Sermon Tone Analysis

We are on the road to Jerusalem.

His going there was God’s plan from the beginning of time that would expose our rebellion and manifest God’s love in salvation.

So, we find that Jesus takes His disciples aside privately and makes it clear that it is His intention to go to Jerusalem.

Now, if Jesus had stopped at this point this would have heightened the excitement - now is the time that the Kingdom is coming and the Roman’s are leaving.

I suspect that it was at this very point that the disciples stopped listening for though they heard Jesus say the next words it was as if He had not said them because they could not put two and two together and make four, instead it made zero sense.

But the message should have been getting clearer for this was not the first or second time that Jesus had told them that He was going to suffer but this was now the third time.

Granted that this time Jesus gave more detail, namely that He would be betrayed, He would be handed over to the Gentiles and that He would be crucified.

Jesus was trying to condition the disciples for what was to happen.

They really did not grasp what was being said at all as evidenced in what happened next.

Mother’s love their kids, don’t they?

Today is “Mothering Sunday”.

We do have Jesus on His way to Jerusalem and in a later passage of Him brooding over Jerusalem as a Hen broods over her chicks longing to gather them together.

Today, mothers are ambitious for their kids.

I’ve seen a few TV programs about Tiger Mums and what they put their kids through whether it is having their kids taught piano, spelling bees, extra tutorials in maths or some other subject.

They are constantly pushing them.

I’m not sure that this makes for happy kids but what do I know!

I think I could have done with a bit more pushing at school if I hadn’t been ill so often.

Well, in this passage we have a mother, and perhaps not the best example of one, but certainly ambitious for her sons, so there really is nothing new under the sun.

We should also remember that in that particular day and age women did not have the same rights and that if a woman had approached another rabbi to ask something of them they would not have been heard yet, here, we find that Jesus hears what she has to say just as much as He would hear a man.

Indeed, Jesus was radical in that way.

He would turn normal conventions on their heads.

Convention is only there to maintain order but sometimes these need to be reevaluated.

I don’t know who instigated this whole thing.

Was it the mother pushing the kids or the kids pushing the mother?

Either way they wanted to get in before Peter asked or any of the others asked for they all had these things in mind as we see from their response later on.

In Mark the words of the request echo that of Bathsheba to David concerning Solomon:

But get this first.

They really do not know what they are asking.

They still had in mind that Jesus was about to be crowned King in Jerusalem for this would be the fulfilment of prophecy.

They imagined Jesus upon the throne and with His right and left hand men next to Him.

After all, this was a fair assumption seeing that they were part of the inner circle which did include Peter but who seems to have been forgotten here!

John Stackhouse wrote a parody of those who think such things:

This all sounds pretty contemporary to me.

“The Lord takes care of those who take care of themselves,” some say.

Name it and claim it,” that’s what faith’s about!

You can have what you want if you just have no doubt.

So make out your “wish list” and keep on believin’

And you find yourself perpetually receivin’

Their request, though, was the very opposite of what Jesus had been saying of Himself, that He is the Suffering Servant Saviour.

The Lord, of course, was not going to leave James and John, or the rest of the disciples for that matter, in their delusion.

So he began to dialogue with them, probing the shallowness and naivete of their thinking.

Are you able to drink the cup and be baptised?

How did James and John understand this?

Of course, we are up to the task of ruling, after all we are called sons of thunder.

We will be fully immersed in the role of ruling with you.

But, of course, they did not realise that this cup was not of blessing, not of leading but of suffering.

To receive the same cup and to be baptised as Jesus was to be was not at all what they had imagined.

The cup here was to be of internal, mental, physical and spiritual sufferings that Jesus would endure.

And even if there had been some sort of inkling the full breadth of it would not be understood at that very moment of time.

Sometimes we wish for something but don’t realise it is not what we thought it would be.

They were seeing things through rose-tinted glasses and fantasy of the good life when they should have been looking through not roses but thorn-tinted glasses and the reality on the ground.

After receiving an answer in the affirmative Jesus then tells them that they will indeed drink the cup and be baptised with the same that Jesus is baptised with.

“Be careful of what you ask for” is an oft spoke expression.

Let me be clear to those who would seek to rule in this place, for those who have sought to be on the Diaconate, for those who work behind the scenes trying to influence things, be careful of what you wish for, for the cup that you will drink may not taste sweet but bitter.

This is why Scripture is clear that those in such positions should not be novices or new to the faith or susceptible to pride for it can damage you and those whom you seek to have a say about.

For James and John they both suffered greatly.

In Acts 12:2 we find that James became a martyr killed by Herod with a sword.

John lived in exile, alone and solitary, until he died of a great age but not before going through tortuous sufferings throughout his life.

They both drank the cup and were baptised into suffering.

It is curious to me that here the word baptised is not thought to be anything other than a complete immersion whereas in other places certain elements of the Church think that baptism is just a sprinkle of water on the head.

No, baptism in both cases is a full and complete dunking.

This picture shows just how hard it was for James and John and indeed all the other disciples who were also martyred and on their way to death suffered immensely.

Now the disciples hear that this outrageous request had been asked of Jesus.

I think that they were disappointed that they had not got in there first!

As I. Williams puts it:

“The ambition of one creates envy in others who partake of the same feeling.”

But it also reveals that not one of them had understood what Jesus said when He took them aside.

I will be betrayed.

And right in their midst was the betrayer, perhaps not with that thought in this heart, yet.

But he, like the others, expected Jesus to rule and it may have been the disillusionment that this was not going to happen as thought that led to the seeds being planted in Judas’ heart.

But Jesus had been upfront with them all about what was going to actually take place when they got to Jerusalem; He had not hoodwinked them at any time.

And then came the lesson.

“You know that rulers rule.

My Kingdom is not like that.

I am not here to become a great military leader and by force cause certain things to go my way.”

I have heard about some churches in the last few of days where the Pastor became an autocrat and dictated how things were to be done without first hearing the opinions of others and ruling over the deacons in such a way that they were conceded their power to him and caused those who opposed him to resign.

He really should have read this passage carefully.

For Jesus said: It shall not be so among you.

The greatest is the one who serves not the one who rules though these are not necessarily opposites.

For as we shall see Jesus rules and serves or, should it be said, that He serves in His rulership.

This is THE key verse in Mark’s gospel:

First, Jesus calls Himself the Son of Man not the Son of God.

He is THE true human.

So, He wanted to be clear, that on this occasion, on His first advent, He has come to be our servant not to have others wait hand and foot on Him.

This is hard to get our minds around.

Think it in your mind: Jesus is my servant.

It does not sound right at all.

And indeed it is not right.

We are to be His servants.

But what we find is that Jesus came to serve and make Himself as nothing in order to save us.

He

was ever active in ministering to others’ wants, going about doing good, healing the sick, cleansing lepers, casting out demons; always accessible, sympathetic, merciful; never weary of teaching, however fatigued in body; a servant to the race which he came to save.

We are reminded of the words in Philippians:

He paid the ransom in full in order to reconcile us to God.

This is what we read in this week’s promise in the bulletin.

We have been reconciled to God by Jesus in His paying the price for us and now we have this same ministry towards others.

We are to serve each other, we are to serve those in the world so that we also bring people to reconciliation with God.

In 1878 when William Booth’s Salvation Army had just been so named, men from all over the world began to enlist.

One man, who had once dreamed of himself as a bishop, crossed the Atlantic from America to England to enlist.

He was a Methodist minister, Samuel Logan Brengle.