Right or Left?

Right or Left?
There are times when I wonder if Jesus wants to just throw his hands up in frustration at the disciples…It just seems that they don’t get it…They spend all this time with Jesus and still ask some crazy questions! Yet, Jesus seems to be pretty patient with them…Oh, he corrects them all right but, he doesn’t tell them to stop asking questions or stop following him…
And we come to another one of those times in our Gospel lesson for this morning…The disciples just don’t seem to get it! Let’s start from the beginning of the story, because it comes from the very first question…James and John walk up to Jesus and it actually isn’t really a question…It’s a statement, no an order to Jesus…James and John say to Jesus, “We want you to do whatever we ask you.” Can you imagine just walking up to Jesus and saying, “Hey Jesus, I want you do whatever I ask you to do.” That takes some guts right there…It’s not asking Jesus to think about or consider it…No, it’s flat out telling Jesus—do whatever I tell you to. Now, to be fair James and John had been following Jesus for some time and had a relationship with Jesus…He was their teacher, their advisor, their friend…It wasn’t just a stranger that they were talking with…Jesus was someone that they knew very well…And Jesus had asked some things of them too…They had to leave everything behind to follow him and Jesus didn’t really ask them either…He told them, Follow me…But really…Going up to Jesus and saying, “Do whatever I ask you to do.” Now, if someone were to come up to me and say, “Do whatever I ask you to do.” I’d have some questions and I’d probably already have some feelings that I’m not going to whatever they say, just because…
Well, Jesus does have a few questions…First; he asks what it is that they want. Good question and good way to handle the situation…Find out what they want first before agreeing to anything…And then the worlds tumble out of their mouth… “Grant us that one of us may lift on your right and one will sit on your left in glory.” Now, this just isn’t asking Jesus to sit next to them at dinner…This is the whole big thing…They’re asking Jesus to give them power. A few weeks ago, in our story, the disciples were arguing about who was greater…And now, James and John are making sure that they’re the greater ones…It almost like a top secret plot…Like James and John have been working on this idea for awhile and now they’ve got the opportune time to ask Jesus to make them the greatest…And it’s probably more, in their minds, just affirming that they’re really the greatest of all the disciples…And really not just the disciples, but all people…Better than the rest of the disciples…Greater than the rest of humanity…Greater than their ancestors…Now that’s pretty big stuff there…James and John want to be greater and more powerful than any of the people who have gone before them…That’s pretty arrogant! Now, looking at some of the good here…James and John have come to recognize Jesus as who he is, the Messiah…They know that he is great and powerful and close to God…But in the midst of that understanding…They still just don’t get it…
So, Jesus tries to help them understand even more…He tells them that they need to drink the cup that he drinks…The idea of the cup was highly symbolic to those in Jesus’ time…Different cups held different meaning. The disciples probably misunderstood Jesus and assumed that the cup he was talking about was a cup of high honor…However, ultimately Jesus was referring to the same cup that he refers to later as he is praying in the garden of Gethsemane…Just before he is arrested. Without hesitation, James & John tell Jesus that they can drink from the cup. You know, these disciples here…First they tell Jesus that he should do whatever they ask, they put themselves above everyone else, and think that they get a cup of honor!
Now, it’s easy to point fingers at the disciples and say how they’re such awful people…I mean, they’re not here to defend themselves for one…And we don’t have their interpretation of the story—I’m sure they have good reasons in their minds for some of the silly things that we can see them do and say…It’s easy to point fingers and say, “Oh you silly disciples!”
But it’s not so easy to point fingers at ourselves and see the times when we act just like them…It happens, doesn’t it? Those times when we demand things of Jesus…Those times when we place ourselves above others…Those times when we crave power that doesn’t and shouldn’t belong to us…Those times when someone could look at us, just as the disciples and say, “Oh, they just don’t get it do they?”
And yet, that doesn’t stop Jesus from loving us any less…As we see in our letter from Hebrews this morning, Jesus cries out in prayer and supplications even at the time of his death…Supplications are prayers offered on behalf of someone else…So, when you pray for someone else, you are offering a supplication for them…And Jesus offers supplications for all, even when it would be easy to say that they just “don’t get it.”
Jesus continues in his discussion and as he is talking the other disciples are angry with James and John…Maybe they’re angry because they weren’t included in the conversations leading up to this…Maybe they’re angry because they wish that they’d thought about asking Jesus first…Maybe they think that James and John have just lost it! Whatever the reason, the other disciples are angry with James and John…
So, Jesus continues his conversation with the disciples and teaches them yet again, “Whoever wants to be great, must first be a servant of all.” This isn’t the first time that Jesus said something like this…Actually in the Gospel lessons that we have read over the last few weeks, we have heard Jesus say something like this each time…The first will be last, the last will be first…These kinds of things that the disciples had been hearing Jesus teach for several weeks, well for his whole teaching! And yet, it didn’t sink in completely because they were asking for great power…They were asking for great power without having to do anything for it…
There’s a quote that I heard and I’m not sure who the original author was, but it was a quote that struck me and was a reminder of this passage… The quote goes, “Sometimes in order to be a leader, you must first be a servant.” That’s what Jesus is saying here… “Whoever wants to be great must first be servant to all.” My dad works as a warehouse manager. He’s been in his current position for about 4 years and it’s much different than the job he previously worked in for 20 years…Where he was a warehouse manager before, while he had paperwork responsibilities, he was also able to take time and work with those he was supervising…He loaded trucks right alongside them…He lifted and carried boxes…He gained their respect…In his new job, those he supervises are in a union and he’s not able to lift and carry any boxes or load the truck…It would be very easy for him to get lost in the paperwork, but he maintained that if he was to be a successful supervisor, he needed to know those he was supervising…So, he joined them at lunch…He made conversation…He got to know who they were…Sure, he could have been a great supervisor without doing all those things, but by understanding those he works with, he was able to fight for certain things with the company and make sure that those employees were taken care of.
“Whoever wants to be great must first be servant to all.” It seems like a contradiction…But Jesus was always flipping things that were understood for the disciples…He was always turning their world around…He was always trying to help them understand what grace really is! It doesn’t make sense sometimes…Yet, it is there, always present for all people…
Yes, sometimes Jesus’ words seem mysterious and coded to us, but they really aren’t…They also seem like contradictions…But there’s a different word…That word is paradox…Now, a paradox is different than a contradiction…Because a contradiction means that there are two ideas that just can’t be held together—complete opposites. But a paradox…A paradox is when two ideas seem like they can’t be held together, but they are…Like when Jesus says that “Whoever wants to be great must first be a servant.” It means that you can be great and be a servant…Not only can you…But in Jesus’ words, you must…It’s holding two seemingly opposites together and it makes sense…
Maybe it doesn’t always make sense to us…But, it makes sense to God…Just like God’s grace doesn’t always make sense to us…How can God love everybody? How can God love the things that are wrong? Well…That’s God’s paradox…God can do it, well because God is God! Jesus lead by example that whoever wants to be great must first be a servant to all…Jesus was great and powerful…Jesus was God! Yet, Jesus walked the earth…Jesus ate with sinners…Jesus touched those that were unclean…Jesus became a servant of all…And Jesus was great…God walked the earth…God ate with sinners…God touched those that were unclean…God became a servant of all…And God is great!