29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Part of my contribution to society is not always saying the things that pop into my head. One way I’m trying to make the world a better place (I have a feeling some of you share in this ministry with me). So yes, a public service I provide is to keep my mouth shut. For example, I once heard someone say they were a “news junkie.” What I didn’t say was, “Well you are clearly on something.” I can’t think of many things that are more damaging to the human spirit than a close attention to the news; especially during an election year.
I have certain tendencies to start with. I don’t need to be intentionally reminded of the troubles of the world. I can see the cloud in every silver lining. I don’t need the help of the news media to remind me of the negativity of the world.
It gets to us as human beings; it gets to as a culture; and it gets to us as a church. It erodes our hope and trains our brains to only see only the bad. I’m not saying we should just ignore the troubles around us; we’re not going to make the change in this world our Savior calls us to if we pretend that nothing is wrong. What I am saying is: let’s keep in mind that the world we see around us is not the world we really live in. We live in the world our Savior proclaimed. Let us remember that Kingdom; a kingdom that lives in us; a Kingdom we help to build; a Kingdom that will live on long after this one is gone.
You may know that I am a supporter of the “Me Too” movement. I know some have mixed feelings about it, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for men, particularly men of power, to be held accountable for the ways they treat (and even have-treated) other children of God. And of course, I can be so staunchly supportive of the movement because I know my own personal history. I know I have never done anything that would jeopardize my position as a pastor. I have a relatively skeleton-free closet. I could run for public office and the most questionable thing you’d find about me is the decision to run for public office.
But having said that, I am a man of a certain age who grew up in a different era. This movement causes men like me to take stock of that personal history. I may not have ever done anything that would get me fired, but there may be some things I’m not proud of; there may be some things I regret; I might even owe an apology or two.
I hope someday, when people look back on my life, I will be remembered for the good and not the dumb things I’ve done. In short, I’m glad I’m not one of the twelve disciples. I’m glad I don’t have gospel-writers, telling the Good News of Jesus, while also telling about all of the dumb things the disciples did. They couldn’t have been that dumb all the time, right? But those are the stories that got written down.
To say that what we read today was not their brightest hour is a huge understatement. They are on their way to Jerusalem. Jesus has just explained why he’s going to Jerusalem. He has just told them what is going to happen there. He just indicated what his kingdom looks like: he has just told them that he will give his life over to brutality and death and that he will rise again in three days. And without missing a beat, the Sons of Zebedee jump up and try to claim seats of power. Now, the other disciples are understandably angry, but keep in mind, they’re dumb too. They’re not angry because James and John have done something wrong; they’re angry because they didn’t think of it first!
As bad as all of that is—as clueless as that is to what Jesus has just been saying—it’s actually worse than that. It’s worse because this is not the first time this has happened. Back in chapter eight, Jesus says something similar: he tells the disciples that he must (quote) “undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Then we hear that Peter took him aside and rebuked him. We’re not sure what Peter said to his teacher, but he was clearly trying to talk Jesus out of going to the Cross. To that, Peter gets called Satan. You’d think being called Satan by your teacher would stick with you and teach you a lesson. Nope.
One chapter later, Jesus took a trip with the disciples for the express purpose of teaching them. He tells them again that he will be betrayed, killed, and will rise again. When they get where they were going, Jesus asks them, “Hey guys, what were you arguing about on the way?” And of course, that’s when they were arguing about which one of them was the greatest.
So the story we read this morning isn’t just an example of how the disciples don’t understand Jesus and what he’s doing, it is one in a series of examples of how the disciples don’t understand Jesus and what he’s doing. Are they not listening? Are they amazingly forgetful? Are they dumb? What’s wrong with these people?
Once upon a time, there was a couple off on a road trip. They stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. When they were done with their meal, the woman unfortunately left her glasses on the table. It wasn’t until they were on the road again that she realized what she’d done. As it turned out, they had to travel quite a distance before they could find a place to turn around. Of course the man fussed and complained the entire way back to the restaurant. When they finally got back, as the woman was getting out of the car, the man sighed and said, "While you're in there, you may as well get my hat, too."
We wonder at the cluelessness of the disciples, we may even find them funny, but the truth is: we are just like them. We may not manifest our cluelessness in the same way, but we are certainly clueless. We so quickly forget the Jesus we claim to follow and we so quickly forget what went to Jerusalem to do. We live in fear and confusion. We become divided and isolated. We speak more than we listen. We take more than we give. We insist on being served more than we seek to serve. We so quickly give up hope and we lose sight of joy.
Do you know who else does that? Everyone. These are traits, not of the followers of Jesus, but of the world we live in. These are the traits that are killing us as a culture, and unfortunately they are killing us as a church. The Sons of Zebedee were not any more ambitious than anyone else; the problem was that they were exactly as ambitious as everyone else. The thing they failed to see was that, in the Kingdom of Jesus, ambition is worthless. As are fear, division, isolation, greed, and self-service. If you look around this world and it all seems overwhelming and disheartening, that’s because it is. But I would suggest that you may be looking at the wrong world.
Like Jesus to the twelve, he keeps pointing us—by his work, his words, and his Spirit—to a different world, his Kingdom; but we keep looking at this one. We live in this world, but we are meant to seek and serve his. We are meant to live in the Kingdom of God, not as if it’s a someday place, but as if it is a place that is here and now, built in and through us.
I know that’s hard to do; the disciples show us today that we’ve never been good at it. But that’s why we’ve got one another. Let’s learn to ask one another, “Where are you living today?” And let us learn to answer, “I am living in Kingdom of God.” And then let us remind one another what that Kingdom looks like. Because it looks strikingly different than this one. It is a Kingdom shaped by Jesus himself: a kingdom of self-sacrifice, unconditional love, unity, eternal hope, and eternal life. This is Good News! I want to be a news junkie for that kind of news! How about you?
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