“James and John Call ‘Shotgun!!!’”
Mark 10:35-45
Did anyone else grow up calling “shotgun” when heading toward the car you were about to ride in?
If you called “shotgun”, you got the privilege to sit in the passenger seat in front, next to the driver.
And the first one to call shotgun got it.
Of course, someone would always say, “You already sat in the front last time,” and sometimes we would wrestle, for the fun of it, as we fought to sit in the front.
In this morning’s Gospel Lesson, James and John are sort of calling “shotgun” in the sense that they are trying to vie for the best seats next to Jesus when He is “glorified.”
The funny and, I suppose, sad thing about all this is that they have no idea what they are asking.
Jesus has just told the disciples, for the third time, what is going to happen in Jerusalem.
“We are going up to Jerusalem,” Jesus tells His disciples beginning in verse 33, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law.
They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him.
Three days later he will rise from the dead.”
But the disciples don’t appear to be listening.
It doesn’t sink in.
It doesn’t even touch the surface.
We are told in verse 35: “Then James and John…came to him.
‘Teacher we want you to do for us whatever we ask.’”
And Jesus patiently responds, “What do you want me to do for you?”
“They replied, ‘Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”
James and John are thinking that Jesus’ glory involves worldly power.
They think He will be politically lifted up.
They expect Him to rule over Israel like a worldly king.
And James and John want in on the power that they assume Jesus wants as well.
“You don’t know what you are asking,’ Jesus said.
‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?’”
“We can,” they replied not understanding a bit of what Jesus is about.
Which goes to prove that you can be a follower of Jesus Christ and still not “get it.”
And the same is true of us, is it not?
We too can be followers of Jesus.
We can walk with Jesus.
We can talk with Jesus.
We can hang out with Jesus’ friends and still, not “get it” about being a servant of others.
We can use the right religious buzz-words, but still not get the basic lesson of life that Jesus was trying to teach James and John and all of us.
“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.”
And what does slave of all mean?
It means all, does it not?
It means we serve everyone; we are to humble ourselves before everyone…
…even the homeless…
…even those who everyone looks down on…
…even those who are being mean to us…
…even to those who hate us and backstab us and try and ruin us.
Wow.
That is what Jesus did.
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
So, Jesus says, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
Jesus is clearly referring to His upcoming crucifixion.
And this is authenticated in Gethsemane when Jesus prays, “Take this cup from me.”
It is the cup of suffering that Jesus is describing to James and John, and the baptism of death.
And its vitally important to understand this and understand the seriousness of this.
It should cause us to stop and think about our Christian calling.
The cup means, in a very real sense, that Jesus is going to experience unimaginable pain and ultimately death.
The baptism means, in a very real way, that Jesus will feel as though He is drowning in sorrow and suffering.
And little do they know that Jesus’ glory is the Cross.
And those who do end up at Jesus’ right and left in glory are a couple of thieves who share His same fate.
We need to be careful what we ask for, do we not?
“Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
Our Gospel Lesson for this morning points out our need to recognize how easy it is to give lip service to an idea, and how difficult it is to live out the actual requirement of discipleship, which is complete submission to God.
Do we ask that our lives “give glory to God,” yet avoid the sacrifice of self for the sake of others?
Can we, will we follow Jesus so closely that we accept His fate as our own?
Can we, will we follow Him in full submission, as servants, as slaves?
Theologian Donald Juel writes, “In the shadow of the cross we get a brief glimpse of a new community in which relations are not governed by power and status but by service and hospitality for those without status—a community in which those who have been ransomed live for others.”
Jesus may not call us to die literal dramatic deaths, but He does call us to live dramatically different lives—dying to the old, sinful self and putting the needs of all others ahead of our own.
I know a young man who became an active Christian in college.
He was going through a turbulent time in his life, and in an emotional Young Life service, he gave his life to Christ.
He said, “I have found what I’ve always been looking for.”
I visited with him a while back.
He now runs a ministry for inner city kids.
He lives in a dangerous, tough part of town, where the kids who come to his ministry live as well.
He has been the victim of violent crimes several times.
I was in awe of his faith and his faithfulness.
“Well, it’s sort of what you sometimes get when you get Jesus,” he said with a smile.
“I thought I ‘found Christ’ when in reality, Christ found me.
I thought He wanted to give me something.
Well, He has given me many good gifts, but mostly what Jesus gave me was a job to do for Him rather than to do what I wanted to do for myself.”
“We want you to do for us whatever we ask,” said James and John to Jesus.
How many of us have said the same thing?
“We want to ride shotgun with you in your glory.
We want to be number one.
We want people to respect us.
We want people to look up to us.
We want to rule with you.
We want to have authority with you over others.”
What is your reaction to James and John’s request?
Is it laughter?
Is it embarrassment?
John Calvin writes that this passage contains a “bright mirror of human vanity,” because, “it shows that…[we] who follow Christ sometimes have a different object in view from what we ought to have.”
Let’s all ask ourselves this question: When we look in the mirror, are we that much different than James and John?
We certainly know better than to make the kind of outlandish, insensitive requests like these narcissistic couple of guys do.
But if we are really honest with ourselves, we might have to admit that we have spent all kinds of time scheming for privileged positions—seeking to be served rather than serve.
Ambition is a good thing.
But when you mix it with vanity you get poison.
And one reason it is poison is because it turns us into monsters who are willing to do just about anything to get our way.
And on our rise to the top or in our trying to rise to the top, a lot of people get stepped on, left out, pushed around, bullied and used and treated like objects rather than human beings who are created in the image of God.
It’s been said that “some people get so caught up in their own agendas that they look at the Trinity for a possible vacancy.”
And that we all have “Zebedee’s sons in our genes.”
It’s part of our nature.
It’s part of our broken condition.
And it’s part of what Jesus came to save us from.
There is beauty, joy, hope and freedom in serving others--in joining with Jesus and forgetting about self.
We are told that when the other disciples heard about what James and John had asked Jesus for they became angry.
And they weren’t angry because they thought James and John had asked for the wrong thing; they were angry because James and John had, in essence, called “shotgun” before they had.
But then Jesus calls them together and tells them about the real nature of leadership in the Kingdom of God and power in the Kingdom of God, explaining to them that it is the exact opposite of what the world values and the way the world works.
“Look guys, you know how it is in the world out there.
Those who have authority love to give orders and tell everybody what to do.
The great ones make their authority felt.”
And we can all think of some people who come to our mind.
Some bad experiences we’ve had with bosses and bullies.
They could be people we work with or even people in the church.
Jesus looks at them and Jesus looks at us: “It cannot be that way with you.”
Jesus calls us to an exact and complete reversal—not a pyramid of hierarchy but really a pyramid that is totally inverted.
When Jesus uses the words “You must become servant to all,” the word in Greek is diakanoi, from which we get the word deacon, which was the person who served at the table—like Jesus did at the Last Supper when He washed the feet of all—including Judas.
We are to be the alternative to the abusive, abrasive, in your face ways of the world.
And this takes total submission to God.
It takes a lot of Christian maturity on our part.
But it is a life lived in love—in the Kingdom.
It is the only way to live as those who have been ransomed by the life, death and resurrection of the One Who came into this world not to be served, but to serve and save us from our sins.
In light of this passage, let’s pray together the words of Saint Francis of Assissi:
“Oh, Divine Master, grant that we may not seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved, as to love, for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
