Proper
24 :: Isaiah 53: 4–12; Psalm 91: 9–16; Hebrews 5: 1–10; Mark 10: 35–45
This
is a homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on
Sunday, October 21, 2018.
“WHAT DID
THEY GET RIGHT, AND WHAT DID THEY MISS?”
(Homily texts: Mark 10: 35–45)
“When we come before God’s throne in heaven, we will
have to ask Him to confirm what we got right, and what we missed.” That statement came from my first Bishop,
whom I have often characterized as being an “armchair theologian”, because he
often made succinct statements about our Christian life, statements that were
easy to remember, statements that summarized some key point or another.
So
what did James and John get right in asking the Lord to grant them “whatever”
they asked of Him, and what did they miss?
(Before
we answer that question, we would do well to note that Matthew’s Gospel account [1] also
records this incident. There, Matthew tells us, it is James and John’s mother
who makes the request. Some commentators think, therefore, that members of the
family, not just these two brothers, who were involved in making the request.
Also, in Matthew’s telling of the conversation, the mother asks the Lord to
grant her two sons these prominent positions when the Lord comes into His “kingdom.”)
Now,
let’s examine the evidence of this request, first of all, to see what it was
that James and John got right:
They
were surely right that something wonderful and great was going on. After all,
Jesus had been healing people, He had been caring for them, and so, as a
result, His popularity was growing: The crowds were getting larger and larger.
There had been some sentiment among those who had encountered the Lord that it
would be a good thing to make Jesus king.[2]
And,
of course, according to these two brothers’ reasoning, since this great
movement had begun and had gathered more and more momentum, it was a prudent
for their own career aspirations to ask that they be granted a prominent place
in the glory, the kingdom, that was surely coming.
But,
in asking for places in an earthly kingdom, there these two brothers had missed
something. Jesus asks them if they could drink from the cup that he will drink
from? They answer, “We are able.” I suspect they didn’t understand – at the
time – just what Jesus was referring to. He was referring to His own coming
suffering and death.
What
James and John missed was the nature of this kingdom, which would come in the
most unexpected of ways, through suffering and through death. This new kingdom
would have as one of its prominent characteristics the fact that it is led by
One who came not to “be served”, but to “serve”.
Now,
let’s pose our opening question to ourselves, and to the Church generally: What
is it that we – the Church – have gotten right? And, what is that we have
missed?
The
areas we might apply this question to are many. Let’s choose just a few of
them.
God’s
love and God’s righteousness: When we individually and we the Church hold
in a good and balanced tension God’s love with God’s holiness and God’s
righteousness, we’ve managed to “get it right”. But when we adhere to one of
these qualities of God to the neglect of the other, we’ve missed something.
Unfortunately, Christians at many times in history have missed the boat,
emphasizing Go’s judgment to the neglect of His love, and vice versa.
The
Bible as God’s Word written: When we hold the authority of Holy Scripture
in high regard, recognizing that it is God’s expression of what He wants us
human beings to know about Himself, then we’ve managed to “get it right”. But
we err when we dismiss the Bible as being nothing more than a collection of an
ancient people’s record of their experience of God, or when we elevate the
Bible to the point of worshiping it (something called “Bibliolatry”). Holy
Scripture is a tool, inspired by God, a tool which is meant to point beyond itself
to the God who stands within and behind the words of it.
Christian
living: When we realize that all we do, say or think
is being done in God’s sight, then we’ve managed to “get it right”. But when we
think that our status as a Christian entitles us to behave in very
un-Christ-like ways, then we’re behaving more like James and John than we are
like the Christ who came to offer Himself out of love for our salvation and for
the welfare of our souls. A phrase – perhaps you’ve heard or encountered it
somewhere – that describes the misbehavior of those who claim the name of
Christian is this: “Christians behaving
badly.”
We
could name many other aspects of living the Christian life. But perhaps the
mention of these three is sufficient to prompt our own reflection on our
behavior and our attitudes. Perhaps we might be led to a critical examination
of how it is that we’ve gotten something right, and to those things that we may
have missed. For, so long as we are in
this life, the possibility exists that we may have managed to get things right,
even as it’s also possible – no, almost certain – that we have missed something
of the things that God wants us to know and to get right.
May
the Holy Spirit enlighten us to see ourselves as clearly and objectively as it
is possible for us to do so. May the Holy Spirit enable us by God’s power, to
learn and to appropriate those things that we need to learn. May the Holy
Spirit conform us to the image of Christ, that we may bring the light of the
Gospel, the Good News, to the world around us.
AMEN.
[1] See Matthew 20: 20 and following.
[2] See John 6: 15.
