22nd Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 10:35-45

I love books and crosswords and puzzles. And for word-lovers, the Oxford English Dictionary or OED is the ultimate authority for the English language. Its volumes contain more than 600,000 words and tell the story of the English language over 1,000 years. Revisions and additions are made regularly as language evolves, and five years ago, this phrase “fear of missing out” was added. It is the apprehension that life is going on without you and “THE place to be” is not where you are. Whether it’s seeing artisan glass at the Biltmore House, watching “Hamilton” on stage at the Belk, or having the winning ticket for Tuesday’s lottery drawing, it is easy to succumb to this kind of fear.

When I hear the Zebedee brothers speaking to Jesus, I wonder if they shared this “fear of missing out.” When they ask to sit on his right and his left in His glory, are they simply asking for a blessed assurance from Him that they will be with him always? They’ll be in the right place? Of course, a less generous, and, okay, more likely, interpretation, is that they were jockeying for power and for prestige.  

But what’s remarkable isn’t that two or the disciples ask a self-centered question. Throughout Mark’s Gospel, the disciples are shown as foolish, forgetful, terrified, and perplexed. They show us that discipleship isn’t about competence or common sense; it’s not about our gifts or our abilities, or even about our desires; discipleship is about following Jesus and responding to what God first gives us. 

What is remarkable here is how Jesus responds to James and John. He doesn’t get angry with them; he doesn't scold them or rebuke them. Instead he tries again to help them understand that discipleship is costly. 

In his “Heidelberg Disputation”, Luther contrasted the theology of glory that puffs us up with pride in our own strength and good works against the theology of the cross that calls us to follow Christ with obedience.1 Luther introduced this theology of the cross when he was called before the leadership of his Augustinian order to further explain the complaints he had raised against the Church in Rome with his 95 Theses the year before. And, that is also where Luther first introduced the hidden God, the One who is found “in the humility and shame of the cross” and in the suffering of Jesus.

When Jesus answers James and John, he asks them, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Mark10:38)

This is not a cup of consolation (Jeremiah 16), salvation (Psalm 116) or blessing (1 Corinthians 10) but, as the psalmist writes, “a cup with foaming wine, …[that] all the wicked of the earth shall drain …down to the dregs.” (Psalm 75:8) It is the cup of rejection and condemnation that Jesus suffers when he is arrested. And the baptism is not the one that Jesus was given by his cousin John in the Jordan, but the sacrificing and self-emptying action that will happen on Golgotha at his crucifixion.

Discipleship is costly. But redemption is given to us by our patient and loving Redeemer, 
by Jesus Christ who came and lived among us to show us what it looks like to live not for glory, but for God.

As we get ready to go into the world this week, think about where you experience the fear of missing out…is it in the ways of the world, and the things of glory that deceive and distract us from the self-emptying love that Jesus models?

We do not need to be afraid we are missing out or grasp for the “good life”  because our security and our value — our identity  — is not found in the world but in the cross. And every time we remember our baptism at the font and eat and drink the bread and the wine at the Table, we are joined with Christ in His baptism. When following Jesus is costly, our hope is sustained in Christ who suffered for us.

Today as we prepare to offer our gifts and commitments for the upcoming year of ministry in our community, I pray we will answer the call Jesus makes to his disciples, to live our lives faithfully, willing to ask our questions, but assured of God’s love and forgiveness, with our eyes set on the way of the cross and not glory.

Let us pray…
Life-giving and redemptive God,
Thank your for your Son who lived among us and taught us what self-emptying love looks like.
Forgive us for our selfishness and thirst for glory;
Satisfy our hunger for power with your love and mercy.
By Your Holy Spirit, empower us to live forgiven and free to follow Jesus.
It is in his name that we pray.
Amen.

1. Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy F. Lull, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 43-44.