Pentecost 22 Year B

Isaiah 53: 4-12; Hebrews 5: 1-10; Mark 10: 35-45

What is your reaction to James and John when they come to Jesus with their rather surprising request? Are you cheering them on from the sidelines admiring their audacity or are you shocked that they even allowed themselves to think in this way

Let’s imagine a possible back story to this episode for a moment. They had clearly conferred and agreed what they were going to ask and how to go about it. One of them must have gone to the other and raised the question. He must have had an argument prepared to convince his brother that this was a good course of action. One way or another, they agreed to support one another and to risk asking, presumably because they believed that the potential reward was worth it. But they know it’s not straightforward. They don’t even begin with a direct question but with a rather opaque statement – we want you to do whatever we ask of you. I assume that was their agreed starting place as they knew that their request might not go down too well. And it certainly didn’t go down well with the other disciples who, we are told, were angry with them. Were they angry just because it was an outrageous thing to ask, or were they perhaps angry that they hadn’t thought of it first? They left the brothers in no doubt that their plotting hadn’t made them popular.

Jesus is quick to tell James and John that they don’t know what they’re asking. He doesn’t tell them that they’re being outrageous or inappropriate or foolish. He comes at it from a different angle and tells them that they don’t understand the possible outcome of the question they have devised, that they’re not actually asking the right question.

I think that we often don’t really know what the right question would be, don’t understand our own ambition. We don’t really think through what it is we want, or think we want, and what the consequences of achieving that might be. We don’t always take the time to discern what it is we might ask for, or whether we would still want it if it was offered to us.

I want to suggest that what James and John were really interested in was being seen; feeling that they were somebody rather than nobody. My suggestion is that they were wondering how they would know that their lives had been noticed, whether they had made a mark as they journeyed through the world. They were looking for affirmation that they were just a little bit special.

We live in a society where being seen, being known, imagining that you’re somebody, has become hugely important. A recent piece of research with primary school children asked what they wanted to be when they are adults. You may not be surprised to hear that there weren’t too many wanting to be firefighters or train drivers, which would have been the stock answers at times in the past. A significant percentage just wanted to be famous.

Just this week, we’ve seen the tragic consequences of being famous. Yet another young pop star killed by the substances that they thought were helping them to cope. Another young life cut short as a direct result of the fame, the being seen that the person had craved.
So what is it about being seen that appeals? I guess it’s something about making one’s life worth something, feeling that you’ve left some kind of mark in the sands of time. The trouble is, of course, that being seen isn’t the same thing as making a difference. To make a difference, to do something that makes change for someone or some thing or some place, usually involves getting ourselves out of the way. Getting our need for attention out of the way. Getting our ego out of the way. And discovering what it really means to serve. To serve God and God’s creation.

Now none of this is new of course. Human beings have been struggling to do what they should rather than what they desire since the beginning of time. The hymn writer and theologian, Isaac Watts, clearly understood the challenge. There’s a reason that this morning’s Gradual hymn is so well loved and so often sung – it speaks directly to our lived experience. In the early 1700s Watts wrote: all the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them…. Watts is taking ownership of his own temptation to be caught into vanity projects, to do that which he chooses because it makes him feel good. Letting that go is his sacrifice.
We don’t talk much about sacrifice, it’s really not a fashionable concept. But it’s an ideal that speaks into that situation we’re exploring – the challenge to put aside our need to be seen as a means to validation, our need to be somebody, not just another nobody. Sacrifice, if it means setting aside what we think we want, opens up the possibility that we might find our way into a healthier relationship with God, a relationship that offers the promise of lasting and unconditional validation. A relationship that helps us to disentangle want from need.

Isaac Watts hymn sees all of this through the lens of the cross. God’s overwhelming, incomprehensible love for us expressed in an act of self-sacrifice, an act that is beyond our comprehension.

But, of course the Christian narrative doesn’t end with that moment on the cross, God’s lasting gift is of the resurrected Christ, the one who lives and moves among us here and now. The one whom we encounter in the people we meet and the situations we find ourselves in. The one who showed us what it might mean to get ourselves out of the way and to see rather than be seen.

Making a difference shouldn’t ever be about us; it should be about being the difference, becoming the difference. Today’s Gospel ends with Jesus’ response to James and John – the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve. If we can find ways to serve, if we can find ways to give our lives, to make the sacrifice, whatever that looks like, to be one of the many nobodies upon whom God’s people depend; if we can even imagine taking a step on that path, then we may be inching towards becoming the somebody God longs for us to be. Becoming those who serve because it’s the right thing to do, rather than those who serve because it’s the right thing to be seen to do.

Our desire to be somebody has value when we long to be God’s somebody. Our desire to make a difference becomes an act of sacrifice when we manage to ignore how it makes us feel and find our way into freely and unconditionally giving, giving with that love that is so amazing, so divine we have no choice but to give our all.