Do I want to be a servant?

So I'm leaving tomorrow for Bishop's convocation so I wanted to make sure that I posted this before I left. Between the weather (the start of a Nor'eastern), the text (kinda downers,) the hymns (which were are based on the text), and the sermon (also based on the text) the morning worship was kind of a downer of a service, but this afternoon we are having a blessing of the animals so hopefully it will be a fun afternoon. But I'll write more about that later after it happens. This sermon is based on Mark 10:35-45

James and John wanted something from Jesus that Jesus could not give them. They wanted to sit at Jesus’ left and right hands in his glory. They wanted to be like Jesus. They wanted the power and prestige that comes from being the leader’s right and left hand men, the second and third in command, the ones people had to go through in order to get to Jesus. They not only wanted these things, wanted to be like Jesus, they also thought that they could actually be like Jesus. That they could drink from the cup that Jesus’ drinks and be baptized with the baptism that Jesus was baptized with. They thought that they could do these things, they had no doubt that they could be like Jesus.

And in many ways we too feel like we can be like Jesus. We may not feel like we deserve to sit at Jesus’ right and left hands but we feel like we too can drink from the cup that Jesus’ drinks and be baptized into his baptism. For weren’t we baptized into his baptism at this font or one much like it? For many of us when we heard the last few verses of today’s gospel “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” we started to mentally tally all the ways that we provide service to our church, our community, our family. How we donated so much money to so many different charities, or that we volunteer here at church in various ways or volunteer with an organization or two with the community, whether it is a social, political or philanthropy organization. We want to be like Jesus. We want to be a servant.

Wait we want to be a servant? Who truly wants to be a servant? To be a servant means to give up your own life and be at the constant demand of a master. It means to do whatever the master wants you to do, regardless of how demeaning the task is or what time it is or what else you have to get done or what else you had plan for the day. It is hard for us to understand the concept of a true servant since very few people in today’s society are servants. Americans went to war to abolish slavery, formed unions to make sure we are workers with rights and not servants to be abused. No we don’t really want to be servants, we want to be great.

We want to be the greatest and many will do anything in order to become the greatest. That is why reality competitions shows have made it so big on TV. Think about it. There are alliances that formed, lies that are told, cheating that happens all in order for someone to be America’s Next Top Whatever… The Amazing Race, Hell’s Kitchen, Top Chef, Project Runway, Survivor, Big Brother, the Bachelor, The Apprentice, all of these shows and many, many more have people lying, cheating, and stealing in order to be the top, in order to be the greatest. And even those of us who think we would never actually act that way, get sucked into these programs because on some basic human level, we all want to be the greatest. And even if we aren’t the one competing, we want the person we are routing for to be given top honors. We all want to have our names in lights, to win the cash prize, to be noted for our fame.

See we really don’t want to be servants; no one really wants to be a servant. We all want to have our own lives, to not give up ourselves, to not have to obey every whim of a master. We want to be in control of our lives. And even those saints out there who give up so much of themselves, who are always doing something for others, they still have their breaking point, the moment when they have had too much or they have a thing that they cannot go without, whether it is chocolate, sleeping in on Saturdays, coffee, a hot bath, internet, and the list goes on and when they don’t get it, they get cranky.

See even the most humble of us, the most saint-like, the most servant-like, still have their moments of being human, of wanting to be great, or at least greater than they are. We cannot truly be servants, we cannot truly drink from the cup that Jesus drinks from nor can we be baptized into the baptism that Jesus was baptized with. We are not able to do that. We are not able to give up everything in our lives, even if we give up our lives for Christ’s mission. For we are humans, we are not Christ. We are not able to die in order to save everyone else from sin and death, we are not able to forgive everyone’s sins including our own, we are not able to die and rise again for the sake of the world. We are not able to be a servant. We are not able to do these things. We are human.

But we also do not have to. We do not have to drink from the cup that Jesus drinks from, we do not have to be baptized into the baptism the Jesus was baptized with. We do not have to die in order to save everyone else from sin and death, we do not have to forgive everyone’s sins including our own, we do not have to die and rise again for the sake of the world. We do not have to be a servant. We do not have to do these things because they have already been done.

They have already been done by Christ Jesus who died on a cross for us, each and everyone one of us. Christ has already given up his life for us. Christ has already died in order to save everyone from sin and death, including us. Christ already forgives everyone’s sins, including us. Christ already died and rose again for the sake of the world. Christ already came to be our servant.

Christ has done all this so that we do not have to. Christ came to this world to be our servant, the true servant, knowing that we cannot.