“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 [I] will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law.
They will condemn [Me] to death and will hand [Me] over to the Gentiles, who will mock [Me] and spit on [Me], flog [Me] and kill [Me].
Three days later [I] will rise from the dead.”
But the disciples appear to have missed everything.
And if we are honest with ourselves, don’t we all?
It doesn’t sink in.
We don’t put it into practice.
We forget and jostle for first place!
A decade or so ago a famous actress received an award—and I can’t remember her name—but in her acceptance speech she told the audience, “I want you to know that Jesus had absolutely nothing to do with my winning this award!”
This made some Christians livid!!!
One Church even took out a full-page add in the New York Times for which they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars—condemning the actresses’ words.
Is that humility?
Is that Christ-like?
Often, I hear Christ-followers complain that their rights are being trampled on by non-believers—or they demand their rights, sometimes in violent scenarios or in courtrooms.
Since when did Christians have rights?
And when did Jesus instruct us to “spank the world” because it doesn’t believe the way we do.
Since when do guns and a political candidate have anything to do with Christianity???
Jesus said to His disciples, “Your rulers lord it over the people they govern, and they take things by force—
exercising authority over people, but this is not the way it is going to be for you.
“Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.”
It’s hard to have less rights than a slave.
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.
Kind of like a Christian Nationalist.
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 talking about.
The cup Jesus will drink from is His 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 giving up of self for the sake of others?
Some of Jesus’ final words to His disciples, and thus to us who want to follow Him was this: “A new command I give you; Love one another.
As I have love you, so you must love one another.”
Jesus’ kind of love leads to a Cross.
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 Jesus.
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.”
(pause)
“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.”
(pause)
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?
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.
Jesus had ambition—great ambition.
Jesus had the ambition of laying down His life for the salvation of the world.
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 its 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 supposed great ones make their authority felt.”
And we can all think of people who come to our minds as we hear these words.
Perhaps they are bad experiences we’ve had with bosses and bullies.
They could be people we work with or even people we go to school with or went to school with.
They can be politicians, even Presidential candidates.
Jesus says in essence, “You know the way the world works with people pushing to be powerful so they can tell others what to do.
And you know how it’s acceptable for the world to use violence to get what it wants.”
Then Jesus looks at them and Jesus looks at us and says: “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 who was about to betray Him.
We are to be the alternative to the abusive, abrasive, in your face ways of the world.
But it is impossible for us to do this on our own strength or by our own self-discipline.
It takes total submission to God.
It takes a daily and sometimes minute by minute prayer where we echo Jesus in saying, “Not my will, but your will be done.”
And this leads to a life lived in love—in the Kingdom of God right here and right now—on earth—throughout our lives.
We have been saved by the life, death and resurrection of the One Who came into this world not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom.
It’s time to follow in His footsteps.
In light of this passage, let’s pray together the words of Saint Francis of Assisi:
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