It’s Not About. . .
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
20th Sunday after Pentecost – October 18, 2009
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Job 38:1-7/Hebrews 5:1-10/Mark 10:35-45]

“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. 43But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

I came across a number of things this week that made me stop and think long and hard about the readings we’ve heard today – and especially about the Gospel reading. One of the things was an article in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, a literary review essay looking at children’s books, noting that in the picture books coming out now the children are in charge. Quite frankly, not having ever been a parent, I don’t want to get myself into the problem of commenting on how children are raised. However, I do think that there are times when some points of good common sense are ignored, all in the name of the promotion of “self-esteem.”

I won’t go through the lists of books, but one, titled “Pinkalicious,” caught my eye, since it purports to be a parable about gluttony. A little girl and her mother bake pink cupcakes on a rainy day and as fast as they are baked, the girl eats them. “More, more, more,” is all she says, caught up in a tantrum of self-indulgence, until she finally turns pink and eventually deep red. Along the way, her parents take he to the pediatrician who prescribes a steady diet of green food (“Yuck” is her response) to get her color back to normal. Here is what the critic said, “By the final page, the girl has learned a lesson about healthy eating, and her parents have been thoroughly steamrolled.” [NY p. 84]

On the bright side, there was the book by Kevin Henkes, “a Wisconsin artist, whose Midwestern good sense is paired with a cheery pastel palette.” His book, “Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse” has the title character get into a situation with her teacher where she says and does some unkind things. The critic’s thoughts about what the author tries to teach were good: “Lilly, unlike her fictional peers, doesn’t revel in her clever misdeed Instead, she spends the evening feeling, ‘simply awful’ about the bad thing she’s done. Lilly skips cartoons and puts herself in the uncooperative chair. She then confesses to her parents, who help her focus on what she can do to make amends. Henkes’s book is squarely traditional in message, yet in the context of modern picture books its confidence in the idea that young children are capable of sympathy – even moral growth – feels positively radical.” [NY, p. 86]

Jesus’ message to the two disciples who came to him on that long-ago day was also positively radical, because the teaching that Jesus offered went to the root of how human beings are supposed to live in community and, particularly, how Christians are to live. James and John got confused. They thought that living a life of discipleship, of being followers of Jesus is a form of career ladder. Jesus has been teaching about the coming kingdom and these two fellows thought that they could obtain a special spot in it; a place that would guarantee them certain prestige, if not power.

Several years ago Kenneth Carder wrote something in The Christian Century that spoke directly to this. “Everybody wants to be somebody. Since the dawn of history, human beings have been trying to move up the scale of importance. The clincher used by the serpent to tempt Adam and Eve was ‘when you eat of [the tree of good and evil], your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ (Gen. 3:5). Henri Nouwen says that ever since then, we have been tempted to replace love with power. ‘The long painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.’ This is a theme running through the Bible, through human history and through our own psyche.”

The theme Carder and Nouwen identify is precisely what I picked up in “Pinkalicious” and in the literary critic’s lament. What is it? Well the theme is: “ME.” “Me…ME….ME!” “Me, Myself and I.” And the response – from Genesis to Revlation – is: “It’s not about YOU!” That, by the way, is what Jesus essentially says to those two “wannabes.” He says to them, point-blank, “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?” When he does that, he’s using a metaphor for the suffering that he’s going to experience. Jesus knows that the way of self-giving love that he’s traveled only comes to glory by means of humiliation and death – only through the Christ. So, he’s honest with them, tells them that they don’t get it, and asks that hard question, to which they blithely answer, “We can.”

Those eager fellows – “We’re able!” -- will desert Jesus at the point of his betrayal and arrest. They will run away. And even those who get upset with them for asking Jesus this favor, will do the same. Peter – “I’ll never deny you!” -- will go so far as to deny that he’s ever even known Jesus. Could they drink the cup? Not then. It will only be after the resurrection that they come to grips with who Jesus is and what it means to be his follower. Perhaps they remembered what Jesus told them about leadership and service after they had asked for favor and the rest had become upset? Did they drink the cup? Eventually.

I think that this incident in the Gospel helps us to understand both what we heard in Job and in the Letter to the Hebrews. Job comes to grips with the reality that it’s not about him. He asks to make his appeal to God and when the opportunity comes, he realizes that he isn’t in a position to speak to God, because he doesn’t have the breadth or the depth of experience. As one author put it: Now Job begins to realize that his sufferings are part of the vast scheme of events that is much too transcendent for any mere mortal to grasp. No one can call the wisdom of God into question. ‘Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind?’” God is greater than we are and God’s ultimate will, as we are told again and again in Scripture, is for our good. Sometimes, even though it is difficult, we have to stand in the mystery and simply trust God.

The Letter to the Hebrews talks about trust, too. It is a long and detailed argument that Jesus is the true Messiah. Part of that argument is about his becoming a priest – remember that the word ‘priest’ means a bridge-builder – and doing so in a way that is able to encompass all of humanity. The author writes: “So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’; 6as he says also in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.’ 7In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. 8Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; 9and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, 10having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” Notice that Jesus doesn’t think it’s about him, rather he understands that his work is to point to the Father, to remind us that it’s about God, not us, and that God is trustworthy.

Jesus takes up our life into his, all through the act of self-giving love, expressed in his life, his teaching and in his death on the cross. He does this so that you and I can be drawn into God’s life and we can be transformed, so that we can live lives of unselfish service. I think this is why back in 451 the Council of Chalcedon will say, “Only as man could he know us. Only as God could he save us.”

We need someone who can save us because we live in a self-focused society and the former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges seems to think so as well in an article on reality television shows that he wrote for The Chicago Sun-Times this summer. He said: “The moral nihilism of our culture licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal. Education, building community, honesty, transparency, and sharing are qualities that will see you, in a gross perversion of democracy and morality, ridiculed and voted off any reality show.” That is a profound statement. The things that we hold most dear, at least we thought we did, are precisely the things that will get you voted off a reality television show. He say: “Fellow competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame elect to ‘disappear’ the unwanted. Those cast aside become, at least to the television audience, nonpersons. Celebrities who can no longer generate publicity, good or bad, vanish. . . .We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy, and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. It is this perverted ethic that gave us Wall Street banks and investment houses that will­fully trashed the nation’s economy, stole money from tens of millions of small share­holders who had bought stocks to finance their retirement or the college expenses of their children. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and bonuses. The ethic of Wall Street is the ethic of celebrity.” [The Chicago Sun-Times July 18, 2009]

What Hedges has to say is hard to hear, but it is important that we hear it. You see, our Christian faith and the example of Jesus stand over against the “moral nihilism” and the “ethic of celebrity.” Our faith reminds us it’s not about us. It’s about God, it’s about others, it’s about the common good and about building up the common good. For some reason we’ve so forgotten the common good we can do that to each other at the economic level and we can treat each other like dirt in our automobiles. Do you see how people drive anymore? The lack of common courtesy is enough to make a preacher swear. I have taken to deep prayer in the car to keep me from saying things that I don’t want to say. All because somewhere along the way people have checked their brains at the door or have decided to irradiate their heads with their cellular telephones. God help us! We need the common good.

We need the common good – it’s not about us. It’s about the Other and others, that’s what it’s about. It’s about that good , not just my good. That’s what Jesus told his disciples that to be great meant to become the servant, to be first meant to come last. He went so far as to model it by serving, rather than by being served and by giving his life, “as a ransom for many.” Jesus taught us what it’s not about. He taught us by his life, he taught us by his self-giving service, he showed us that it’s not about us. It’s about God, it’s about loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength – and loving our neighbors as ourselves. It’s about love.