Mark 10:35-45
“What You Ask For”
October 21, 2012 - Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

         “Let’s try it,” I said, looking at the little bag of red powder Beth held. It was homemade curry, shared with us by a Malaysian student helper who worked with her in the seminary library. She had received a care package from home. Beth and I followed the student’s recipe for chicken curry. It said to put in three teaspoons of the powder. “Let’s put in half,” I said, “we can always add more.” I measured out a teaspoon and a half from the baggie and stirred it into the sauce. It smelled glorious!

         We spooned chicken and sauce over our rice. I took a bite. Fabulous! I took another. Then it hit me. I reached for my water glass as tears streamed down my face. It made jalapeno seem like strawberry jam in comparison. Beth was watching me, and didn’t even try. All I could think was “What if I’d put in the full amount?”

         I didn’t know what I was asking for when I opened that bag. It was more than I expected. James’ and John’s request to Jesus was like that. They didn’t know what they asked, what they were opening up.

         From accounts like the Transfiguration and the Garden of Gethsemane we know James and John, along with Peter, were part of Jesus’ inner circle. They felt close enough to claim seats beside Jesus. There was precedent. The Jewish Talmud says, “Of three walking along, the teacher should walk in the middle, the greater of his disciples to his right, the smaller one at his left… thus do we find that of the three angels who came to visit Abraham, Michael went in the middle, Gabriel at his right, Raphael at his left.”

         Matthew tells us their mother came with to beg this favor. She may have put them up to what they say in verse 35, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask.” How often do our prayers sound like that? How many times do we come to the Lord expecting Him to do whatever we ask? And how often do we really know what we’re asking for?

         Jesus was willing to listen. In verse 36, He asked what they wanted. He knew, but He wanted the two to hear themselves say out loud what was in their hearts. In the same way, Jesus is always willing to listen to you and me.

         According to verse 37, James and John asked to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus in His glory. You might wonder where they got that notion of glory. Look over the previous pages, and Jesus has been talking about anything but glory. He is the Messiah, but they have not yet learned that Isaiah 53, which we read this morning, is the Messiah’s job description. He came to die. They came looking for good seats.

         Jesus fed the hungry by the sea, and they thought of sumptuous banquets in a palace. He sent a rich man away to sell everything, and they pictured themselves getting wealthy in His Kingdom. He held children on His lap, and they imagined themselves sitting on thrones. So two of the boldest, two closest to Him, asked that their thrones be the best of all, chairs next to the most important chair of all.

         Jesus told them they did not know what they were asking. Not just what He tells them later in verse 40, that those seats may belong to someone else, but that they had no idea what was in front of them. They didn’t understand where Jesus was headed.

         Whatever we ask of the Lord, He’s giving us an invitation to follow. I pray for good health, but God is calling me to follow Jesus whether I am well or sick. You pray for a new job, but God already has a job for you, to be Jesus’ disciple no matter what. We ask for healing or safety for others, but above all God wants them to know and follow His Son.

         Whatever you ask for, be sure you do not know what you are asking, anymore than James and John. All we know is that whatever we ask, Jesus will give us a way to follow in His own steps. What that means is the rest of the text. In verse 38 Jesus asks them, “Are you able to drink the cup I that drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They answered quickly, “We are able.” If they could have seen how we swig back little cups of grape juice or get dipped or sprinkled with a bit of water, they might have been even quicker to think, like us, that it’s not all that hard to follow Jesus.

         Years ago, on a Boy Scout backpack trip in the Sierras, my friend Ed and I looked out at a little island of rock in the middle of a mountain lake. “Could we swim out there?” asked Ed. “Sure we can,” I said. It wasn’t far. We both had the swimming merit badge. We had swum farther than that in the pool many times. The sun was shining, the air was warm and we didn’t think about the snow on the slopes around the lake, melting down into it.

         We dove in and stroked hard. We made it more than halfway before our brains began to register how cold it was. Our arms and legs felt like stone. We couldn’t even float. If we stopped we’d sink. The rock seemed farther than when we started. It did not matter that there were two of us. Neither could have done anything to help the other. We could only look ahead and keep going.

         Finally we pulled ourselves out of icy water onto that rock. We had to sit a long time in the sun and talk ourselves into the trip back. Muscles had to thaw out, strength return. Now we knew what it would take and it was much, much more than we had asked for.

         “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” They thought they were ready to swallow it down. “Are you able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” James and John were ready to dive in. But the cup was suffering. The baptism was death. And the two for whom verse 40 says it was prepared to be on the right and left hand of Jesus in His crucial moment of glory were two thieves hanging on their own crosses.

         Verse 39 promises James and John their own cup and baptism. Acts 12:2 tells us about James’ death by the sword. Revelation 1:9 shows us John in exile. They didn’t know what they asked, but Jesus took them at their word. They got their chance to follow Him. They just didn’t know then what it would mean.

         Neither did the other disciples. Verse 41 shows them indignant with the Zebedee brothers. Those ten didn’t understand any better, they were just angry James and John got the jump on them, had tried to claim the best seats like teenage boys calling dibs on riding shotgun. They weren’t any wiser than the brothers, they just wished they’d thought of it first.

         Jesus knew. He saw the ambition that drove them, like it drives us. So He repeated once again a lesson He’d been trying to teach them for awhile now. Verse 42 contrasts Gentile rulers with who Jesus’ disciples were supposed to be. Rome in the first century is one long story of people conniving and conspiring for power. Julius Caesar claimed divine honors. Tiberius, the present emperor, minted coins calling him the son of a god and a goddess. Even senators thought they were better than ordinary citizens and refused to marry commoners.

         Jesus made His disciples face up to their own ambitious behavior. Wanting to have the best places in the kingdom of heaven was a desire that came straight from the kingdoms of earth. They despised Gentiles, yet had the very same kind of ambition. In verse 43 Jesus said, “But it is not so among you.”

         This is the fourth or fifth time for this lesson. Jesus told them twice that to be first they must be last. He told them that to be first, they must be servants. More than once He called them to be like children. They haven’t learned. So Jesus’ language got stronger here. Not just servants, as He says in verse 43, we are to be slaves, He tells us in verse 44.

         It’s a lesson as hard as it sounds. We want those seats of honor. At least I know I do. I want to be understood and respected. I don’t want to be ignored or mistreated. Yet followers of Jesus are to take last place, to give up respect, to place themselves below other people. It’s a difficult lesson, but it’s what Jesus did.

         That’s the last and best example Jesus can give for what He’s teaching. He Himself is the living illustration of His message. Verse 45 says even the Son of Man, who the disciples were realizing is the divine Son of God, is not exempt. Jesus Himself did not come to be served, but to serve.

         Taking Jesus as our example itself seems terribly difficult. How are you and I supposed to be like Him? He’s sinless, perfect, always in control. How can someone who is God really be an example for you and me? I think that’s why we get to see James and John wrestle with it and then discover how they finally learned how to follow. I think it’s also why we get to see it happen in the lives of other Christians around us.

         My friend and mentor Stuart Hackett died Wednesday morning. He was my philosophy professor in college and my boss for my first teaching job. He was a brilliant scholar who read his New Testament devotions in Greek, Immanuel Kant in German, and studied Hindu philosophy in Sanskrit. His mind was clear as a bell and every word he spoke had been carefully thought out.

         After hearing Stu had gone to be with the Lord I went to William Lane Craig’s web site and read some memories from when Bill had been his student. He recalled how one day in the Wheaton College chapel Jack Wyrtzen of Word of Life Fellowship was speaking. His text was Acts 17, Paul among the philosophers in Athens on Mars Hill. He noted that they called Paul literally a “seed picker.” Wyrtzen said it is philosophers who are really the seed pickers and went on to ridicule philosophers and philosophy. It was awkward because that very week Wheaton was hosting its annual philosophy conference.

         Bills says Stu’s philosophy class was right after chapel. All his students were excited to hear how Dr. Hackett would respond to Wyrtzen. Stu came in and asked, “Are all you seed pickers ready?” After the laughter, he said, “Here’s what I’ve got to say about today’s chapel message. When I’ve brought as many people into the Kingdom of God as Jack Wyrtzen, then I’ll criticize.” Then he just started his lecture. That’s a servant heart.

         It’s one of the privileges of my life that I got to be with Stu as he suffered some much worse humiliations and trials at another school later on. He was called to follow Jesus and serve others by teaching them to think well about their faith. Stu did that with his whole heart regardless of what others thought or said about him.

         The last few years I saw Stu follow Jesus while losing his brilliant mind to Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. He had to quit reading the Bible in Greek and just listen as his wife Joan read it to him in English. He couldn’t strap on his guitar to play bluegrass and Johnny Cash tunes. Instead he had to be strapped into his wheel chair so he wouldn’t fall out. I heard Stu who had defended the faith for decades ask me why all this was happening to him. He didn’t know any longer what he was asking.

         Yet I never saw or heard Stu give up. He kept following Jesus to the end. The last time Beth and I saw him a year or so ago, he was smiling and thankful for the day the Lord had given him. He who taught so many of us had learned his own lessons well.

         We don’t know what we are asking for. That’s how we all come to Jesus. We think we know what we want, but what He wants is for us to follow, to learn how to serve like He served. And we don’t know where it will lead. But we do know Jesus came to save us from our ambitions, from our silly requests. We don’t what we’re asking for, but He knows what we need. That’s why He gave us His life, as our ransom, as our salvation, as our example.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj