The End of "The Way Things Are"

The End of "The Way Things Are"--September 29, 2016

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.”  [Mark 10:35-45]

You know, "the way things are" doesn't have to be "the way things are."  To hear Jesus tell it, in fact, his followers already don't play by the rule of "the way things are."  He demolishes the power of the-way-things-are with just two little words: "Not so."

"Not so."  It is just "not so."  Who ever thought that the words "not so" could be so beautiful, so hopeful?

I love the way Jesus puts in these words from the very heart of Mark's Gospel.  "It is not so among you!"  As in, "This is a matter of plain fact, not wishful thinking."  It is, as a grammar teacher would remind us, in the indicative mood, which is to say, it is stating the way things are, not simply expressing a hope or an ideal or a possibility. It is not even a command in the imperative, like, "Don't let it be so among you!" or "Make it not that way for you!"  But rather, Jesus speaks like he is making a simple declaration of fact.  It is not so among you.  And that's that.  The followers of Jesus play by different rules than all the silly maneuvering and power-plays for greatness of the world around us.

Of course we play by different rules: we are playing a different game than the world around us is.  While they all count up who has bigger piles of pastel colored Monopoly money or more hits on each other's Battleship fleet, we are joyfully just playing Follow the Leader.  And there are no points, no missiles, and no dollars in Follow the Leader.  We don't play by all the byzantine rules of the world's silly gamesmanship in the quest to prove our worth by the size of whatever we have piled up, because for us it just isn't so. 

You recall the scene from Mark: Jesus' inner circle of followers is bickering among each other about who is the bigger "winner" and who will get to be the "greatest" next to Jesus.  It started with John and James, and then the other ten disciples get in on the competition.  They are all trying to play the same old sad, tired games of the world--all variations on the eternally futile "King of the Hill."

And Jesus points out to them that this is exactly what they are doing: they are sliding back into copying the old patterns of the world around them: each person trying to step on the others to get on top, each person trying to prove their greatness, each person trying to grab as much for themselves as possible.  And Jesus also tells those first followers what that way of life gets you: tyrants as rulers, all trying to portray themselves as "great ones." 

But right into the midst of that, Jesus speaks those beautiful, life-giving words: But it is not so among you.  You don't play by those rules.  You don't have to accept those terms.  You are to be different.  You will not step on each other or lord it over one another.  You will not accept the world's definition of "greatness."  You are supposed to be an alternative to all of that--you already are.  You are what it looks like to start over with a whole new way of being human. 

According to Jesus, that is simply who we are as his followers. He doesn't speak with wagging fingers in terms of "should"--Jesus just says, "You are different.  Dare to believe that it is true.  You who follow me will no longer be defined by the way the world around you defines greatness.  You are those whose greatness comes through self-giving.  You will not have to play the never-ending, exhausting game of climbing forever and being pulled down by others who are climbing for the top, too.  You will find your greatness in kneeling to serve each other, and in taking turns letting one another wash your feet.  You will bow and bend to one another, and that will be your revolution."  This is how God starts over with humanity--we are called to be a new kind of human community, one that just doesn't accept the dictums of every other power-broker of the day says.

This is what makes Jesus' kind of starting-over something real and solid: it is not just a chance for us to repeat all of our old mistakes.  It is a way for things to be truly different because we are doing things differently--differently than we used to, and differently than the world around us still does.  You and I can be a part of the wonderfully upside-down movement Jesus has begun, and we do it without campaigns or super-PACs, without millions of dollars in muckraking ads or off-putting social media posts, without a single weapon and without a bullet fired.  We are part of the new way to be human in the way we lay down our lives for others, and in the way we just shrug off the world's insecure fussing about proving yourself "great."  All that silly ego-stroking and puffed-up competitiveness, all the fuss and bluster wasted on trying to make yourself "great," whether for the first time or all over again, all of that is so much sound and fury--nonsense and wasted breath for us.  We are no longer interested in playing Battleship or Monopoly--you get stuck at a table for those anyway.  We are people who play Follow the Leader, a game in which there is movement, freedom, and energy.

There is this scene in the classic The Little Prince where the title character meets a Business-Man who claims he "owns the stars" and spends all his energy trying to count up all the stars he "owns," and how much they are then worth.  The prince asks him what good it does him to "own" the stars, to be rich, and to calculate their monetary value, and the Business-Man says, "It lets me buy more stars!"  And of course the prince recognizes how foolishly circular that is, like the drunk he has met earlier in the story who keeps drinking in order to forget the shame of being a drunk.  That's the old humanity for you--the futile, circular thinking of always climbing for more and more in order to try and prove your greatness or restore some imaginary lost greatness.  And it would be funny if it weren't so sad.

But not so among us.  Not so indeed.  Jesus has set us free from that emptiness already; the only question is whether we will dare to believe it is true.  We don't have to do it the old way anymore.  God has started over with us, and the newness is real.  Trust it.  Practice it today.

Lord Jesus, here we are today seeking your kind of newness.  Help us to hear your freeing word that we are already a part of the new way of being human--and help us dare to practice that newness.