God's Advisors - Mark 10:32-45

Did you ever get the feeling that someone you were talking to just didn’t seem to understand what you were saying? They appeared to be listening but when you finished saying something that you considered to be very important, they jumped to something else completely different as if you hadn’t said a word. As I read the Gospel lesson for today, it seems that the disciples of Jesus, especially James and John, had a completely different agenda from their teacher Jesus. He was telling them something very important. He was telling them what would happen when they got to Jerusalem. He would be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes. They would condemn him do death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. They would mock him and spit on Him and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.

What would you think if your teacher and friend told you that? I would think that you would be shocked. You wouldn’t know how to respond. One other time when Jesus told His disciples something similar, Peter pulled Jesus aside and rebuked Him, essentially telling him to stop talking like that. Remember what Jesus said to Him? “Get behind me Satan, you do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men.” He called him Satan. In this case though the disciples didn’t really respond much to what Jesus said at all. Maybe they didn’t understand what He could have meant. Maybe they had other things on their minds. That seems to be the case with James and John, two brothers who were part of Jesus’ inner circle. You would think that they would have had a better understanding of Jesus’ ministry and His purpose for being here on the earth but their question to Jesus showed that they had other ideas.

Perhaps realizing their favored position with Jesus, they came up to Him and asked if he would do whatever they asked. Their answer was pretty surprising. “Grant to us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” What they were asking Jesus was for positions of honor and authority when Jesus established His new kingdom. They wanted to be Jesus’ trusted advisors. They would be looked up to by everyone because they were seated in positions that would grant them great status. They also wanted to be in seated so that they could be able to give advice and counsel to Jesus as He ruled. By their question they revealed that in spite of all that Jesus had taught they still held some of the common understanding that the Messiah would be a rebel leader who would drive out the Roman oppressors and reestablish the Israel of old as a world power.

To make matters worse, the other disciples realized what James and John had asked and they became angry with the two brothers. There could possibly be two reasons why they would become angry. One might be that they realized how foolish the request was and how dare they ask Jesus such a question. The other reason why they would become angry with the two, and this is more likely, is that they hadn’t thought of asking Jesus first. They all may have misunderstood Jesus’ purpose and they all would have wanted the positions of power and prestige for themselves. Why should they get to be Jesus’ advisors? Why not me? They sounded like a bunch of children on the playground arguing about who was going to be first in line when it was time to go in after recess.

We might smile about the foolishness of those disciples or shake our heads at how they acted but in reality, we often do the same things when we think about our place in God’s kingdom. Our human nature is at work all the time urging us to seek positions of honor and prestige in the kingdom of God. We may think that because of our long and dedicated work in the kingdom of God that we deserve places of honor in heaven. The devil works hard on dedicated Christians to get them to think that their work for the Lord ought to be worth something in the big accounting books in heaven. The devil targets workers for the Lord especially because he knows that if he can influence the hard worker and get them to see their work as earning points rather than as response of love then he can get them to think other more destructive thoughts. He can get them to look down on others that don’t do as much as they do. He can get them to complain about everything and everyone who doesn’t agree with them.

The biggest danger is when we start to think that we can be God’s advisors. Our prayer life becomes a series of suggestions to God that imply that His way is not really the best and that we know better. The suggestions become demands and we become very disappointed and sometimes disillusioned when God doesn’t do what we think is best. We gave him our best advice and He didn’t listen. Can we really think that we know better than God?

Not surprisingly, Jesus didn’t think too highly of their request. Anyone who would presume to be qualified to be Jesus’ advisors would have to be prepared to drink the cup that He would have to drink. What he meant by that was that they would have to go through what He had just described to them about what would happen to Him. They said they would, not really understanding what that would mean. They would suffer but not in the same way and not with the same outcome. It was time for a lesson in true discipleship. He called them all around Him and explained what it meant to be great in the kingdom of God. It has nothing to do with status or honor or power or influence. Jesus said, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.”

What a surprise that must have been! Servants and slaves had very little status in their society. Yet the role of a servant was considered by Jesus to be a sign of greatness in the kingdom of God. That comes as a surprise to many people when they hear this passage. We are tempted to be like the disciples when Jesus explained His suffering and death to them. They heard it but it didn’t register. They didn’t really understand what He meant probably because they didn’t want to accept such shocking and negative news. We are like that at times. I have to be like a servant? I don’t want to hear that. That doesn’t fit my lifestyle and my self-image. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.

Anticipating that kind of response from His disciples and from us, Jesus used himself as the ultimate example of what true servanthood really means. He said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” He came not to be served but to serve and His service to us is that He gave His life as the ransom to set us free from the power of sin, death and the death. He set us free from the sinful thoughts, attitudes, words and deeds that demonstrate our selfish nature. By His suffering and death He paid the price to free us from the guilt and punishment of our sins and set us free to serve Him as we serve one another in joyful response to His great love and His life of love and service to us.

He sets us free from the urge to be God’s advisors to being His ambassadors. We have a wonderful Savior who has given His own life for us and by His resurrection we have a great victory that we can share with those around who are still living with the idea that they can tell God what to do. As His ambassadors we can understand the servant role in terms of bringing to people what they need to hear. A servant is dedicated to serving the needs of his master. The greatest need of all people is to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We can stand ready in season and out of season to share the hope that we have in Jesus, the One who came not to be served but to give His life as a ransom for many. We are not God’s advisors but we are His ambassadors. Amen.

And the peace which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen

gm