Take My Life—Please!
Dale Lindsay Morgan
Pasadena Presbyterian Church
October 18, 2009
The gospel lesson this morning is from Mark 10:35-45. Listen for the Word of God.
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus 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 you 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 as a ransom for many.”
Along with Peter, James and John made an exclusive threesome, the inner circle of Jesus’ twelve disciples. We might see them as the brave and dashing three musketeers; or on other occasions as the meek and visually-challenged three blind mice, or – except for the fact that it wouldn’t be kosher - we could occasionally see them as the excitable and confused three little pigs. In any case, however you see them, those three men -- Peter, James, and John in the New Testament gospels -- are as inseparable as three men named Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Old Testament stories of Genesis. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were said to have laid the foundation for the future followers of Judaism, so according to the Gospels would Peter, James, and John lay the foundation for future disciples of Christ. How shocking, then, that one of the threesome, Peter, will later in the gospel deny even knowing Jesus, and that the brothers James and John messed up so badly in the story for today, asking to sit on either side of Jesus in his glory! What vanity those brothers displayed! What machismo! Or, more appropriately, what chutzpah! We have to wonder what Mark was up to when he wrote his gospel that he shows Jesus’ special disciples in such a bad light. When we read about James and John in Mark we should be angry with them – as angry as the other disciples were – thinking “boy, are James and John DUMB!”
Matthew, who wrote his gospel a few years later than Mark, must have agreed with us. Believing that the disciples should have cleaned up their act, Matthew did it for them. When Matthew got around to writing this request for personal greatness, he took the request out of the mouths of James and John and gave it to someone else. Do you know who that was? Listen to Matthew’s account beginning in Matthew 20:20:
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to him, “We are able…” And from there the story continues as it was in Mark. (Matthew 20:20-33)
Before we fall over in shock at this discrepancy in the scriptures, let’s try not to fault Matthew for trying to show the disciples in a more favorable light. We’ve done that with our own nation’s history in our own school textbooks for generations…where we read of a president who never told a lie or of another who returned a library book by walking miles through a snowstorm, or of brave military heroes who never seemed to fear the battle, but only said strong words like, “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes,” or “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,” or “I shall return,” or simply, “Nuts!”
In a book entitled, Lies My Teachers Told Me, Jim Loewen (who spent years researching high school history textbooks in the Smithsonian) wrote: “This…is about heroification…. Through this process, our educational media turn flesh and blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures, without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest.”[1]
As a schoolgirl in the 1940’s and 50’s, I grew up believing that “in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue” and discovered America; but then I heard native people in the 1960’s and 70’s begin to say, “In 1493 Columbus stole all he could see” -- that he didn’t discover America, but that the “Indians” were the ones who discovered Columbus landing his ships on their shore.
I grew up thinking that early missionaries took nothing but the gospel and “civilization” to foreign lands; when I grew older I learned that some of them also took smallpox and slavery.
I grew up thinking that our founding fathers were true champions of independence -- promoting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because they believed, as they put it, that “all men were created equal.” It was much later that I learned that they, like most of the leaders of their day, kept slaves.
I grew up thinking that America’s wars were “just” wars and that our troops would never fire upon civilians. Then I learned more about civilians who died in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in the massacre at Mai Lai.
When rumors began behind closed doors about the secret lives of contemporary American presidents and other men who were leaders in the Civil Rights movement, the nation learned that even heroes could “slip” when it came to their marriage vows…and now, with the press liberated to tell all, to print every rumor they hear, we learn more than we want to know about politicos and pop stars whose private peccadilloes become front page news.
In writing about the whitewashing of history in textbooks, Loewen says: “…the results of heroification are potentially crippling to students….Our children end up without realistic role models to inspire them.”[2]
Holding a more realistic view of historical figures would help our students, and ourselves, believe in our own self-worth. If people with flaws can be the founders of a nation based on freedom and liberty, if adulterous presidents and civil rights leaders can govern the nation or march for freedom, maybe I can, too. If a denying disciple like Peter and glory-seeking disciples like James and John can still be loved by Jesus, can still be the principal leaders of the emerging Christian church, then maybe I can be loved by Jesus…maybe I can be a leader in the church, too.
But it’s simple human nature to hide our faults, to gloss over embarrassing mistakes, not only to elevate our biblical and national heroes, but also to lift up our own sagging self esteem.
Witness the trend on so-called “reality” tv -- Extreme Make-Over, celebrating changes made possible by cosmetic surgery, and What Not To Wear, showing how to call attention to the body’s best features while managing to hide the rest, and Biggest Loser, encouraging those who need group support to take off excess weight. For every contestant on the screen there are thousands watching at home, seeking to change their image and their lives.
Some people, apparently, are even ready to re-invent their resumes. A couple of years ago an online university, ironically called “Trinity Southern University,” was sued for selling fake academic degrees. (Did you hear about this?) Investigators paid $299 to obtain a bachelor’s degree for Colby Nolan, who was actually an investigator’s six year old black cat; they claimed Mr. Nolan had experience in babysitting and retail management. The school, which offered no actual classes, allegedly determined that Colby Nolan’s resume entitled him not only to a bachelor’s degree but also to a master of business administration degree; the transcript that accompanied the degree listed the cat’s course work and, would you believe, a 3.5 grade point average.
Prolific Catholic author and priest, the late Henri Nouwen, called sagging self-esteem “spiritual brokenness.” He believed that when we puff ourselves up, what we are doing is covering up our feelings of self-rejection, feelings that Christians shouldn’t have. The stories of Jesus, Nouwen said, tell us that, no matter WHAT our faults, ‘Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so.’ “The great secret of the spiritual life,” Nouwen wrote, “is that everything we live, be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of the journey toward our full realization of our humanity. …” [3] And then he wrote the words we said in our prayer of confession today: “…we know the joy of life comes from the ways in which we live together and that the pain of life comes from the many ways we fail to do that well.” What we need, Nouwen says, is to admit to our own brokenness, to see the brokenness in people around us, and to bring our mutual brokenness under the blessing of Jesus Christ.
When James and John ask to sit on Jesus’ right and left in glory and when they tell Jesus that they can be baptized as he is and drink of the cup from which he will drink, they show they have failed to hear what Jesus is facing – that Jesus will endure the ultimate brokenness known to humankind. In the preceding verses, Jesus has just said, “The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will hand him over to the Gentiles, they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him.” When Jesus comes to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane he will pray that this cup of suffering may pass from him…but it doesn’t…and as it turns out it won’t pass from James and John either. As they asked for glory, so too would they get sacrifice. “The cup that I drink you will drink,” Jesus told the brothers, and next thing you know, in the twelfth chapter of Acts, James himself is executed, becoming the only disciple of the Twelve, besides Judas of course, whose death is recorded in the Bible. Luke writes: “About that time, King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword.”
We don’t know exactly what happened to John, where or how he died. But Matthew’s clean-up of their request for glory is NOTHING compared with the stories telling why James and John were subsequently elevated to sainthood by the church. As Louwen called textbook biographies of America’s leaders “heroification,” we call these later biographies of biblical leaders “hagiographies”…from the Greek word, “hagia,” meaning “saint.”
If you have been to Spain, you may have wondered how James ever became Spain’s patron saint – and that’s because, after his death in Jerusalem, a hagiographer wrote that angels miraculously transported James’ body to the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostelo (which means Saint James the Apostle) where it was buried beneath the cathedral there. And not only that, one day, James re-appeared – alive! – to help the Spanish Army defeat the Moors. In the Middle Ages, it was discovered that just being near James’ bones cured rheumatism in people who worshipped at the cathedral. That’s why the name of Saint James has been invoked against rheumatism ever since. (Some of you may want to take note of that.)
John, on the other hand, lived a long life, such a long life that there are some really funny stories about his “senior moments” while preaching to the people in Ephesus. Jerome, who is famous for translating the Bible from Greek to Latin, also wrote about John: “When John tarried in Ephesus to extreme old age,” said Jerome, “… and was unable to give utterance to many words, he used to say no more at their several meetings than this, “Little children, love one another.” At length the disciples who were there wearied with always hearing the same words, said, “Master, why dost thou always say this?’ ‘It is the Lord’s command,’ was his reply, ‘and if this alone be done, it is enough.’”
But John, too, in another legend, is reported to have drunk a cup of suffering. He was subpoenaed to Rome by the Emperor one day and was forced to drink a cup of hemlock. Another prisoner who drank of the cup died- – but not John. He blessed the cup and the poison came out of it in the shape of a snake. After rendering his potion palatable, John bent down and revived the dead prisoner. The emperor then had John thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil, but this, too, had no effect at all. And so it was that John was banished to the Island of Patmos where he is reported to have written everything in the Bible with the name “John” ascribed to it – the Gospel, the letters, the Book of Revelation. He actually didn’t write all that, but that’s how the apostle John became the patron saint of writers…and, of course, John’s name is invoked against poison (I hope none of us has need to take note of that.)
You may believe these stories or not, but as George Washington said, “I cannot tell a lie.”
Hagiographies aside, my favorite story of the disciples is still this story by Mark who wrote that two brothers one day, in ignorance or innocence, sought to be great. And, though I wish he hadn’t blamed their MOM, I also like Matthew’s cumbersome attempt to clean it up. I like to see these stories together because looking honestly at scripture helps us to appreciate the truth that is there, even if the original telling of it later brought embarrassment to the community. I especially like knowing that even the disciples closest to Jesus really did make great mistakes from time to time, because we who live 2,000 years away are bound to do the same and we need to remember that the stories of Jesus tell us, as Henri Nouwen said, that no matter WHAT our faults, no matter how broken we are, no matter how down in the cellar is our self-esteem, “Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so.”
“I recall a scene from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass,” Nouwen wrote, “that embodied for me the thought of brokenness put under the blessing of Christ. Toward the end of this work, the priest, richly dressed in splendid liturgical vestments, is lifted up by his people. He towers high above the adoring crowd, carrying in his hands a glass chalice. Suddenly, the human pyramid collapses, and the priest comes tumbling down. His vestments are ripped off, and his glass chalice falls to the ground and is shattered. As he walks slowly through the debris of his former glory, barefoot, wearing only blue jeans and a tee shirt, children’s voices are heard singing, ‘Laude! …(‘Praise God!) Suddenly the priest notices the broken chalice. He looks at it for a long time, and then, halting, he says, ‘I never realized that broken glass could shine so brightly.’”[4]
The light shined brightly through the three broken and flawed disciples, Peter, James, and John. And the light also shines brightly through you. Jesus calls us, each one of us, flawed as we are, to give our lives to him...not that we might sit beside him in glory but that we might work beside him in service as Jesus told the brothers on that day long ago: “…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 as a ransom for many.”
The late comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, made a living out of saying, “Take my wife – please!” And whenever he said it, he got a laugh. I think we get to laugh, too, when we say to Jesus, “Take my life -- please!” – because in offering up our old life, with all of its flaws, with all our sins and stupid mistakes, we receive new life in Christ, a joyful life with all its blessings…a life that becomes a light that will shine through our brokenness…healing others as it shines upon them…and, then, reflecting back to us will heal us, too…making us honest heroes and true saints… unashamed of the past, unafraid of what is to come. Amen.
Will all who are able please stand as we share what I believe to be the greatest affirmation of faith in the scriptures, from Paul’s Letter to the Romans:
We know that all things work together for good
for those who love God,
who are called according to God’s purpose.
I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Sermon Hymn Jesus Loves Me, This I Know PH 304