And the common grace of God
Proper 24B | Mark 10:35-45
For several weeks now, we’ve followed Jesus’s turn toward Jerusalem. His return to their land and people, bringing with him disciples and a growing crowd of followers. But something has been off. Not with Jesus, but with the disciples. Something has come between Jesus and them—a kind impenetrable field.
The simple answer seems to be about hubris. The disciples seem to be getting a bit full of themselves. That they themselves are special and their connection with Jesus makes them special.
This specialness isn’t the problem. Neither is their perception of specialness, exactly. It is something more…ephemeral. Like a confusion of order and purpose. As if their sense of specialness leads them to think something, not just about themselves, but about other people.
And that move: hubris leading to condescension: has made their healing powers vanish completely. They can’t heal the boy at the base of the mountain. Then they can’t prevent the person exorcizing demons. Their influence has vanished.
These cascading things, the specialness to hubris to condescension to powerlessness, don’t make the disciples bad. This is not an expression of sin exactly. It is humanness, a block of sorts. It is like they are on the path because they are following Jesus, but can’t see it. As if their vision is distorted. By power. By the way they think things ought to be—which is a reflection of the culture.
Missing Something
Last week, when we heard Jesus tell the rich man that he lacks something and that the thing that he must do to address that lack is to lack wealth—that one must lack security to possess faith—the disciples struggle to see that this is already the path they are on. That they have done what this pious man must yet do: get rid of earthly security and trust in the faith of Christ. They see this as a prescription that is too hard, even as they live it. Even as they follow it.
They are blind to the journey, even as they walk it. Blind to the grace, even as they receive it. Blind to the love, even as they share it. Not because they cannot see, but because the world tells them to see it differently. Their culture, including their religious culture, wants it different. Pursuing wealth, success, power, specialness as superiority. This is the way of empire—to be great, they must make others weak.
The lectionary skips three verses that are integral to this moment.
“They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to 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; 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.’”
— Mark 10: 32-34
As they approach Jerusalem, the disciples are amazed and the followers are afraid. There is so much going on inside—expectations of what is to happen, who they are, what they believe needs to happen there. It is as if the disciples and followers each have half the story—and can’t share it with each other. They should be amazed. And afraid. Because what they know of the world is going to shatter.
Jesus again predicts his death—this time laying out the sequence. That the Temple leaders will arrest him and Rome will torture him, execute him, and then, on the third day, he will be raised from the dead.
This is why James and John ask Jesus to grant their request: to be glorified with him. That they, too, ought to die for the cause.
All Thunder…
The disciples’ perception problem persists through chapter ten, doesn’t it? Because James and John want to join Jesus in this glory-spawning death, like they are living out a fantasy from a war movie, with great lighting and pathos built of patriotism, like the righteous cause will transform the blood-spatter into gold paint, like a martyrdom for freedom. And they, too, perhaps, will be crowned and buried with honor, remembered forever for their sacrifice.
Jesus’s response is so telling—a sort of Oh, don’t worry, you’re gonna die for sure. These people will kill you. But this isn’t your glory or your time. The hubris veil distorts it for them, doesn’t it? The Thunder Brothers want to provide the lightning. But really, it is all bluster and noise.
But the veil also afflicts the other disciples, too.
When they hear James and John jockey for special seats on warhorses next to the general charging into battle, they get all up about it. How dare they! The gall! And they want to bring the brothers down a peg. But Jesus intervenes.
Can we see it? What is happening?
That James and John want to be special, but they can only conceive of it as the culture does—that special means above others. As officers. That to be special, they must receive special places. But those places don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in relationship to everyone else. To be next to their rabbi, not behind him. Not among the people, but in front of them.
And what will the disciples do in response?
They would punish them, condemn them, put them behind the group, push them away from their communal order.
Can we see that this is how the culture orders us? That it doesn’t reflect the way of God, which is to share and equalize what is unjustly unequal? That the mighty shall be brought low because they lord their power over others and exploit them for wealth. That this is why the wealthy have a nearly impossible course to sneak into heaven—because we can’t conceive of wealth without impoverishing our neighbors, we can’t conceive of greatness without condemning our neighbors, and we cannot be special without reducing the specialness of our neighbors. Not because it is impossible, but because this is how the world perceives it. It wants us to think if you win, I must lose. And to “get ahead” we must ensure someone is “left behind”.
The people closest to Jesus, who have heard all of his teachings, and healed so many people through the grace and power of God keep missing this fact. Their perception problem persists because empire wants them to worry about being special—and to define special by putting everyone else below them.
Our perception
I am comforted by the fact that Jesus doesn’t give up on the disciples, even as they keep screwing up. And I used to hold it against them. I loved to make fun of them. I still do. But it is not to criticize them, but to make sure we understand how human they are—how normal they are. Not that such a thing is insulting, but as an antidote to idolatry, hierarchies, and pedestals.
The poison in our impulse for evaluation is that we lose track of our nature, our work, our commonness. We start to think being a Christian is better or that being a good Christian is a better Christian. Or that there are some who are the wrong kind of Christian and are lesser than we are.
But this even invades our thinking about the work itself. That serving the church requires special talents that none of us happen to possess. That we must be special to lead a Bible Study, to be the treasurer, or preach. That the work requires such special skill that only special people with special skills can do these things. Never mind that a few might be unsuited for the work, the elevation of our most common things makes them impossible to recruit for because nobody is ever truly good enough.
We have a word for this: perfectionism. And it is a vice, my friends, not a virtue. It doesn’t just make us strive for greatness, but makes us never satisfied, never comfortable, never joyful at what we can do.
The antidote is to embrace the common.
Our common prayer helps us see that it is for everyone. To lead and follow. Our specialness is in our participation, in our joyfulness and gratitude, in our contribution to the beauty and holiness of the gathering. Our specialness is not in our gifts and talents but in our offering them and our commitment to serve.
When Jesus says “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,” he isn’t inviting us to a superior position for evaluation, but for inspiration. Because we are all to be servants, all special in our service, our commonness, our commitment to our community, to our special Way of Love. Committed to the love of Christ.
Each of us wants to be special, but there is no glory in God’s Kin-dom by being special at the expense of others, great as others struggle. There is no glory in God’s Kin-dom in building a successful church if our neighbor churches close their doors, the hungry have no food, and so many have no homes. There is no glory if we have wealth and security and others live in fear. There is no glory if we, like the pious man follow all the commandments, but lack faith.
The glory is God’s: revealed in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And we are called to love, not like the world teaches, but like Jesus teaches. Seeking equality by serving each other, loving each other as children of God, inheritors of the Kin-dom, as Jesus in our midst.
We are called to love. Joyously love. Always. And that makes all of us special.