Sermon Mark 10:35-45

I don't usually post until after I have preached, but what the heck...in one way or another this is what I am preaching tomorrow.
(for some reason the formatting isn't working as I would have it.  Sorry.)

Elizabeth was 15 when she first went to a hospital and her first visit was to see her grandmother.  As she walked down the halls her parents prepared her for what grandma would look like.  They talked about what stage three cancer meant to someone in their late 80’s.  Upon entrance in her grandma’s room, Elizabeth was overcome by this machines and lines attached to her grandma.  Her grandma was ever the realist, and within minutes of their sitting down, she had off offhandedly remarked that the “end was near” and that she was "going to go home to die.”  It was just shortly after Grandma said, that she was "looking forward to seeing her husband again soon", that Elizabeth, in a fit of adrenaline, asked if she could have her car.

In the weeks following this poorly worded visit, her grandmother will come to live with her and Elizabeth will inherit not only grandmother’s car, but many other lessons.  She will come to see her humor, her strength; she will achieve the perfect apple crisp, and dumpling soup.  She will sit and learn a bit about her family’s story as they flip through photo albums.  Years later she will remain a bit embarrassed by her flippant remark, but her true inheritance remains her source of greatest joy.  It grounds her to her past and guides who she wishes to be in life.

While we all know it is inevitable, we all handle death differently.  Perhaps the most unsettling is those moments when people are honest about it.  Direct and forthright.  Most of us would rather live in denial or, are just so busy with life to ponder anything else. 

We might grant the disciples some grace…when we meet up with them today in Mark’s gospel.  They are somewhere outside Jericho, just over 30 miles from their destination of Jerusalem…Jesus will heal a blind man and then he will enter Jerusalem for the last time.  For the third time he has told his beloved what the plan is.  Again, he tells of how he will turn the world upside down.  The last shall be first.  The first will be slaves.  Rich shall be like children.

He’s talking to his disciples about his death and they are asking if they can have the family car.

Jesus, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.  Who among hasn’t prayed that prayer?

Who among us hasn’t made that demand?  Who among us hasn’t fallen into the theological trap that tries to tell us Christianity is only about getting into heaven?

We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.  What is it you want me to do for you?

What do we want?  What shall we ask for today?

To be right?  To live longer?  To have more love?  To be more popular?  To get ahead?  To be God’s favorite?

We don’t know what we are saying anymore than those sons of Zebedee did…James and John, perhaps jazzed up on adrenaline, can’t take in what Jesus has said.  In verse 33 Jesus tells them that they are going to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priest and he will be condemned to death.  He will be mocked, spit on, flogged, and killed.  And in three days he will rise again.  

It isn’t the first time they have heard such a claim.  No matter how many times he tells them…they just can’t wrap their minds around it.  …it really isn’t something you can understand.  Until it happens.  And even then you can only process it by faith.  No wonder they skip over the claim…I’ll cut them some slack and assume it was some coping mechanism that wouldn’t allow them to fully understand what death would mean to them.  After all, I get self centeredness.  I understand jumping right to how a situation will impact me…verses fully staying with the moment.  Thinking about how it affects others, or the larger picture.  I get that.

Jesus pushes them a bit further.  Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?  Can you really walk in my shoes?  “Oh, yes…yes.”  Perhaps it is denial like I have suggested or perhaps it is sure and certain faith that whatever comes, Jesus will be in charge, and that is enough to make them sign up.

What they miss is that Jesus isn’t just preparing them for the logistics of the coming days.  He’s handing down their inheritance as well.

Jesus isn’t leaving the world the same way he found it.  It isn’t just a matter of the bad people being kicked out, or the unjust getting their punishment.  It isn’t that Jesus’ followers will take over in wealth, prosperity and power.  They won’t simply slip in to the seats of the previous rulers and kings.

We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.  “Ok,” Jesus says, “ok…you can have what is coming to you, my beloved children, my faithful followers…you may have your inheritance.”

Is everyone fed?  Do those children have coats?  Have you stopped by the nursing home?  Or the shelter?  How are the cancer patients?  How about that group that came down with malaria?  HIV?  Are you listening to the questions people are asking?  Have you looked beyond your backyard?  Are babies still growing up in orphanages?  Are teens still giving themselves away to drugs and alcohol and their boyfriends and girlfriends?  My beloved, does everyone have what they need?  Do they know…do they know they are loved?

This, this life of service and being bound to the other, it is yours.  It is what Jesus gives us.  As gift.  As power—new and different as it is.  It is ours.

Yes, yes, I know.  We’d rather have the family car.  Even if your family’s car didn’t offer prestige or power it always had in implied message of freedom and doing whatever you wanted.

But that’s not what Jesus is offering us.  Christianity isn’t about getting what we want.  It isn’t about getting ahead.  It isn’t about who you know.  It isn’t an insurance policy to protect us from sin, or mistakes or illness…or death.  It doesn’t keep us from messing up or hurting people.  It isn’t even solely about getting into heaven.

It is about finding our way back to who we were created to be in the first place.  It is about being connected to our God who created us and knows us and longs for us to be healthy.  It is about having purpose and intentionality.  It is about being connected….to each other, to strangers, to friends and family, to the earth…to God.

And what God gives us, is a new world order.  Our inheritance is the gift of knowing our place in the world…

We can’t help but hear servant, slave through the filter of our culture and context.  I can’t help but pastorally to offer this disclaimer…Jesus isn’t calling you accept abuse, or to stay in a violent controlling situation, God didn’t create you for that...But our place in the world isn’t as center star, either.

The way the world is, isn’t the way it will be.  But our inheritance remains, and it is given for each of us.  Consider the other.  Listen when someone speaks.  Look at what they need.  Focus your time not on your anxiety or fear, but on what is holding others back from being who God created them to be.

Inheritances can be life changing.  They can root us to the past and give us a more secure future.  They also help us understand who we are.  What we come from can shape who we will be.  You and I share an inheritance…one that reminds us…

That we drink from the same cup, we are baptized in the same waters and we servants of each other…we collect this gift at the foot of the cross.  Working and waiting for the world to turn upside down.