Home        Contact     Meetings     Map        Sermons     Messenger  

There are two references of this account of Jesus and the two disciples who come to Jesus and ask for a place of honor, the one you heard this morning and the one in the Gospel of Matt.

The only difference in the two accounts is that Matthew tones down the story by having their mother make the request. Which reminds me of a Jewish Mother joke.

As I remember it, three mothers vacationing in Miami begin to talk about how much each of their sons loved them. The first – My son loves me so much that on my birthday he flew all of the family down from Brooklyn to celebrate. The second – My son gave his father and me a trip around the world for our 50^th anniversary. The third mother, not to be outdone, said “my son loves me so much that he visits a psychiatrist once a week--for one hour all they talk about is me.”

Jewish mothers in the OT have a reputation for being pushy.

Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, advises her daughter-in-law how to catch a husband by plying the well-to-do Boaz with booze and come to him during the night… it worked.

One of the more intriguing Jewish mother stories is the story of Esau and Jacob. That’s the Jacob of “Jacob’s ladder.” Their mother Rebecca, favors the younger of the two who by the way are fraternal twins, and advises him how too fool the old man into giving Jacob the blessing rather than the first-born Esau…Gen. 27.

What Matthew does in his telling of this incident, is to soften the impact of this outrageous request by these two disciples by having mom make the request for a place of honor for her sons.

What makes this request even more incredulous is that on two previous occasions Jesus had spelled out that discipleship required a reversal of the way the world viewed status.

Jesus does not reprimand them for their importunity, he does not scold or lecture. On the contrary, when they ask for a place of honor in the Kingdom, Jesus asks them if they are able to suffer as he will and they say yes.

So Jesus tells them that they will drink the cup that he is to drink and be baptized with the baptism that he will experience but the place on either side of him in the Kingdom is not for him to mete out.

Jesus uses this incident as a teaching moment. He reverses the way things are in the world as contrasted with the world of a disciple. 

It must be remembered that for a thousand years the forefathers of James and John had looked for the day of the coming of the Messiah, who would liberate them from oppression.

Their picture of the Savior was not at all what Jesus was. First there was that problematic birth, in a manger by a homeless peasant girl without a husband, then this itinerant preacher who keeps talking about “the first being last and the last being first…”

Had they not been last for long enough? The disciples didn’t get it any more than we ….

The God of Jesus is not one to rain down fire and brimstones on those we don’t like.

I’m reminded of another account in the Gospel of Luke.

On the day of the resurrection were two of the disciples on their way home from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They encounter a “stranger” who catches up with them and who questions them about the latest news…Luke 24.15 “We had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”

Last week's reading ended with “but there are many who are first who will be last and the last will be first…”

 We think about the stories Jesus told that we call parables

 – The Widow's Mite, The Wicked Tenants, The Unforgiving Servant, Laborers in the Vineyard, The Prodigal Son – all are parables of reversal… where the first become last and the last first!

We have heard these stories so often that we are no longer surprised at just how radical Jesus was. 

When it comes to the two disciples in today’s Gospel, we should not judge them too quickly. We have the advantage of confirmation class and hundreds of sermons.

Christianity is not another religion – Christianity challenges us to experience a God that turns the world, as we know it, upside down; where peace prizes are awarded before there is peace.

What most don’t know is that the country that awards the peace prize is a Lutheran country – the home of Soren Kierkegaard the Danish Pastor who invented existentialism.

The world of the kingdom is a world where Priests become saints and saints become Lepers – like Fr. Damien who was just canonized by Rome. I’m sure the little nun from Albania who we know today as Mother Theresa, too, will be saint if she isn’t already.

Jesus challenges his disciples to experience the world differently than those who have not come to know him and he uses the illustration of how the “Gentiles” rule.

In other words as his disciples, we are to see the world differently too.

Two examples. Do you remember Candid Camera producer Alan Funt? It was a TV program that caught people in an awkward moment when they did not know they were being filmed. It was a world of talking mailboxes, birdcages without birds, and flowers that could bend and drink coffee from your cup.

The birdcage episode had a cage without a bird but everything else, a chirping sound, a perch and foliage but no bird. People, after peeking in were asked what kind of bird they saw and they would describe the bird, long yellow beak, blue feathers, etc. what they saw was not the bird but what they expected to see: which was a cage with a bird.

In another episode I remember – a table in a restaurant each with a vase and flower. Someone would sit down order a cup of coffee or tea and the flower would lean out of the vase and take a sip of coffee. The unsuspecting dinner guest would blink, look around to see if anyone was watching and eventually move to another table. What he saw did not fit his or her frame of reference. Flowers don’t drink coffee or tea.

Jesus came into this world to challenge our preconceived notions of God, born in a stable, first announced by shepherds, with a genealogy that has some rather questionable mothers … like Sarah, Rachel, Mary and even Tamar a woman of, let’s say, the oldest profession, to name a few.

When I accepted the call to become your pastor I did so because I believed that as Lutheran Christians we have something special to share with the world… not to see the world as we would like it to be, but as it is.

A place that is the object of God’s attention and love. The flower bowed is wild and beautiful. It bows its head and drinks the man’s coffee. 

Life had taught him long ago that flowers don’t move and don’t drink coffee. But before his eyes it did happen. So he got up and moved to another table.

We either get up and move somewhere else, anywhere, like we had never seen the love of God or we kiss the flower that bows its head to us and call it by its proper name which is King of Kings, Lord of Lords – Messiah – and live our lives open to the fierce transforming power of the upside-down Kingdom.