given up, for all that they have been through and have done as they have followed Jesus from village to town.  Before we examine how Jesus responded to that concern, we need to have in mind the context in which this conversation took place:  the group is “on the road, going up to Jerusalem.”

“[G]oing up to Jerusalem” means going to the headquarters of the religious and political leaders who want to see Jesus dead.  And, as Jesus strides toward Jerusalem, with his disciples in his wake, the writer of Mark tells us, the disciples were afraid, but Jesus did not ease their fears.  Instead, he told them, “[W]e are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”[iii]  That is where today’s passage begins:  right after Jesus has told his disciples the cruel fate that awaits him.  And the disciples’ only response is to say, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”  Unbelievable!  But, Jesus does not bat an eyelash.  He just says, “What is it you want me to do for you?”

There are 3 times within the gospel of Mark that Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to suffer and be killed, and that after 3 days will rise again.  The first time Jesus gave them this astounding news, Peter pulled Jesus aside and told him to stop talking such nonsense.[iv]  The second time, Mark tells us, the disciples “did not understand what [Jesus] was saying and were afraid to ask him.”  This is now the third and final time that Jesus has told his disciples the future that awaits him, and all three times, Jesus has explained to them that most of the things they spend their energy worrying about count for nothing in the kingdom of God.  All three times, Jesus has explained to them that the kingdom of God is a topsy-turvy world, where down is up and up is down — when looked at from a human point of view.  Three times he has explained that the person who wants to be first in the Kingdom of God must be last of all and servant of all.  On two of those occasions, he has held out to them a child — someone who has no power or no status, someone whose only true possessions are trust and need and a willingness to take whatever is given — as an example of what this means. 

Clearly, the disciples are still wanting something else — something other than the kingdom of God that Jesus is holding out before them.  Amazingly, Jesus’ patience does not wear out.  When James and John reveal that the only thing on their minds is what chairs they will occupy after Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus does not upbraid them for being so presumptuous, he just spells out for them — and for us — what it means to take a place alongside Jesus the Christ.  It means no less than drinking the cup that he came to drink and being baptized with the baptism that he, himself, received.

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.

There, as in everything he had to say, Jesus declared that if you and I want to follow him, we will have to let go of all our previous ideas of how things work and what things matter.  When we look at an earthly ruler, we find at his right hand and left those who are privileged, powerful, protected.  When we look to the right and left hand of Jesus, we find two criminals, and all three of them are hanging on the same kind of cross.

“Are you able,” Jesus said, “to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  When you and I celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, how on the night of his betrayal Jesus took the cup and said, “This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for everyone.”  We also pledge ourselves to live in the new covenant, to be part of the new union between God and his people and to make that union known to the world. 

When you and I celebrate the sacrament of baptism, we declare that in baptism God puts his sign on us to show that we belong to him.  We are invited to take courage in knowing that God gives us the Holy Spirit as a guarantee that, sharing in Christ’s reconciling work, we will also share his victory; that, dying with Christ to sin, we will be raised with him to new life.  And we are asked to make a promise.  We are asked to promise that we will to tell the good news of the gospel, not merely to one child or the children already within these walls, but to all of the children who are within our reach.  To help not only children know what Christ commands, but to let the world know.  The promise that, by the fellowship we have to share, we will strengthen all of humanity’s family ties with the household of God.  Two thousand years ago, Jesus asked his disciples if they were able to fulfill all of these promises.  Whether they were able to live in the new covenant, whether they were prepared to pour themselves out for all of God’s children, whether they would diligently work to strengthen all of humanity’s family ties with the household of God.

How human it was for the disciples to wonder what Jesus’ death and resurrection would mean for them.  Isn’t that our response, as well?  Don’t we all respond to Jesus’ death and resurrection with a concern for what it will mean for us?  And, what are you and I supposed to want?  What are you and I supposed to hope for, to reach for, in our life as children of God?  Not long before his death, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a sermon about this passage, in which he said that, “there is deep down within all of us an instinct.  It’s a kind of drum major instinct — a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first.  And it is something that runs the whole gamut of life.”[v]  Dr. King pointed out that when James and John asked Jesus if they could sit at his side in glory, Jesus did not reproach them for reaching too high, or chide them for wanting too much.  Instead, Dr. King said,

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.  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.  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.” [vi]

Friends, you and I have been made in the image of God.  We been brought together as members of the Body of Christ.  And, we have been filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.  What are you and I supposed to want?  What are you and I supposed to hope for, to reach for, in our life as children of God?  We are supposed to want and hope and reach for greatness, and to know that the only way to become great is to become servants of Christ and therefore servants to all.  Amen.

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