Mark 10:35-45
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Dr. Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 18, 2009
Kenmore Presbyterian Church
Kenmore, New York
As I start this sermon, I need to thank you all for remembering my 52nd Birthday and the 25th Anniversary of my ordination to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, last Sunday. Especially, I need to thank the Worship and Fellowship Ministry Teams; their moderators, Kathy Huntz and Gene Koszarek; and Les Kellner and Nancy Macakanja, who I suspect had a lot to do with it! For the second time this year, you all pulled one over on me and I am most grateful for your surprise!
As I prepared this sermon, I remembered that Sunday afternoon twenty-five years ago. Bronwen sang, “A Simple Song” from Mass by Leonard Bernstein, which begins,
Sing God a simple song, lauda, laude.
Make it up as you go along, lauda, laude.
Sing like you like to sing, God loves all simple things,
For God is the simplest of all, for God is the simplest of all.
I asked her to sing it. It’s a beautiful piece by one of my favorite composers. It’s also comes from a powerful piece of theater, which uses the movements of the Latin Mass to explore how we complicate things in religion, how we erect barriers between ourselves and God, who “is the simplest of all.”
Please don’t misunderstand what Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the lyrics of “A Simple Song,” meant when he said, “For God is the simplest of all.” He doesn’t mean, “stupid,” which doesn’t even make it into Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary until the fourth meaning, or “easy,” which the ninth meaning only implies. Instead, I think he means something like the first three meanings,
1: Free from guile: INNOCENT.
2: Free from vanity: MODESTY.
3: Of humble origin or modest position.
After fifty-two years as a child of God, I long to return to that kind of simple, to say what I mean and mean what I say, to stop worrying so much about how I come across, and to accept who I am, warts and all. After twenty-five years as a minister of Word and Sacrament, I long for the church of Jesus Christ, this church, to remember its place, the place I found when I went to my knees twenty-five years ago, and received the laying on of hands at ordination. I believe we make things too complicated in our lives, when we try to insure our place, rather than placing our lives into God’s keeping. I believe we throw up barriers between ourselves and God, between one another, when we make our life together about status, rather than service; about rights, rather than responsibilities; about having our needs met, rather than meeting the needs of one another and the needy beyond these walls.
We aren’t the first Christians to make things complicated. When we read church history, we realize how the church repeats these same mistakes, again and again. Professor of Preaching and Communications at San Francisco Theological Seminary, Jana Childers suggests it may be genetic. We inherited the Zebedee gene. We take after James and John, who come up to Jesus, after he predicts the passion for the third time. In great detail, Jesus tells the disciples what will happen to him in Jerusalem, saying, “The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”
Zebedee’s boys, James and John don’t miss a beat. They take this moment to secure their positions in the kingdom. They ask Jesus to grant them to sit at his right and at his left, when he comes into his glory. Once again, I imagine Jesus sighs deeply and shakes his head. James and John missed the point, again. He gives them a chance to redeem themselves, saying they have no idea what they’re asking, asking them, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They have no clue what Jesus means. They only know they want good seats in the kingdom, so Zebedee’s boys say, “Bring it on.”
I wonder whether we grasp what cup Jesus drank, what baptism he endured? Do we really understand the cost following Christ exacts? I have many problems with the contemporary church, far too many to enumerate now,but one thing has troubled me since I started in ministry. We keep making things easy for folks. We dumb down our message, so that it suits their palates. The church places convenience over commitment. We make decisions based on demographics, rather than discipleship. We inoculate people with a weakened strain of Christianity for fear they might just catch the real thing.
Jesus describes the real thing when he hears the other disciples. They’re angry at James and John, but let’s be clear about what makes them angry. They’re not angry because James and John had the chutzpah to ask Jesus to sit at his right or left. They’re angry because they didn’t think of it first! I believe this, because of how Jesus responds to them.He reminds them how the Gentile rulers use their power to oppress their subjects. He tells them that’s not how it is between them. Instead, he repeats what he’s told them time and again, “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Then, he does something surprising. He uses himself as the example, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
When the Presbytery of New Covenant ordained me in 1984, we followed the service found in The Worshipbook of 1970. Now, I appreciate the service of ordination in our current Book of Occasional Services and applaud its clear connection between the ministry of all believers receive at baptism and the ministry we accept at ordination. Yet, I felt something was missing and I found what was left out. In the old service, the Moderator would say, “Whoever among you wants to be great must become the servant of all, and if he (or she) wants to be first, he (or she) must be the slave of all (people).” The congregation would respond, “Just as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life to set others free.”
I think the next time we ordain and install officers, I’ll add those two sentences back to remind us what leadership means in the church. All leadership within the church is servant leadership, a phrase coined by the late Robert K. Greenleaf, who wrote,
The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then the conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions.
Yet, I will add these verses back to remind all of us what it means to be the church. Being the church is not about how much power we have, how well we manage our possessions, how many people are in our pews. Being a member of the church is not about status, but service; not about rights, but responsibilities; not about having our needs met, but meeting the needs of one another and the needy beyond these walls. Being part of the body of Christ means knowing Jesus is our head; he determines our direction; he sets the tone; and he leads the way.
It reminds me of another song, a song Paul sang in Philippians 2,
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
It is a simple song, empty of guile or vanity, full of humility and service. It is the simple song servant followers of a servant Lord should never cease from singing in praise to him. It is a simple song that reminds us all power comes from God, who “is the simplest of all.” Amen.
©2009 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Thaqnks for the words of encouragement in your sermon!