What Is It That You Want?
Mark 10:35-45
October 18, 2009
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."
As we tune in to TVJesus this week the Markan chronicles continue right along. Once again, the disciples come asking Jesus a question. Last time they asked him about who was the greatest. Even though he told them then that the first would be last and so on, they press the question. Even after the rich young man has come asking after eternal life, they press the question. Even after Jesus has said, “sell what you own, give the money to the poor, come and follow me,” they press the question.
“What is it that you want?” Jesus asks.
And the disciples press the question – the wrong question.
Why? Why are they so remarkably, almost comically, insistent on the wrong questions?
Well, perhaps it is because they are so remarkably like us.
The 2,000-year staying power of the gospels rests largely on these remarkably human portraits of the disciples, and the even more remarkable portrait of the even more remarkably human Jesus.
Let’s unpack that just a bit.
There are dozens upon dozens of ancient and largely forgotten accounts of gods walking upon the earth with super-powers of healing and miracle-making and mythic victories. I’d guess that there are countless such stories completely lost to the mist of time, and we know that there are dozens of them that live on in collections of ancient myths that have long since lost their power to capture our imaginations in ways that authentically inform our lives.
But the gospel accounts live on in incredibly powerful ways because they continue to reveal authentic truths about the human condition even though the stories are bound to a culture long gone.
Crucially for our time, these stories – and particularly this series of events in the center of Mark – uncover and lay bare the human tendency to confine the divine to neat, easily understandable and controllable boxes. The disciples, just like us, create God boxes.
When Jesus asks, “what is it that you want?” the disciples answer, in effect, we want to know God on our terms. We want a God who will reinscribe the same human hierarchies and structures that we understand, and, moreover, we want a God who will place us on the top rung of those structures. We want a God who understands power just like we do, and we want a God who will give us the lion’s share of that power – “who will be first?” We want a God who understands affluence just as we do, and we want a God who will bless our affluence. We want a God who understands influence just as we do, and we want a God who will put us in positions of power – seat us at the right hand of the throne of power.
We want God to fit neatly into our own God boxes.
Almost 50 years ago, J.B. Philips, in his classic Your God is Too Small, wrote – in the style of his time – “The man who is outside all organized Christianity may have, and often does have, a certain reverence for God, and a certain genuine respect for Jesus Christ (though he has probably rarely considered Him and His claims with his adult mind). But what sticks in his throat about the Christianity of the Churches is not merely their differences in denomination, but the spirit of "churchiness" which seems to pervade them all. They seem to him to have captured and tamed and trained to their own liking Something that is really far too big ever to be forced into little man-made boxes with neat labels upon them. He may never think of putting it into words, but this is what he thinks and feels.
"If," the Churches appear to be saying to him, "you will jump through our particular hoop or sign on our particular dotted line, then we will introduce you to God. But if not, then there's no God for you."
Whether in “churchy” terms or not-so-churchy terms, we still tend to construct God boxes. Here are some of the ones lying around my house. Perhaps you have built similar ones.
I find that God boxes are a bit like Russian dolls. Inside of every God box is another, then another, then another … or, perhaps it goes in the other direction.
You get to a really small box – something that might hold a precious jewel. Surely, the love of God is precious – more precious than the finest diamond. Jesus suggested that the kingdom of God – the great economy – is like a mustard seed, so it would surely fit inside this small case.
Of course, the key to the mustard seed parable is that the seed grows into an unruly bush that, like kudzu, tends to take over everything it touches. So, clearly, the small box will not do.
This next box, which reads “Sprint” on its cover – might work. After all, it was originally used to package a cell phone – a small device used to share news broadly. On the other hand, for better and for worse, these things only work on certain networks. The boxes come with brands. If this is a God box, it might come labeled “Protestant” or “Catholic” or “Hindu” or “Muslim.” Jesus has just told his followers that anyone who is not against us if for us. I think he was telling them to beware of branding and of networks that limit who gets to call upon God. If God was to be in a cell-phone box it would have to be an open-source system. So, again, this box is too small.
This next box has a couple of items in it: a clock and a Book of Confessions.
A lot of folks imagine God as the great clock-maker, who built the mechanism of creation, wound it up and set it running, and has since, like Elvis, left the building. This is the god whom the so-called “new atheists” – the Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens of the pseudo-intellectual world – claim to have killed, once again. I’m not sure why they go to such trouble to kill a god who has been dead for centuries, and who was never the God made known in the life of Christ. For the God to whom Jesus relates so intimately as to call him “daddy, poppa, abba,” was not a clock-maker any more than any parent is a “baby maker” setting the new creation on its own at birth.
In the same way, the God of Jesus cannot be reduced – as the church has so often tried – to a set of words or propositional statements or arguments too easily dismissed by the likes of Dawkins or Hitchens. We have created creeds and confessions and used them as a fence around God to be entered only through the gates of orthodoxy guarded by a priesthood of professional clergy and theologians who know the insider language of God not because God speaks that language but because the clergy and theologians invented it.
A box of clocks and confessions is too small for God.
This next box is incredibly attractive and has much to offer. Indeed, each of our boxes has its attractive attributes – that’s why they survive so long and why each of us reinvents them in our own ways. This red one is a music box – or, more precisely, a flute case.
The church fathers understood the central role of music in human experience of the divine. That’s why they placed the psalms at the center of the canon. “When in our music God is glorified … and adoration leaves no room for pride … it is as though the whole creation cried: Alleluia!”
That is as true as any hymn can be, but, of course, not even our music is a big enough box. Look around – the windows cannot sing, but they clearly express truths about God. Beyond them, it is, sometimes, as though the whole creation sings, but not in a music that we can contain and reproduce even with the incredible musical gifts that so many faithful people have been given through the ages. Even the music box is too small for God.
See, the problem with all of our boxes is that we just don’t have good enough lids.
God gets out.
As J.B. Philips suggested a half century ago, perhaps the biggest God boxes of them all is the church itself.
How many of us – despite knowing much better intellectually – live as if God is contained in this space? We come here to get in touch with God, and thus surrender the rest of our lives to something less than God or to other false gods of the culture – those gods to whom the disciples looked in vain as they argued over who was to be the first, and who was to get the best seat, and who was to have the most power and influence.
When we confine God to this space – this beautiful, peaceful, spirit-filled space – we go out and look for the gods of power and influence and affluence out in the rest of our lives, and we forget that we are also bearers of the divine in the world. We put God in a gilded box and try to clamp down the lid.
We are like the Israelites as they were carried into exile. They believed that God was confined to the temple in Jerusalem, and they had to learn that no temple was enough to contain the God who laid the foundation of the earth, who determined its measurements, who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy.
The God made known in Jesus Christ will not be confined to any of the boxes we construct. That God calls us to lives of discipleship, not merely an hour of worship and reflection. That God calls us to sacramental lives, not merely a moment of bread and cup in a quiet sanctuary. That God calls us to lives of service, not merely to weekly worship services.
That God is calling. What will you say in response?
Amen.
October 18, 2009
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."
As we tune in to TVJesus this week the Markan chronicles continue right along. Once again, the disciples come asking Jesus a question. Last time they asked him about who was the greatest. Even though he told them then that the first would be last and so on, they press the question. Even after the rich young man has come asking after eternal life, they press the question. Even after Jesus has said, “sell what you own, give the money to the poor, come and follow me,” they press the question.
“What is it that you want?” Jesus asks.
And the disciples press the question – the wrong question.
Why? Why are they so remarkably, almost comically, insistent on the wrong questions?
Well, perhaps it is because they are so remarkably like us.
The 2,000-year staying power of the gospels rests largely on these remarkably human portraits of the disciples, and the even more remarkable portrait of the even more remarkably human Jesus.
Let’s unpack that just a bit.
There are dozens upon dozens of ancient and largely forgotten accounts of gods walking upon the earth with super-powers of healing and miracle-making and mythic victories. I’d guess that there are countless such stories completely lost to the mist of time, and we know that there are dozens of them that live on in collections of ancient myths that have long since lost their power to capture our imaginations in ways that authentically inform our lives.
But the gospel accounts live on in incredibly powerful ways because they continue to reveal authentic truths about the human condition even though the stories are bound to a culture long gone.
Crucially for our time, these stories – and particularly this series of events in the center of Mark – uncover and lay bare the human tendency to confine the divine to neat, easily understandable and controllable boxes. The disciples, just like us, create God boxes.
When Jesus asks, “what is it that you want?” the disciples answer, in effect, we want to know God on our terms. We want a God who will reinscribe the same human hierarchies and structures that we understand, and, moreover, we want a God who will place us on the top rung of those structures. We want a God who understands power just like we do, and we want a God who will give us the lion’s share of that power – “who will be first?” We want a God who understands affluence just as we do, and we want a God who will bless our affluence. We want a God who understands influence just as we do, and we want a God who will put us in positions of power – seat us at the right hand of the throne of power.
We want God to fit neatly into our own God boxes.
Almost 50 years ago, J.B. Philips, in his classic Your God is Too Small, wrote – in the style of his time – “The man who is outside all organized Christianity may have, and often does have, a certain reverence for God, and a certain genuine respect for Jesus Christ (though he has probably rarely considered Him and His claims with his adult mind). But what sticks in his throat about the Christianity of the Churches is not merely their differences in denomination, but the spirit of "churchiness" which seems to pervade them all. They seem to him to have captured and tamed and trained to their own liking Something that is really far too big ever to be forced into little man-made boxes with neat labels upon them. He may never think of putting it into words, but this is what he thinks and feels.
"If," the Churches appear to be saying to him, "you will jump through our particular hoop or sign on our particular dotted line, then we will introduce you to God. But if not, then there's no God for you."
Whether in “churchy” terms or not-so-churchy terms, we still tend to construct God boxes. Here are some of the ones lying around my house. Perhaps you have built similar ones.
I find that God boxes are a bit like Russian dolls. Inside of every God box is another, then another, then another … or, perhaps it goes in the other direction.
You get to a really small box – something that might hold a precious jewel. Surely, the love of God is precious – more precious than the finest diamond. Jesus suggested that the kingdom of God – the great economy – is like a mustard seed, so it would surely fit inside this small case.
Of course, the key to the mustard seed parable is that the seed grows into an unruly bush that, like kudzu, tends to take over everything it touches. So, clearly, the small box will not do.
This next box, which reads “Sprint” on its cover – might work. After all, it was originally used to package a cell phone – a small device used to share news broadly. On the other hand, for better and for worse, these things only work on certain networks. The boxes come with brands. If this is a God box, it might come labeled “Protestant” or “Catholic” or “Hindu” or “Muslim.” Jesus has just told his followers that anyone who is not against us if for us. I think he was telling them to beware of branding and of networks that limit who gets to call upon God. If God was to be in a cell-phone box it would have to be an open-source system. So, again, this box is too small.
This next box has a couple of items in it: a clock and a Book of Confessions.
A lot of folks imagine God as the great clock-maker, who built the mechanism of creation, wound it up and set it running, and has since, like Elvis, left the building. This is the god whom the so-called “new atheists” – the Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens of the pseudo-intellectual world – claim to have killed, once again. I’m not sure why they go to such trouble to kill a god who has been dead for centuries, and who was never the God made known in the life of Christ. For the God to whom Jesus relates so intimately as to call him “daddy, poppa, abba,” was not a clock-maker any more than any parent is a “baby maker” setting the new creation on its own at birth.
In the same way, the God of Jesus cannot be reduced – as the church has so often tried – to a set of words or propositional statements or arguments too easily dismissed by the likes of Dawkins or Hitchens. We have created creeds and confessions and used them as a fence around God to be entered only through the gates of orthodoxy guarded by a priesthood of professional clergy and theologians who know the insider language of God not because God speaks that language but because the clergy and theologians invented it.
A box of clocks and confessions is too small for God.
This next box is incredibly attractive and has much to offer. Indeed, each of our boxes has its attractive attributes – that’s why they survive so long and why each of us reinvents them in our own ways. This red one is a music box – or, more precisely, a flute case.
The church fathers understood the central role of music in human experience of the divine. That’s why they placed the psalms at the center of the canon. “When in our music God is glorified … and adoration leaves no room for pride … it is as though the whole creation cried: Alleluia!”
That is as true as any hymn can be, but, of course, not even our music is a big enough box. Look around – the windows cannot sing, but they clearly express truths about God. Beyond them, it is, sometimes, as though the whole creation sings, but not in a music that we can contain and reproduce even with the incredible musical gifts that so many faithful people have been given through the ages. Even the music box is too small for God.
See, the problem with all of our boxes is that we just don’t have good enough lids.
God gets out.
As J.B. Philips suggested a half century ago, perhaps the biggest God boxes of them all is the church itself.
How many of us – despite knowing much better intellectually – live as if God is contained in this space? We come here to get in touch with God, and thus surrender the rest of our lives to something less than God or to other false gods of the culture – those gods to whom the disciples looked in vain as they argued over who was to be the first, and who was to get the best seat, and who was to have the most power and influence.
When we confine God to this space – this beautiful, peaceful, spirit-filled space – we go out and look for the gods of power and influence and affluence out in the rest of our lives, and we forget that we are also bearers of the divine in the world. We put God in a gilded box and try to clamp down the lid.
We are like the Israelites as they were carried into exile. They believed that God was confined to the temple in Jerusalem, and they had to learn that no temple was enough to contain the God who laid the foundation of the earth, who determined its measurements, who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy.
The God made known in Jesus Christ will not be confined to any of the boxes we construct. That God calls us to lives of discipleship, not merely an hour of worship and reflection. That God calls us to sacramental lives, not merely a moment of bread and cup in a quiet sanctuary. That God calls us to lives of service, not merely to weekly worship services.
That God is calling. What will you say in response?
Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
1:38 PM
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