Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity 2024

James explores the upside-down kingdom of Jesus — where greatness is measured in service and the first shall be last — asking what genuine servant leadership looks like in church, family, and public life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And so may I speak in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I'd like to begin this sermon by recapping some of the things that we've been thinking about since around the start of September in this kind of Mimi series that has taken us through this middle section of Mark's Gospel. It's not your job to be thinking about these things all the time, and you might have missed a few Sundays. So I thought it might be helpful to just start with a quick recap of where we've got to. You can imagine the Gospel of Mark in three acts, you know, like they separate a Shakespeare play into three acts. It's a very similar idea, but the seams aren't quite as obvious in the Gospel. So let me uh just highlight them for us now. In the first act of Mark's Gospel, which is chapters one to eight, the key question that's being asked by the Gospel and by the characters in the Gospel is who is Jesus? And all of that section takes place in Galilee. The central act in uh Mark's Gospel is on the way to Jerusalem. It's it's traveling, they're always moving through this middle section, and they're traveling towards Jerusalem. And at the start of this act, the answer that was asked, the question that was asked in Act 1 gets answered by the Apostle Peter. He says, Jesus, you are the Messiah, the Son of God. And that's the hinge point into the second act of the gospel. So now we know who Jesus is. We've answered the first question. The second question for the second act is, what kind of Messiah is Jesus? We know he's the Messiah, but what kind of Messiah is he? And then the third act starts in chapters 11 and goes through to the end of the book, and it starts with this phrase: Then they arrived at Jerusalem. No more traveling. We've now reached our final destination in Jerusalem. And the question here is: how does Jesus become king? That's the question for the third act in Mark's gospel. In Galilee, who is Jesus? Traveling towards Jerusalem, what kind of Messiah is Jesus? And then once you enter Jerusalem in that final act, right, okay, we know who Jesus is. We know what kind of Messiah is. How does he do it? What does he do? And what happens to him. We've been watching different people trying to work out who is Jesus. What kind of Messiah is Jesus? And on three occasions, Jesus makes it very clear what kind of Messiah He is. He answers the question three times. And his disciples and the crowd and the Pharisees, they don't listen to him, they don't hear what he has to say, they can't really believe the sort of Messiah that he is describing himself to be. And so they ask these strange questions around the edges. But the third occasion, when Jesus tells us explicitly who he is, happens just before our gospel reading today. So I want us to read it, to remind ourselves of who Jesus is, and then I think it's going to shed a ton of light on our gospel reading. So these are the two, three verses before our gospel reading today. They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what will happen to him, saying, See, we 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, and 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. You know that I'm the Messiah, says Jesus. Now let me tell you what kind of Messiah I am. I'm the kind of Messiah who goes to Jerusalem to be killed by the Roman authorities, and the kind of Messiah, I'm the kind of king who is willing to be subject to torture and death. And three days later I will rise again. And then James and John, in our gospel reading this morning, sidle up to Jesus, pull him to one side, and say, Hey Jesus, you know when you're going to be in charge? You know when you've gonna have killed all the Romans and booted them out of Palestine and we'll be free to be our own nation again? You know when that's gonna happen. Do you think we could sit on your left and your right? Do you think we could be your top lieutenants? Do you think you could make us in charge? Because we want the sorts of power that you're about to have. And you know, we've been working so hard. Jesus, didn't we distribute the bread to the 5,000 so beautifully? And did you see how good we were at praying, Jesus? Look, here's our CV. Can't you put us in charge with you? That's the context in which James and John ask their question to sit on his right hand and on his left. I think this gospel reading is supposed to be funny and kind of tragic at the same time. We're supposed to listen to the words of James and John and say, guys, come on, don't you get it? Haven't you heard the words of Jesus? And as we find ourselves laughing at James and John, I hope we also have the self-awareness to laugh at a moment for a moment at ourselves. Because the truth is, you and I would do exactly the same thing. At this point, the disciples had spent their entire lives living under occupation by a brutal regime. The Roman Empire ruled the known world with the sword, and it was in that day completely inconceivable that there was any other way to destroy this empire, to overthrow this empire, than with the sword, to fight fire with fire. And so, on one level, it's quite understandable, is it not, that the disciples found it so hard to hear what Jesus was saying. This was totally novel teaching about what it meant to be a king. But the tragedy doesn't finish there. Let's keep reading. When the ten, the other ten disciples, heard this, they became angry with James and John. Hold on a second, James and John, who do you think you are? We should be the ones in charge. You were rubbish when it came to distributing the bread to this 5,000. We did it way better than you, Jesus. If you'll want to be at his right hand and left, why can't we be at his right hand and his left? You can imagine the debate and the fracturing, the pushing back and forth, the vying for control and power. So Jesus brings his disciples together. He huddles them on by the side of the road. Jerusalem is just in the distance over the next hill. And he says, Guys, come on. You know how the Gentiles treat one another. You know how the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over one another, the tyrants that they put in power over each other, not so among you. Don't you dare behave like that. Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant. And whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all. So Jesus sets up this binary between tyrannical leadership and servant leadership, between rulers who use domination and those who are willing to serve. And it's very tempting, I think, having looked at this passage, to think, well, that's great, Jesus, but he's not talking about me. I'm not a ruler, I'm not a tyrant. Let me suggest that this passage is not just for prime ministers and bishops, but that each one of us in our own way holds leadership responsibility in the communities that we're a part of. With our family, with our friends, with our parents or with our children and our grandchildren. We all have influence, we all have leadership. This is a question for each one of us this morning. Tyrant or servant? The answer to that question, I'm sure, is very obvious to each one of us because we're not in the position that the disciples were in. 2,000 years has passed since the disciples first answered these questions, and we've lived in a Christian society in the Western world for 2,000 years, and something about Jesus' teaching on what it is to be a leader has seeped into our understanding of what we should do. And so if I asked you, or if I asked anyone in the street, if I walked into the mall right now and gave them this question, if you were put in charge, what would you do? Would you A lead through domination and control, or B lead through manipulation and subterfuge, or C be a servant leader working for the benefit of your colleagues and subordinates? None of us would get that question wrong, surely. We know the answer to the question of servant leadership. And so a couple of problems present themselves. Firstly, I think we are deaf to just how profound Jesus' teaching is here. No one in the history of humanity has suggested that the best way to lead is to die for your people. But the other problem that we have this morning is that after 2,000 years of this teaching seeping into our culture, we all know what the right answer is, and none of us are able to do it. We can all think of far too many examples of poor leadership in our society, where people have resorted to domination and control and coercion and subterfuge. It's embarrassing the amount of leaders in our church. The list is too long, those people who have failed to lead as servants, but instead have used their position for their own advantage. It's too easy to think in the political realm, whether it be parties during lockdown or freebies during the uh election process, too easy to think of politicians who have used their position to their own advantage. And it's the same for teachers in schools and the police, in local officials, to charity workers, nursing staff and hospital execs, but in our own families and in our own lives, in this church and with our friends. Sometimes, uh for some reason, in every sphere of leadership, we find leaders and we recognize in ourselves a tendency towards failure. Why is that? Why is it that we all know that we should be servants and yet none of us are able to be? I suggest that it is because to become a servant, to become the slave of all, leaves you open, leaves you defenseless, leaves you powerless and open-handed, open to being wounded by those around you. That's a tall ask. And no one wants to find themselves in that position. And so we come to the final sentence in our gospel reading today. Jesus says, The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. We know, as a matter of history, what was required of Jesus to fulfill his calling to be the servant of many and to give his life as a ransom to us all. He goes to Jerusalem to become our servants by dying for us, though we are set free from our servitude to sin and death by him paying the ransom for our life with his life. Jesus came not so that you could serve him, but so that he could serve you. This is the sort of deity that we worship. This is the God at the center of Christianity, the God who serves, the God who gives up his life, the God who loves you and cares for you. As I was reflecting on this this week, I found myself thinking, if only, if only I could get that into my thick skull, if only I could get that into my hardened heart, then maybe I would find the courage to be vulnerable, to serve and not to be a tyrant, to be a servant of all, open and vulnerable to all that that entails. If I know that God serves me, if I know deep in my hard heart, deep in my thick skull, then maybe I'll be able to serve and lead like Jesus does. On him.