Mark 10:35 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.” 10:36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 10:37 And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 10:38 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?” 10:39 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; 10:40 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.” 10:41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 10:42 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.10:43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 10:44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 10:45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
“You must be slave of all”
Main point: world has “s.o.p;” we must see with right-wising eyes, i.e., from where God enters the world, at what the world considers “the bottom up,”
- What is S.O.P.?
- What Vision Impairment do James and John have?
- How does Jesus want us to see?
- What does Jesus want us to do?
Bohana Danilovic, of Serbia, has a very rare visual disorder. It was her way of reading a book or a newspaper that first tipped people off to her condition, called, S.O.P., which brings us to the first question in today’s outline, “What is “S.O.P.?” (first slide) It stands for “spatial orientation phenomenon.” The “spatial orientation” part is about how Bohana sees things in relation to each other. Bohana sees the world upside-down. So she reads books and newspapers from the bottom up. Her television set also stands on its head. The doctors and specialists call it a “phenomenon,” instead of a “syndrome” or a “condition,” because they have no idea what causes it or how to fix it.
But they don’t have to fix it. Aside from a few other minor adjustments, Bohana lives and functions quite well. Which leaves me with a strangely disturbing, niggling, nagging question: What if Bohana is actually seeing the world right-side up, and everyone else has it wrong? Yes, down for us is the direction of gravity’s pull, toward the center of the planet, beneath our feet. But in the vast reaches of infinite space, where really is up, or down or east or west? And what difference does it make?
Eeeeeeew. That’s a disturbing, disorienting thought, like the experience Becky and I had of being in a small airplane one dark and cloudy night, flying over Lake Michigan. There were no lights to be seen anywhere down below, no moonlight nor any stars above, just pure pitch blackness. “I’m starting to feel kind of funny,” I told the pilot, “because I’m not all that sure anymore whether we’re right-side up, sideways, upside-down, cockeyed or catty-whompus to the ground. “Is there a bag handy in here?”
The pilot smiled and pointed to a display on the instrument panel that showed something like the silhouette of an airplane, looking nose on, basically a ball in the center with a line through it, representing the angle of the wings. Clyde tells me it’s called a “turn-and-bank indicator (Did I get that right?)” I started to feel better when I saw that the line was dead level, and then the lights of Benton Harbor, Michigan, appeared below.
I suspect that the disciples felt a similar kind of dizziness and disorientation when Jesus told them, “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Because slaves are never first; they’re last, last in terms of honor, consideration, power, last whenever it comes time to eat or to rest.
Or do we have that upside-down and backward, too? When two of Jesus’ disciples, James and John, come to Jesus and say, “Grant us each a throne closest to yours, one at the left, the other at the right.” That’s our clue that they also have a vision problem, something we might call, S.O.P., for “spiritual orientation phenomenon,” or “social orientation phenomenon.” That’s the answer to the second question in the outline: “What kind of vision impairment did James and John have?” A social orientation phenomenon or a spiritual orientation phenomenon. Or both. Socially and spiritually speaking, the world and its up and down looked to them like a giant pyramid.
Jesus diagnosed it when he said, “among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.” In the Roman Empire, as in all empires, society and spirituality were like one big pyramid, with Caesar and the royal family at the top in terms of status, power and wealth. Just beneath them were the nobility, who were the wealthy owners of estates, high government officials, Senators, highest ranking military officers, friends and relatives of Caesar and his family. Underneath them were citizens, people with some rights like some voting in their professional guilds, or in a few local elections, and due process of law, if ever you were accused of a crime.
Underneath the citizens were subjects, the regular laborers, merchants, artisans, farmers, fishers, and low-ranking soldiers, of all the different tribes and nations incorporated into the empire, who couldn’t vote, who could be forced to host soldiers or carry their baggage, with no guarantee of due process of law in case you were accused of something, but who were still expected to be grateful for the protection and the prosperity of the empire. Most Jews of the time were subjects of Rome, like Jesus. Only a few of them were citizens, like the Apostle Paul.
At the bottom of the social pyramid were the slaves, who had no rights nor privileges, who were usually considered and treated as mere property of their masters. On these lowest two levels of the pyramid, the subjects and the slaves, loomed the shadow of the cross. They could be punished or executed without due process of law, and by the most publicly humiliating and painful means. That is why the Apostle Paul, a citizen, was beheaded for his ministry and his faith, while Peter, a mere subject, was crucified.
The Romans weren’t alone in seeing the world this way. The Egyptians weren’t the only ones into pyramids. It’s no accident that human sacrifice often happened atop Babylonian, Aztec and Mayan pyramids, because worldly empires are usually pyramids of human sacrifice, through war, commerce and religion.
Maybe you’re thinking, “That pyramid describes my junior high! or my high school!” Or, “That’s like where I work today!” If so, not surprising. This pyramid is still the most common form of social and spiritual organization and orientation in the world. Different forms of human sacrifice happen atop them still. The whole pyramid exists to serve the few at the top. The higher up you are, the better off you are, and the better you are, some might think, because, for the Romans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Maya, the top is where power, grace, God and the goods are understood to enter the world. Their benefits trickle downward by a system of patronage. If someone higher up than me is my patron, a friend, a protector and an advocate, then I can get some goodies coming down out of that relationship. But I must also come through for my patron by way of serving and obeying him, by honoring him to his face and before others, and showing up whenever he needs help in his fields or in a fight.
In such a pyramid, people’s eyes, minds and hearts are oriented upwards, toward the peak, in admiration, adoration or envy (or all of the above) for protection, favors, guidance, and a chance to rise up in status. If every we look downward along this pyramid, it’s often in fear, contempt and arrogance. That’s why you’ll never see a TV show entitled, “Lifestyles of the Poor and Unknown.”
And that’s the way James and John see the world; that is their spiritual and social orientation phenomenon. That’s why they request thrones at Jesus’ left and right: when Jesus is finally recognized for who he is, they want some of that status to rub off on themselves, by their immediate proximity to Jesus, their patron.
Which is not entirely off the mark. Isn’t it interesting that Jesus doesn’t challenge the desire of James and John to be great? He simply challenges the competitive, king-of-the-hill, imperial pyramid-shaped way that they’re going about it. If anything, they’re aiming too low and settling for too little. For Jesus says, in Revelation 3: “To the one who overcomes will I grant the right to sit with me on my throne, as I have overcome and sat down with my Father on his throne.” The brothers want thrones next to Jesus, while Jesus offers to share his throne with us. What beats that?
Nothing, unless it’s really important that the other disciples be further away or lower down the pyramid from Jesus than they are. That’s another symptom of the conventional, competitive spiritual and social orientation phenomenon: fear and fixation with who’s above me and who’s below me on the social and spiritual pyramid.
Which brings us to the third question: How does Jesus want us to see? Jesus has a different way of seeing spiritual and social things, one as opposite from that of James and John as Bohana Danilovic and her vision is from most of ours. Jesus’ way of seeing he states most clearly in verses 43 and 44: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”
His choice of word, “slave” is where my sermon preparation this week got hijacked. A week ago, I would have told you that this sermon was going to be about servanthood, and that servanthood is a key feature of discipleship, according to our vision statement: “bearing the lasting fruit of discipleship, and planting the seeds of God’s Reign through… service.” I was also going to talk about servant education, like what Goshen College and other Mennonite schools and universities do with service/study terms abroad. Or about Mennonite Central Committee service assignments, or the SALT program, “Serving and Learning Together.” Those are very good programs, well worth our support and participation.
I was even going to talk about servant leadership, which has become something of a buzzword in education, government and business. Jana and I, and Halle too, did some reading this year about servant leadership, including the famous essay by that title, some forty years ago, written by the Quaker author who started the whole school of “servant leadership,” Robert Greenleaf. I was even going to include some stories about companies and organizations that have done well by doing good, doing good for their employees, as well as for their clients. In business, servant leader managers do not only see the employees as tools for the growth of the company. They also see the company as a tool for the growth of the employees. Servant leader managers don’t care about how much closer they are to the top of the pyramid than other employees; they care about how they can lift their employees up. They’re still firm about the mission of their business, or their organization. They don’t indulge nor excuse any sabotage or irresponsibility on the part of the people they manage. But they know that a business or an organization in which everyone feels some ownership, because they feel equally safe, honored, trusted, respected, supported, and served, are not only more likely to succeed, they’re more likely to be good places to work. That’s not only good human relationships; that better reflects the nature of God, and of God’s kingdom.
But I got waylaid on the way to that sermon by one word, “slave,” in verse 44, as in, “Whoever would be first must be the slave of all.” I dug into the original Greek to see, Did Jesus really use the word for “slave,” as in “bondslave,” the man or the woman who was bought and sold like livestock or property, someone who was unable to escape lifelong servitude, who lived under the shadow of the cross, without legal rights or social honor, at the lowest level of society, then and now? And although I never made history any of the three times I took introductory Greek, I could tell, yes, Jesus used that word, “slave,” as in, well, “slave,” and not just servant, when he said to be “the slave of all.” “Slave” was a deliberately provocative and powerful choice of words, in that time and place. It still feels provocative and powerful now.
The word, “Servant,” by contrast, sounds so mild, so friendly, so tame. The servant is in charge of how much or how well he serves; a slave is not. I’ve heard of “service with a smile,” but whoever heard of “slavery with a smile?” Which got me to wondering, Does Jesus want us to be everyone’s willing and ready “Stepn’ Fetchit,” just mindlessly taking orders from everyone so as to please them, for fear of punishment? That’s what slavery is about. And how do we square “Be a slave to all,” with Jesus’ other teaching, “No one can serve two masters?”
Jesus certainly did not act in a slavish, servile, people-pleasing fashion. He had a firm, fearless, assertive way about himself. He wasn’t at everyone’s beck and call, to do whatever they wish. He didn’t seem to feel responsible for making people around him happy, nor to be afraid of people’s disapproval or punishment. When Jesus recommends slavery to us, I wonder if he is talking more about our perspective than about our personality. What he says makes most sense to me as a challenge to our customary, pyramid-shaped view and vision of the world, in which our eyes are stuck looking upward, always watching, waiting and wishing for our chance to move up. In contrast to the imperial pyramid I described a moment ago, our point of view should be something more like an inverted, upside-down triangle.
For this is God’s perspective. An upside-down pyramid is a symbol of how all the grace and goodness of the most high God focuses and funnels down toward each person, where all of us really stand, together, slave, subject, citizen, or Caesar, in equal stature, in equal need of God’s grace and goodness. This upside-down pyramid (or is it right-side up?) is also a picture of how Jesus is and how he came into the world, as “all the fullness of God dwelling” in him, in one person, one place, here below. In contrast with the imperial worldview, where God or the gods enter the social pyramid at the top, “the word of God that became flesh and dwelt among us,” entered society at the lowest level, as one of the weakest and most helpless of the imperial subjects, a homeless Jewish baby. As he was born, as he lived, so he died, the death of an imperial subject and a slave, on an imperial cross.
See why Paul would later refer to the gospel and the message of the cross as foolishness and a stumbling block to both Jews and Gentiles? Because they were so used to looking upward on the imperial pyramid of power.
To be a “slave to all” then is a matter of perspective, learning to see anew in a dizzying, disorienting way, kind of like getting a new pair of glasses. The optometrist says this is the prescription you need, but you have to keep them on a day or two to prove her right. It’s a perspective of love toward the bottom of the pyramid, and of identification with the bottom of the pyramid.
Which brings me to the fourth question: What does Jesus want us to do with what we see, in this new way of seeing, the real way? God’s way? Right-side up, for a change? Jesus is saying to the disciples, “Learn to look down, as God does, toward the levels below you, even toward the bottom, to the level of the slaves and the subjects, where the cross casts its dark shadow. Look there no longer with pride, nor fear, nor contempt, but with the eyes of love, the eyes of identification. For that is where the Son of Man has entered the world, and that is where you will find God most often present, most often at work, for there God is most often wanted and welcomed.”
This matter of spiritual and social orientation phenomenon came up soon after the events of today’s gospel reading, in the first church of Corinth. At the beginning of the service, Joe talked about the fighting and factions that were dividing that Church. Would to God that it was only about different opinions on various issues. Then they could have given each other some time and forbearance as they engaged in a shared search for truth. But the Apostle Paul told his Corinthian disciples, “You are still carnal, you are still worldly,” because they were still thinking and seeing according to the world’s imperial, pyramid-shaped perspective. “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Peter,” or “I am of Apollos,” they said, as they staked out different identities for themselves in competition one with another. That turbo-charged every difference of opinion with an extra boost of fear: Where am I, and where are people like me, on the pyramid of power, wealth and worth?
As an antidote to this fear-driven king-of-the-hill winner-takes-all cut-throat competition for power and position in their pyramid perspective on the world, they needed a fresh vision of Christ and the cross, of Christ as the wisdom of God, who came into the world at the level of subjects and slaves, identifying with imperial subjects and slaves, because he was first and foremost God’s slave. Paul also wanted his Corinthian friends to see the cross not as an embarrassing part of the gospel story to play down, but as the very symbol and shorthand for the way God works in the world, so often from the bottom of the pyramid up. And so God upends and reverses the customary and competitive wisdom of the world, the very wisdom, so-called, that nailed the best friend humanity ever had to a cross. Then they would be the kind of community which gives “the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another (I Cor. 12: 24-25).”
Someone who lived out this cross-shaped wisdom, from learning to look down the world’s pyramid of power in love, was Father Henri Nouwen. If you haven’t read any of his works, I can’t recommend them enough. When he died in 1996, a commentator on Public Radio described him as the prophet of downward mobility, and rightly so.
When Henri got a teaching position at the very prestigious Harvard Seminary, he thought he had reached the top of the academic pyramid. But he didn’t last there long. He did not have the stomach for all the departmental politics, the constant, competitive jockeying for power, position, status and tenure by publishing the right kinds of scholarly articles in the right scholarly magazines, and doing whatever it takes to get great student reviews. He was to teach about the practice of Christian spirituality. This was a seminary, after all. But that was a dead-end road for any quest for academic acclaim. The fact that he took that subject seriously earned him labels like, “bigoted, reactionary, imperialist, or chauvinist” from some of the most strident and influential students.
At the same time that Father Nouwen was getting disenchanted by the highest levels of the academic pyramid, he was also getting intrigued by another model of Christian formation, one that a French priest, Father Jean Vanier, was developing. In his ministry to physically and developmentally disabled people, Jean understood that they not only had great needs, they also had much to offer. Like everyone else, they want to give to others, as well as receive. So Jean Vanier began some intentional Christian communities in which they would live with people who have all the normal and expected physical and development that society expects and rewards, so that they could all serve each other, with whatever gifts they could contribute. For some, that could never be anything more than a smile, or a hug. The network of these communities is called, “L’Arche.” That’s French for, “The Ark,” as in Noah’s Ark.
But as Father Nouwen discovered, there is great power in smiles and hugs. As he got pushed out, or fled out, of the highest levels of the academic pyramid, Nouwen found comfort visiting a L’Arche household in Canada, until he finally quit the Harvard faculty and joined that community. He was still in demand as a speaker and writer on the spiritual life, but he would go nowhere unless he could bring one of the disabled residents along. One of them took on the job of turning the pages of Nouwen’s speeches for him. Their presence together at the podium was a living parable of everything Nouwen was discovering about the God who upends and inverts our conventional, competitive pyramids of power by entering the world at the bottom, a God who exercises his awesome power most by surrendering it, to be found, as St. Augustine said, not in power above us, but in weakness at our feet, at the level of the slaves, the subjects, the downtrodden and the disabled.
So, what does Jesus want us to do? To break free of the enchantment and enthrallment of the levels and the layers of human power and prestige above us, and to take off our blinders, the pyramid-shaped blinders that society hands out, which keep our attention focused upward. In their place, let’s put on God’s cross-shaped lenses of divine wisdom, and learn to look downward, there to see the people and the wisdom we so easily overlook, as well as God, who has entered our world, not at the top, but at the level of our lowest common needs. Then we’ll be seeing right side up.