Sunday October 20nd, 2024 Worship

I have never thought about table seating arrangements so much as I have in planning our wedding. Especially when it comes to the order in which our wedding party will be arranged on either side of us and where our families will sit because they are just big enough to require multiple tables, but we don’t want anyone to feel slighted. Either we have half empty tables, or we combine some parts of our families, but then others feel left out, especially when tables need table numbers to identify which table is which. So someone will get table #1 while someone else will get #3. Honestly, this is not the part of wedding planning that I am good at. Give me a hymnal and the liturgy and I am golden but decide where people are going to sit and whom they are going to sit with, and my brain suddenly stops working for a bit. And we haven’t even really thought about tables past our families yet either!
But this is such a big thing in both Jesus’ time and ours because proximity to the host displayed importance. So even though we are not basing our seating arrangement on that, we know that some people are implicitly going to think about it because that is what we have been engrained to do. But, Jesus disrupts this narrative in the Gospels today when he reminds the disciples again that greatest doesn’t come from power and wealth, or proximity to other power, but instead comes from the way that we serve one another in our community. Greatness doesn’t actually appear so great at all. And, just maybe, we need to think about service a little differently too.
Will you let me be your servant? There is a hymn that prompts us to ask this question and wow does it change the way we understand discipleship. I told you all a few weeks ago that the theme of our first call retreat was stewardship, and both that presentation and this question have me thinking a lot about what this Gospel is asking of us in the world. Because, when we think about it, we often see our call to be generous and to serve others, but how often are we willing to receive the generosity of others and their service to us in return?
Sometimes, we’re taught so much about serving, that we also forget that part of our call is to be served. Now, I don’t mean this in the privileged, we should get everything we ever want all the time, and it doesn’t matter what impact that has on the people or creation around us, but it is a call to remember that we are created to be a part of community that loves and cares for each other. We can get in the way of others acting out their call to serve others if we hold onto our pride too much and refuse to let them. Yet, I also know that I stand up here as someone who has an incredibly difficult time asking for and receiving help because our society has taught us that if we ask for help or share the load it somehow means that we are failing. Which is absolutely ridiculous that we keep being fed those messages!
I will say repeatedly, Jesus asks us to be servants but doesn’t ask us to be doormats! These serving relationships are supposed to be reciprocal, not just one person giving over and over until they have absolutely nothing left to give. Yet, in our world of individualism and independence, it can be so difficult to receive the generosity of others, whether that is someone else buying your meal or someone giving you a compliment. I remember growing up when my relatives would fight over the check at dinner, even going up the servers before they came to the table to make sure they got the check for everyone. But, then if they didn’t and someone else was able to pay, they made sure to repay them somehow, often with $20 bills hidden in random places like the sun visor in the car or in between the extra bathroom toilets folded in the closet. While hilarious, I think of the unspoken messages we send to the world around us if we are only willing to offer help instead of receiving it, it begins to establish a hierarchy that tries to put ourselves above others for various reasons, whether we are trying to do this or not. It becomes easy for us to fall into a savior mentality instead of a companion.
Part of what we have been talking about in the Lutheran world in the last decade is that serving should be focused on an accompaniment model instead of a savior-type model. It means listening to what it is that people need instead of just giving them what we think they need. Part of this comes from that relational model and the way that we serve one another in the community as well. When we get to know each other, we learn how to serve one another, it becomes inherently relational instead of something that we can do from a distance. It establishes the uniqueness and acknowledges the identity of who we are walking alongside if we don’t just make assumptions about what we think will be best for them, especially when we think in context of our global missions. But it’s important on a local level too. It’s like when I was working in a food bank and most of the meat every week was pork of some kind, except many of the families that we served were Muslim, and didn’t eat pork. It was sometimes hard for people to grasp that people didn’t always want the food that we had to offer because there was a mentality that people should just be grateful to be receiving food. But everyone deserves to eat food that they find nourishing and appealing, that meets their religious and personal needs.
This way of serving, as a companion, is the exact opposite of what Jesus is telling us about the leaders at the time, who are domineering tyrants over the people that they are ruling (Mark 10: 42). Jesus, as he approaches his death, continues to prepare his disciples for the fact that they will soon be leaders in the movement, whether they want to accept it or not. He is reminding his disciples that they are to act differently than the leaders who make the people serve the leader’s own needs for power and control. Instead, they are called to use their power to serve all people. It’s a vastly different way of ruling the world, one that will be a shock to both the disciples and the people they are leading alongside. It breaks down the hierarchy of who is most important among them. Something that James and John have still yet to grasp.
James and John seem to grasp on a literal level what Jesus is talking about, but they fail to understand all the metaphors of death and resurrection that Jesus is also referring to when he talks about the cup and the baptism. They still see him as someone who is going to be powerful and socially important, so they want to be right there with him when that happens. As the parables of the banquets remind us, those at the right and the left of the host are the most important, and it goes down from there. No wonder the other disciples get angry at James and John! They want the recognition and the power that comes from being associated with Jesus, yet they fail to understand that their association will bring persecution and hardship instead. Jesus’ power isn’t that which dominates and controls but is used to serve many; not exactly what James and John want to hear, especially when they are acting like children waiting to receive their inheritance only to find out that it’s all being donated to charity. Jesus emphasizes repeatedly, especially in Mark’s Gospel, that in order to be great, we must be servant-leaders. He doesn’t mince words and it’s so important that we hear this multiple times.
Service can take on so many different forms, depending on the needs of the people we are living in community with. So, I love that Jesus doesn’t sit the disciples down and tell them “Now here’s exactly how you are supposed to serve others” because he knows that the needs of each person, each community are different. In his discourse, he reminds them of the importance of using their power and leadership for the good of the community, but it also feels implied in there that they are also to receive the service of others. If not, we set up a whole new competition where the disciples are trying to outdo one another in service. The point is that we need one another to thrive, and that God desires life abundant, so we get to go out in the world to love and serve others, but also to be loved and served in return, as uncomfortable as that last part might be for us.
So, I honestly have to say that I love the audacity of James and John today, not because of what they are asking, but because they give us permission to also approach God boldly. It makes a difference that in Mark’s version of this story, James and John approach Jesus with this request, as opposed to Matthew’s version in which their mother asks on their behalf. When we approach God boldly, our intentions obviously still matter, like are we praying for world peace or for gold to line our pockets, but our prayers are another way that we can boldly serve the world around us. By bringing voice and heart to the needs of the world, we continue to ask God to be whom God has promised throughout all of Scripture. It’s important today that Jesus doesn’t automatically dismiss James and John today because he could have easily said take your nonsense and leave. Sure, he asks some follow-up questions and does some more teaching, but he never once scolds these two for approaching him so boldly. We get to remember that too, as we go out from this place to love and serve the world, and to be loved and served in return.