Called to
Power?
Isaiah 53;
Hebrews 5:1-10; St. Mark 10:35-45
A Sermon
Prepared and delivered by James E. Norton, Guest Pastor
Church of
the Covenant, Grafton, West Virginia
Twentieth
Sunday after Pentecost, October 21, 2012
This morning’s
Gospel story is one that appears in three of the four Gospels. The disciples quarrel over who should have
the places of honor and power at Jesus’ right and left hands. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on the
disciples. Striving after power and
status may be quite the human thing to do.
When reaching retirement, say some
psychologists, it is natural to look back and reflect on the many of our
working years. I recall my father’s
tendency for such reflection after 50 years as a handyman in a furniture store,
and I find myself engaged in such ruminations after 46 years as an ordained
pastor. One very clear recollection for
me involves the assumptions I had just after graduating from seminary and
receiving the church’s stamp of approval: “Ordained.” (Use ASL for “dumb” as if stamping my
forehead with the word “ordained,” and play with that.) There I was full of excitement about all that
my education had taught me and my imagination even went so far as to believe
that people back home in West Virginia were waiting with bated breath, so eager
were they to absorb all that I could impart.
How powerful I was going to be!
Surely I would be promoted quickly to the office of District
Superintendent, seated at the right or left hand of the Bishop!
Do I need to tell you how long it was
before that delusion was done in?
Actually, it took about a year for my yuppie aspirations to be the
pastor of the “church-of-what’s-happening-now”—with its walls bulging from
increased attendance and membership, its growing budget, its new building programs,
its higher salaries, its added perks, its upscale parsonage, its fancier office
complete with a parson’s private privy, its power and prestige within the
community and throughout the state—it took a year for those hallucinations to
end up where they belonged (down one of the holes in the two-seater outhouse
out back). So much for private privies.
And so much for our power as
pastors. Yet, sometimes it seems that
more than pastors assume that pastors possess power. The message that often comes through from
Superintendents, Bishops and other denominational executives, and sometimes
even through church members, is that if the pastors were competent and their
hearts were in the right place, churches would grow, mission giving would be
overflowing, and operating budgets would always have surpluses, despite the
declining population figures and the worsening economic conditions, especially
for the middle class and working poor.
People have to pay their taxes, but there is no power to compel them to
be faithful in their commitment to the church.
That kind of faithfulness is motivated either by the desire for power
and control (the more I give and the more I do, the more I will be recognized
and rewarded for my “faithfulness”), and/or it is motivated by genuine care and
generosity. But those are highly
personal considerations, and it is unlikely that pastors have much power over
what people do. Adults (not children, of
course) do what they want to do—that’s the privilege of being adult. Pastors and other persons may be able to
persuade others to do those things that are constructive and contribute to the
common good, but the bottom line is that people do what they want to do.
Some individuals sometimes act as if
that they are powerless and that they are not behaving the way they say they
want because of being forced by others against their will. “I really wish I could help out with that
project, but you know how browbeating Brunhilda can be?” How often I’ve heard individuals make such
claims to powerlessness and yet how they really seemed to be doing what they
really wanted to do or not doing what they didn’t want to do, and at the same
time eliciting a pity-party for having to live in such oppressive
conditions. The reality is that being
adult means doing what we want to do, and perhaps, that’s as it should be.
Some of us can remember a time when the institutional church was thought to be a powerful force, one that could dictate what people did and didn’t do. There was a time when the church seemed to be the moral authority in the community, and it was respected and its voice had power. The Blue Laws were enforced so that storeowners didn’t dare open their places of business on Sundays. Prominent professional people and business leaders joined the church because it was good for business to be seen in church.
Those days are gone. The voice of the church is divided and falls
on deaf ears. Those outside the church
witness how in some congregations there is haggling over power and bickering
within the family of faith, and they stay as far away as they can get. The pews empty. The younger generations are more and more
skeptical of all institutions, including the Church, and according to research
data, 85% of persons in their twenties through forties have never even darkened
the doors of a church. They have never
learned the Lord’s Prayer, and about the only time they will ever see the
inside of a church is when they attend a wedding or get married themselves.
One time a couple came to the church where
I was pastor to look around the sanctuary as a possible place to get
married. The communion cup holders in
this particular church were located along the kneeling rail in the front of the
sanctuary. The bride had read the
wedding regulations of the church and saw where the church had “candelabras”
for use at weddings. Pointing to the
communion cup holders along the kneeling rail, she asked if they were the
candle holders we rented out for weddings.
The days when the majority of people have grown up in and been influenced
by the church are probably gone and will never return.
Well, okay, the church isn’t as
powerful as it used to be. So what? There are other very powerful entities in
this world. Corporations, nations and
governments can and do wield enormous power, make no mistake about it! Powerful nations can flex their muscles and
use up hundreds of thousands of billions of dollars in an attempt to control
the course of history, but do they have the power to escape the long-term
political, economic and social consequences of such actions? Is our country’s present financial failure in
any way related to giant corporations and their CEOs condoning virtually any
behavior that will net them and their shareholders greater wealth, no matter
how unethical or illegal; or is our financial failure in any way related to the
cost of combat operations and military actions overseas? Hasn’t history demonstrated again and again
that indiscriminate and miscalculated use of power usually leads to colossal
outcomes that inflict greater harm and destruction than good?
When the disciples asked for positions
of power and prestige, Jesus punctured their grand illusions of power by asking
if they could drink the same cup that he would drink and be baptized with the
same baptism with which he would be baptized.
He was referring, of course, to his own suffering and death. How disappointing Jesus’ response must have
been to the disciples! How upsetting to
be told that instead of positions of honor and public acclaim, the disciples would
indeed share in Jesus’ suffering, drink that same cup and be baptized with that
same baptism. Not only so, but they
would have to renounce their desire for greatness and power and become servants
to people in need.
This morning’s passage for the epistle
to the Hebrews says, “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud
cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death…(but like all
of us) he learned obedience through what he suffered.”
The
One we claim to be the Son of God was not exempt from suffering, anymore than
we are. None of us can escape
suffering. We can inflict suffering (to
be sure) just as we can extend goodness, but we cannot escape suffering. We cannot use faithfulness as a way of
manipulating God into making our lives fair and fine. We cannot give more to the church as a way of
keeping turmoil and trouble at bay. We
cannot expect some special consideration in return for our obedience.
My friend for over thirty years, as decent and thoughtful and good a man as you could ever want to know, who died at age 58 after 15 months of agony battling pancreatic cancer, could tell you if he were alive. Or talk with the mother whom I met some years ago whose son was one of our troops, a medic actually, in Iraq. She could tell you. She showed me a picture of him that appeared in the NY Times. The photographer caught him sharing some of his day’s ration of water with an elderly Iraqi woman, her wrinkled hands smeared with fresh blood. The picture also showed a gun strapped over the boy’s shoulder. According to the Geneva Convention, medics are non-combatants and, as such, are not to carry weapons. The mother’s obvious distress was for her son, to be sure, but she also expressed through her tears deep concern for all whose lives were in jeopardy as well as those families who had lost loved ones.
According to worldly standards, success is determined by political and economic power. James and John request positions of power where they can lord it over others. Jesus responds by saying, “No!” Instead of the glory of exercising authority over others, Jesus offers the way of his own life. Just as he faced his own struggles and prayed with loud cries and tears, so that way of cross-bearing is our lot in life as well. The nation or the church that seeks to save its life by achieving status and power over others will lose it. True disciples, said Jesus, are not those who lord it over others, but those who “deal gently,” who become servants of others.
