A Service Economy

Today’s morning lesson comes from Mark’s Gospel, the middle section of which presents a series of Jesus’ teaching organized around a journey. Jesus and his disciples were on the road together. So before reading today’s text I want to read the two verses just before it. Jesus says, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” (Mark 10.33-34)

Within the journey section (8.27-10.52) there are three predictions of Jesus’ death (8.31, 9.31, 10.33-34). The one I just read is the last. All three predictions are followed by the disciples demonstrating their complete misunderstanding of what the Lord was doing and teaching. Jesus was trying to teach his followers that entering the kingdom of God is only by way of the cross.[1] The journey section of Mark’s Gospel has been called a “laboratory in discipleship”[2] where followers learn Jesus’ way — the way of the cross. Let’s read it in Mark 10.

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.” But Jesus said to them, “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?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 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.”

Can you imagine James and John? What gall they had. They already were in the inner circle of the inner circle. For within the Twelve, Jesus focused even more attention on the Three — Peter, James, and John. But now James and John wanted it all: can they sit on the Lord’s right and left hands in the eternal Kingdom?

That made the other disciples mad. But don’t you think that the other disciples were angry mostly because they didn’t ask first? I think so. After James and John’s galling question and after the angry disciples, Jesus gathered all his disciples — he gathers us too — and teaches that greatness in the kingdom is different than greatness in the world. To amount to anything in the kingdom of God, we must be the servant and slave of all.

That wasn’t an easy message for the first disciples and it’s not any easier for us. I’m reminded of the little drawings of temptation where someone has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder. The angel whispers in one ear, “Serve others.” The devil whispers in the other, “Serve yourself.” The easy choice hearkens to the devil’s voice. James and John did that. The other disciples wanted to do that. Most of the time so do we. But let’s work with this text for a moment to see if we can find a better way, a path that we know to be Jesus’ way. Let’s reflect on a couple of questions to help us. First, what does it mean to follow Jesus’ way?

Sometimes the hardest thing for me about writing a sermon is coming up with a title. Since I do initial planning for my sermons one to four months in advance, sometimes the title I picked when I started to think about a sermon just doesn’t fit when I’ve actually completed the sermon. Plus, I think most of my sermon titles are rather boring. Of course, maybe most of my sermons are boring too but that’s another subject. Some preachers seem to have a gift for coming up with creative titles. I don’t. I guess I’m “sermon-title challenged.”

The title for today’s message changed two or three times. As I worked on the text the theme of service stood out clearly and since the economy is always in the news and the American economy is more service-oriented than based in manufacturing, my mind hit upon “service economy.” It’s not a great title. But it set me to thinking about what it means to be successful in a service economy.

A successful service company takes different skills than being a successful manufacturing company. In fact, a good service company would be well served to learn from Jesus’ teachings about putting others first. Some time ago I read about a room-service waiter at a Marriott hotel who learned that the sister of a hotel guest had just died. The waiter, named Charles, bought a sympathy card, had hotel staff members sign it, and gave it to the distraught guest with a piece of hot apple pie.

Some time later that hotel guest wrote a letter to the president of Marriott Hotels. “Dear Mr. Marriott, I will never meet you. And I don’t need to meet you. Because I met Charles. I know what you stand for … I want to assure you that as long as I live, I will stay at your hotels. And I will tell my friends to stay at your hotels.”[3]

Perhaps, therefore, quite by accident my sermon title does come fairly close to the mark after all. Jesus was urging that in the economy of our lives we put others first. Our lives need to be an economy of service. We need to be like Charles at the Marriott. He was attuned enough to a hotel guest’s need that the guest was impressed not only with Charles but with Charles’ president. When people meet us or come into contact with us, are they inclined positively towards our head, the Lord? Do our lives, by their service of others, point to Jesus? Sometimes, yes. Too often, no.

When James and John asked Jesus for glory, he asked them, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “Sure we are.” The cup is the symbol of his shed blood and baptism is the symbol of being buried, that is, of dying, to sin.

It’s interesting that Jesus didn’t scold them for being so glib or arrogant. In fact, the only promise Jesus made to the sons of Zebedee was that they would, in fact, drink his cup and be baptized with his baptism. All the first disciples suffered for the Gospel. So what Jesus really promised was that the gospel does call disciples to follow Christ in the way of the cross, an economy of service.[4]

A second question to ask today is, why did Jesus die for the many and what does this mean? The text says that Jesus came to “give his life a ransom for many.” Who are the many?

To us, this phrase suggests exclusion: “many but not all.” In the mind of Mark, however, the emphasis was more likely to be inclusive: the contrast was not between the many who are saved and others who are not, but between the many and the one who acts on their behalf.[5] In other words, to our ears this could be saying that Jesus died for some but in Mark’s mind he was probably saying that Jesus gave his life for all.[6]

I think we can see this more clearly if we reflect for a moment on the phrase the Son of Man which Jesus used most often to speak about himself. It has two meanings. First, it simply means “human one.” It also hearkens back to the Old Testament book of Daniel when in a dream Daniel sees one like a Son of Man descending on the clouds as God’s eternal king. Let me read these verses from Daniel.

“As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being [the NRSV departs from the older translations which actually use here the phrase “like a Son of Man”] coming with the clouds of heaven.… To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” (Daniel 7.13-14a)

So Jesus used the Son of Man title to speak both about his being fully human and about his coming in glory.

Now, in that same chapter from Daniel, there is a vision of four terrible beasts who are destroying the people of God. A few verses after what I just read, Daniel says, “Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast … and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, and concerning the other horn … the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly, and that seemed greater than the others. As I looked, this horn made war with the holy ones and was prevailing over them.…” (Daniel 7.19-21)

The horn that was killing God’s people was a symbolic depiction of Antiochus Epiphanes, a Greek ruler who attacked the Jews in the mid-160s bc. A band of heroic Jews known as the Maccabeans resisted Antiochus and eventually defeated him. But many were martyred and won freedom for their brother and sister Jews only at the cost of their own lives. The book of 4 Maccabees, not in our Bibles but in a group of other holy writings called the Apocrypha, describes these Maccabean heroes.

“These, then, who have been consecrated for the sake of God, are honored, not only with this honor, but also by the fact that because of them our enemies did not rule over our nation, the tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified — they having become, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated.” (4 Maccabees 17.20-22[7]).

Many died so that the few who were left could be free. The many were a ransom, an atoning sacrifice, for the one nation.

Now — I know it’s hard to keep all these ideas in your head but bear with me a bit longer — Daniel had a vision of the human one, the Son of Man, coming with the clouds and being given dominion and glory forever. That represents God’s victory over those who were killing God’s people, a victory historically won in part by the many who were martyrs in the battle against Antiochus. The many gave their lives so that the one — the Son of Man — might be proclaimed the victor.

What is so striking, then, about the last verse of our text is that Mark reverses Daniel. Jesus, the Son of Man, was not the one on behalf of whom the many died. He is the one who dies for the many. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”[8]

Jesus died to win our freedom from sin and death and he died for all. For you and me and everybody else and that is the one best example we can have for how we are to live. To be a follower of Jesus means to be like him and live our lives or die our deaths for the sake of others. That’s what it means that Jesus died, one for the many.

Do we want to be great in the way of Jesus? To be great in the way of Jesus is to let there be in the economy of our lives an attitude of service. To be great in Jesus’ way is to put others first.

Sometimes we’re not very good at that. I can think of many ways that as a church we are wide of the path of Jesus’ way. In fact, at one point I was going to scold us for not doing a better job of putting others first. But I cut all of that out. Jesus did not scold even James and John after their cheeky question. So no scolding today and scolding is generally ineffective anyway. We are a good church, not a great church yet in many ways, but a good church on a journey with Jesus Christ our Lord.

Like the disciples of old we are on a journey with Jesus. We have not arrived yet but we’re on the way. So I close today with words from the great Reformer, Martin Luther — and we’ll celebrate Reformation Sunday next week. Luther wrote, “This life … is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished but it is going on, this is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.”[9]

So let us go onward, my friends, in the way of service, in the way of living for others, in the way of Jesus. Amen

[1] Reginald H. Fuller, “Exegesis: Mark 9:30-37,” Lectionary Homiletics 8.11 (1997): 18.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, James D. Newsome, Texts For Preaching, Year B (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 555.

[3] Roger Dow and Susan Cook, Turned On (New York: Harper Business, 1996) 87.

[4] Marion Soards, Thomas Dozeman, Kendall McCabe, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B After Pentecost 2 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993) 100.

[5] Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991) 249. “Interesting parallels have also been discovered in the Qumran material, where one of the terms used for the congregation is ‘the many’. The organization of the Qumran community demonstrates that they regarded themselves as the embodiment of ‘true Israel’, and ‘the many’ were therefore the people of God. If Jesus’ life is given for many, therefore, this may well be understood to mean that he dies on behalf of all God’s people.… For Mark, however, the constituency of God’s people had changed; they were no longer ‘Israel according to the flesh’ (as Paul puts it), but a much smaller community, consisting of those — whether Jew or Gentile — who followed Jesus.”

[6] It is this contrast that we find in Isaiah 53.11f., from the fourth servant song: “Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”

[7] 4 Maccabees 17.23-24: “For the tyrant Antiochus, when he saw the courage of their virtue and their endurance under the tortures, proclaimed them to his soldiers as an example for their own endurance, and this made them brave and courageous for infantry battle and siege, and he ravaged and conquered all his enemies.”

[8] This insight is from Hooker, 250-251. “Moreover, this reversal is precisely what we expect after the repeated emphasis in earlier sayings about the paradoxical road to greatness. But since those who die and those who triumph are members of the one community, each of them can be the representative of that community; the martyrs represent faithful Israel, steadfast even under persecution, while the one like a son of man represents the victorious saints. What Mark 10.45 does is to remind us that suffering and victory belong to each other, and that it is only through the former that the latter is achieved.”

[9] J. Harold McKeithen, Jr., “Serving and Being Served,” Lectionary Homiletics 8.11 (1997): 24.