Year B
 Isaiah 53:4-12
 Psalm 91:9-16
 Hebrews 5:1-10
 Mark 10:35-45

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Michael Hegeman…  who is the Preaching Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary…  wrote…  that scripture itself…  is God’s divine condescension to human language…  and human capacity…  to know more about the mysteries of God…  when we speak of God…  our words gesture toward divine reality through the mode of metaphor…  parable…  and simile…  what this means…  is that we struggle to understand words and ideas which point to transcendent…  to ephemeral and wordless realities beyond our own…

And what we have in today’s reading from Hebrews…  is a comparison between human High Priests… and the one Divine High Priest…  and its author uses a form of comparison called the chiasmus… which uses the pattern…  A, B, C, D, E… E, D, C, B, A…  and symmetrical patterns like these are found in ancient literature…  like the epic poetry of the Iliad and the Odyssey…  and biblical writers used them…  to highlight details which they felt were particularly important… 

The human high priest is chosen from the clan of Aaron…  is put in charge of things pertaining to God…  offers gifts and sacrifices for sins…  deals gently with the wayward…  is not himself above weakness…  and doesn’t presume to take this honor upon himself…  but is called by God to serve in that role… 

The divine priest…  does not glorify himself…  but is chosen by God…  learned obedience through human suffering…  relates to the weakness of others…  offered prayers of supplication…  became the source of eternal salvation…  and is designated as a high priest by God…  according to the order of Melchizedek… 

But where we can get tripped up… where we can mislead ourselves…  is in v. 5…  where the author uses the phrase so also…  this phrase can sound to our modern ears as though the author is comparing apples to apples… but that would be a mistake… one of these things is not like the Other…  and the comparison doesn’t do justice to anything that happens on earth…  and what relates to God… our earthly reality pales in the light of who God is…  and what God does on our behalf…

And the disciples had the same kind of difficulty understanding what Jesus was talking about…  today’s Gospel is the last part of a three-part cycle in Mark…  Jesus predicts his rejection and vindication three times… the disciples reject or misunderstand his words three times…  and Jesus corrects these mistakes three times with teachings about genuine discipleship…

In Mark 8:33…  Jesus had just said to Peter…  Get behind me Satan…  because Peter didn’t want to believe that Jesus would be killed…  and in Mark 9:34…  the disciples had just been arguing about who was greatest…  and when Jesus called them on it…  they got all sheepish and quiet…  and now…  James and John…  who were among the first disciples Jesus called…  who with Peter…  were invited by Jesus to witness events no one else saw…  the raising Jairus’ daughter…  the Transfiguration…  with Moses and Elijah on Jesus’ right and left…  and after that…  they probably felt full of themselves…  because James and John now come to Jesus and say…  Teacher…  we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you…

It sounds like the promise King Herod make to Herodias after she danced… Ask me for whatever you wish…  and I will give it… Jesus says…  I’m going to die… and they’re like…  Hey… can we sit on your right and on your left…  and their request is so outrageous…  that when Matthew tells this story…  he has their mother come and make the same request on their behalf…  as mothers will do…  but when the other disciples hear about their request… they argued… after all… none of them wanted to be left out of all the glory either…  and speaking about mothers…  at a gathering my family once attended at the National Cathedral… my very own mother asked the Bishop of the Diocese of Washington…  if he had a job for me…  I was mortified…  but he was very gracious and kind…  and suggested that I call his office…

The disciples had been having some very bad days…  that’s why it was so difficult for them to understand what Jesus meant when he talked about servant leadership…  like us…  they not only wanted to hold on to what they knew… they wanted to be taken care of…  not take care of others…  they wanted to feel special…  not feel like the least or the last… they wanted to get the best seats at the game…  at the concert…  in Heaven…  without having to wait in line… 

So how do we get our heads around servant leadership…  how can we understand that putting ourselves last actually puts us first…  in a spiritually and psychologically healthy way…  last week we heard about the rich man who wanted to know what he had to do to inherit eternal life…  he didn’t like Jesus’ answer…  

And so as we begin our stewardship season…  we need to begin to think about…  and talk about…  the support of our parishes / this parish in a new way…  we need to understand that coming in first…  doesn’t of necessity also mean withholding our time…  talent…  and treasure…  we need to correct the notion that we lose something paramount…  by sharing of ourselves and our resources…  of and by itself…  money isn’t evil…  but idolizing it can be…  idolizing it can keep us from the kind of growth into which God invites us…

We can then more easily understand…  as our reading from Hebrews shows…  that the abiding love and deep connection that God wants for us far exceeds this human experience… and I believe that when we experience this deep connection with God… when we know in our heads AND our hearts… that this love and care is everlasting… that it’s not something that can be consumed by moths or rust… or stolen by thieves… money becomes one of those things that we can more easily share with grateful hearts…   as we are grounded in God’s love…

Jesus asked James and John if they could drink from the same cup as he…  and be baptized with the same baptism…  they assured him that they could…  and he assured them that they would…  but even Jesus asked that if possible…  that the cup be taken from him…

And although the historical record can’t verify John’s martyrdom…  it’s pretty clear that James was martyred in about 44 A.D. by order of King Herod Agrippa I of Judea…  

and Jesus’ rebuke is meant to be a reminder to us…  that we should not pin our hopes for salvation on those people…  or those things…  which cannot bear the weight of our expectations…  because any human being who is a self-appointed savior…  or anything onto which we project the power to save us…  like money…  is going to be a disappointment…