Led In Love - Sermon for the Twenty First Sunday After Pentecost (October 20, 2024)

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 53:4–12 | Psalm 91:9–16 | Hebrews 5:1–10 | Mark 10:35–45

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:35-45).
 
What kind of leadership do we really need today?  
As I’m sure we are all well aware, tomorrow is our Provincial Election Day… when we the people of New Brunswick will choose between the competing visions of the future our politicians have been pitching to us. A lot of promises have been made. A lot of time and money has been spent. All to convince us to entrust these select representatives with the authority and power to lead us.
 
Of course, this isn’t the only election on people’s minds these days. In just a few weeks, our neighbours in the United States will also be holding their own massive Presidential election. And while there will be lots of other American government officials chosen at that time, a huge amount of energy… not to mention time and money… has been focused on promoting each side’s candidate in the hopes that they will be elevated to the highest office in their country… a choice that shines a huge spotlight on an ever growing clash of values and priorities… and which will likely go on to have some truly worldwide implications.

Every community throughout history has had to try to work out the tensions and challenges of leadership… of figuring out how to keep their people united… how to survive together, and to overcome the many challenges being faced… and how to strive for the best future… at least, the best future for themselves.

And like so many things in life, leadership is complicated… and messy. Those who seek to gain and exercise authority will face all sorts of serious temptations, and may end up in situations that can expose our worst weaknesses and tendencies. Things like greed and corruption, using our power to exploit others for selfish gain. Or giving in to fear and hatred against those who seem to threaten our groups position. Or fueling mistrust and cynicism that eat away at the communities we claim to serve.

These same dynamics are at play in some form in every human society… even in the ones who consider themselves to be explicitly Christian.

So it is good news for us that our Scripture Readings today  present us with a challenge to the whole way we humans think about and exercise leadership… challenging us to rediscover what the power and authority of the Living God is all about.

Our Gospel reading today from Mark Chapter 10 tells us of a moment when two of our Lord’s closest disciples ask Him for a favour:
 
Mark 10:35-37, “James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’  And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’”

James and John were asking straight up for authority… for power… to be Christ’s Kingdom cabinet ministers… to belong to the top tier rulers when Jesus finally takes charge. Bold move. But I mean, why not right? They had been with Him a long time. They had paid their dues. They had shared in His ministry, with all of it’s ups and downs. They thought they knew what it would take. Somebody was going to be by Jesus’ side in His moment of glory. Why not them?

Well, one reason at least is that it seems like James and John, despite being two of Christ’s closest followers, had also completely misunderstood the nature of the Kingdom Jesus had come to bring. They wanted to share in Jesus’ power and authority… to be lifted up and to reign in glory at their Master’s side.
 
But to be lifted up beside Jesus in His glory was not at all what they had imagined. And Jesus tells them both that it was not to be their fate to have this favour granted.
 
Honestly, what comes to mind when I hear this part of the story is the old warning: ‘Be careful what you wish for!’

Thinking back to the example of Elections again: how many times have people elected a person or party, only to find out after the fact that they should definitely not have been trusted with the reins of power? If we don’t know what someone’s really about… what drives them… and what guides their way, we might be very surprised by the direction that they end up leading us down… for better, or for worse.

I often listen to a history podcast, and they have been working through a series on the events of the French Revolution… what a mess!

They reminded me that, at that time, like today, so many people were longing for freedom from the very serious challenges they were facing. They longed for things like ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’… all good things, I hope we’d all agree. But the ways that these ideals were pursued led to an ongoing saga of extreme paranoia, divisions, and widespread bloodshed… a time that’s often been simply called the Terror… as one group after another seized power for themselves, and executed those who opposed their own particular vision of the future for their country.

One person’s hero quickly became the next person’s tyrant. And all these cycles of violence paved the way for one of histories most infamous Emperors, Napoleon Bonaparte, to raise himself up above all his rivals, and bathe Europe in war. And this is a pattern that has played out again and again: someone wants to become great, and so they step over and crush anyone else in their path.

But we know Jesus is not this kind of King… one who rises by holding others down… who reigns by using fear, or hatred, or endless divisions. And if we want to be a part of His Kingdom, and share in His rule and reign… than we have to do things His way: not seeking to be served… to have our ambitions met… but to serve.

After the other disciples start to get upset with James and John, Jesus tries to set the record straight.
 
Mark 10:42-45, “So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘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. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’”

This passage and others like it has influenced our language about leadership in the West. We speak of our politicians and government employees as ‘public servants’… holding up the ideal that leaders are supposed to be working for the common good… not just pursuing their own interests. This is all a remnant of centuries of Christian influence on our culture’s imagination… but it’s true meaning goes far deeper than just the words we say.  

When Jesus tells us that He came to serve, He is offering us a whole different path to follow… and a completely different reason to seek greatness at all. Why did Jesus come to serve? Why does He call us to do the same? The answer lies at the heart of the story of the Good News:
“to give His life a ransom for many”.

A ransom is a payment made to set someone else free. This word is used in the Bible as the price to buy freedom for those who were captives or enslaved… giving them the gift of liberty, erasing the lines that kept them cut off from their fellow humans, and placing them on the same plain… to offer true liberty, equality, fraternity… true fellowship. Jesus came not to get His own way, but to ransom humanity.

And not through use of terror… through the shedding of the blood of His enemies… but through His own blood being shed on their behalf… serving their best interests by laying down His own life at the cross.

This had been His plan all along. Back in our first reading today from the Prophet Isaiah, the seeds of hope were already planted. Back in Isaiah’s days, the Israelites had long been drawn into the same old self-destructive patterns of slavery to power at work in our world, leading them on the path to devastation and eventually Exile. But the Prophet Isaiah held out the hope of God’s surprising promise to save them… a hope that has echoed down through the centuries, and points us once again to the cross.
 
Isaiah 53:4-6,
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
 
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
 
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
 
Jesus came to be that faithful, suffering servant… to bring about God’s good Kingdom by ascending the throne of His cross… ruling God’s way by giving up everything in order to save the world that He loves.

Because love is the why behind it all. Love is the reason that God sent His Son to give His life for the likes us. Love led Jesus to the cross, and love is what held Him there to the end.

And love is how Jesus reigns in our lives even now. Love is the power of God at work in us today. Love, not just for us, or those on ‘our side’… but love for us all… love that sets slaves and captives free… love offered equally to everyone from all nations… even to our enemies… love that draws us together into God’s worldwide family.

So, back to James & John’s request: they asked for power and authority and positions of honour for themselves. But to sit at Christ’s right and left hand meant to share in His sufferings… to be lifted up on a cross along with Him… to die with Him, as He gave His life to ransom us all. James and John had no clue what they were asking for… and in the end others would take up those places at Calvary… the two criminals that died at His side.
 
And yet, Jesus invites James and John, and the rest of us to also share in His sufferings in our own ways… to share in His baptism… to drink from the cup of His calling… to offer our lives along with Him as instruments of God’s great compassion and mercy for our frightened, fractured, and imprisoned world. To die to our own ambitions… and maybe even to face death itself for Jesus’ sake, in order to serve those around us… sharing Christ’s saving love, offered up at the cross, once and for all… so that all who trust in Him might share in His resurrection life that even death cannot defeat.

So, as we reflect on the people who we will let lead us… not only as elected officials, but as examples, or sources of inspiration, or as those who may influence our visions of the future, let us remember that first of all we are called to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ our Saviour King.
 
May His great love guide us, and keep us, and empower us to resist the impulse to seek our own self-centred goals… or to give ourselves over to the agendas of others… but instead, to help us share with Christ in His sufferings… to walk in His holy ways, and to share His saving love with those all around us today.   

I’ll close now with a poem I’ve shared before by the priest and poet Malcolm Guite:
 
See, as they strip the robe from off his back
And spread his arms and nail them to the cross,
The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,
And love is firmly fastened on to loss.
But here a pure change happens. On this tree
Loss becomes gain, death opens into birth.
Here wounding heals and fastening makes free,
Earth breathes in heaven, heaven roots in earth.
And here we see the length, the breadth, the height,
Where love and hatred meet and love stays true,
Where sin meets grace and darkness turns to light,
We see what love can bear and be and do.
And here our Saviour calls us to his side,
His love is free, his arms are open wide.[1]
 
Amen.


[1] Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2012).

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