“Prestige” - October 18, 2015

Mark 10:35-45

When James and John went to Jesus and asked,

“Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory”, [Mark 10: 37]

you sort of have to wonder what they were thinking.  Were they asking to be second-in-command?  Maybe, but I suspect it had more to do with that picture they had of Jesus in his glory.  There they would be at that moment, right there beside him in the spotlight.  They were focused on the photo opportunity.  It’s like the line from Jesus Christ, Superstar, when the disciples sing,

“Always thought that I’d be an apostle.

Always knew I’d make it if I try.

Then, when we retire, we can write the gospels

So they’ll all talk about us when we die.”

If you aren’t in the center of the picture, you can at least be just to the edge of it.  It’s a place of honor, of prominence, and of prestige.  It’s like those restaurant owners who line their lobbies with pictures of celebrities palling around with them.

            Jesus responded with a realistic assessment of what it takes to get to that point, and it didn’t sound like a stroll down the red carpet.

“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?” [Mark 10:38] 

When the moment came, they would not be able to see things through to the end.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, they fell asleep while he was praying, and when he was arrested they fled, like the others.  That’s really the whole problem with being preoccupied with prestige.  Either you find out that it isn’t such a big deal after all, or you discover that it comes at a higher price than you realized, or you find that it isn’t to be obtained the way you thought it would.

            Here’s a little quiz.  What do all of these people have in common?

John Breckinridge                               William King
George Clinton                                   Thomas Marshall
Schuyler Colfax                                  Levi Morton 
Charles Curtis                                     James Sherman
George Dallas                                     Daniel Tompkins
Charles Dawes                                    William Wheeler
Charles Fairbanks                              Henry Wilson 
Thomas Hendricks                             Garrett Hobart

How about if I add these?

Hubert Humphrey       Nelson Rockefeller                 Dan Quayle

Walter Mondale          Adlai Stevenson                      Al Gore

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            Of course, you recognized the answer from the start.  They have all been vice-presidents of the United States.  They have all been held in high esteem in their day, of course.  A modern vice president flies in Air Force Two and receives a nineteen-gun salute.  They live at one of the most famous addresses in Washington: 1 Observatory Circle, NW.  It is an office to which almost every child in the land aspires at some point, and carries with it an automatic seat on the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.

            You get it, right?  In fact, the vice presidency is a hard and mostly thankless job.  It has a lot of truly important duties attached to it.  In addition to hanging around in case the president dies and covering receptions and events that the president is unable to attend, the vice president presides at meetings of the Senate and casts a vote to break any ties.  The vice president oversees voting by the electoral college and presides at the impeachment proceedings of any federal official except the president.  The vice president is a member of the National Security Council, a body that does not show up in the Constitution but that has tremendous influence at key moments.

            All the same, there’s something that makes the office the object of jokes.  They started with the first vice president, John Adams, who wrote to his wife in 1793, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."  That is what it is like to be second-in-command. 

            It’s ironic, in a way.  The office of the vice president (and I’m not commenting here on any of the specific people who have held it, some of whom have been statesmen and some of whom have been scoundrels) – the office itself is one example of what Jesus pointed out about worldly position.

“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 10:41-45] 

We see it in Washington, but it’s also true in Phoenixville.  What makes someone great is willingness to take a back seat, or to do what needs doing without reference to self.

            Every year, as we approach Charge Conference, our annual organizational meeting with the District Superintendent, I fill out all kinds of forms and am asked to consider questions that get to the heart of whether the church is being faithful to Jesus; if so, how? and if not, why not?  This year I can say a clear “yes” in part because we’ve had an unusual demonstration of that kind of discipleship, one that we hadn’t even envisioned clearly a year ago.  In January, we started cooking and serving (there’s a word that was in the gospel lesson today) meals to people who need them every other Monday.  Now, in order to meet health department standards, people who are doing that are required to cover their hair with a net or a hat, so we went to the list to see how many to buy.  

            We discovered that we needed more than fifty caps.  Mind you, that doesn’t include the people who support the work by providing supplies.  In other words, about one in three people sitting here on a Sunday are involved in direct, hands-on ministry of this one type – and there are other ministries worth celebrating as well.  

            So instead of finishing my sermon with a quotation or a poem or the joke about “Everybody knows Bubba” that I thought about using, I’d like to finish it with a prayer for these people and others:

Thank you, Lord, for people who hear your message and get it, who without fuss or fanfare simply do what you ask, whether in this ministry or any other.  Thank you for people who take up some form of service to your children, whether in their spare time or as their life’s work.  We ask you to bless them in what they do, and to raise up others beside them, as you work in and through your disciples by your Holy Spirit.  Amen.