Mark 10:36 - "And
Jesus said to them, What do you want Me to do for you?”
What do we want?
What do we really want out of life?
What do we want to see happening in our lives in the future?
What do we want to see happen next week?
What do we want to see happening in our places of work or within our daily
routines?
What do we want for our families, our children or grandchildren,
our parents, our friends?
What do we want to see happening here in this church
as we meet together to worship God?
What do we want of our session members, our pastor, our choir,
our ministry groups, our congregation, each other?
What do we want for this community of Beckley, with a mine of its own,
its changing population, its
ups and its downs?
And... how do we set about turning "What we want" into "Something we have?"
How do we turn our dreams into reality?
A good place to start would be with our prayers. Jesus said, "Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it". In this morning’s lesson we heard Him say to James and John, "What do you want me to do for you?"
What James and John wanted was to be better than everyone else. They wanted positions of honor, one
seated at Jesus’ left hand, the other at His right. The other disciples were equally ambitious, for when they found
out that James and John were asking for such prestige, they became angry at them. Why?
Because in their heart of hearts they desired that sort of honor for themselves.
Are we any different? There is nothing wrong in trying to be the best we can be, trying to make the
most of our potential and those things God has given us. But there is something
decidedly un-Christ like in being the best we can be in order that we can be better than everybody else!
That's why when people hear this story about the sons of Zebedee, James and John, seeking to be the
greatest they often react by thinking, "What a couple of Blockheads!" They had
been with Jesus all that time. He had spoken to them of His immanent betrayal
and the manner of His death. He had taken a little child before them and taught them of faith. He had told them that their
salvation was a matter of God's Grace rather than their personal striving. He
had taught them that it was in serving each other that the Kingdom would be found. Yet they still came to Him with a plea
of self interest!
It is to their credit that they were beginning to catch on. They
were beginning to realize that if they sided with Jesus they were on the winning side.
That ultimately His love would triumph, and those who opposed Him would be made to look foolish. But there is still
part of them that keeps nagging, "What's in it for me? How is this going to help me get what I want?"
And that nagging selfishness drove them, as it drives us sometimes, to do stupid things that at the
time seemed sensible. James and John, like Peter, were part of the inner circle
of the disciples. Unlike Peter, who seems a rather rough and ready type, they seem to have come from quite a well-to-do background.
Maybe they did feel that it was their birthright to be destined for great things. Can you sense a hint of supposed superiority
in this question as they ask Jesus, "Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of you."
I am not going to knock them down for that. Because I've done exactly the same thing in my prayers. I have spoken to God just as stupidly as they spoke to Jesus. "Lord, I want you to
give me what I want. I want this. I want that. And Lord I want You to see that I get it. And if I don't get it, well You better
look out. I just might not believe in You anymore. So what do You think of that?"
I praise God that God indulges our stupidity. That God
is able to turn it around and teach us something important. In the face of their impertinent questioning Jesus seems to respond,
"O.K John... All right James... how can I help you special people. There seems almost a hint of sarcasm in the question "What
do you want Me to do for you? "
And they come out with it. "Oh… nothing much. It's just that when You are King of all Creation,
we'd like to be equally in charge, you know, kind of like royalty. All we want is to be joint Presidents of the whole wide
world."
A few years back there was a Rock group called "Tears for Fears" who had a hit song that still gets
played on the radio every now and again. "Everybody wants to rule the world." Or maybe some of you know that other song, "If
I ruled the world, Every day would be a..." Yeh, Right…If I ruled the world...All
that prestige…All that power...All those resources…I could handle it…It would be great. I DON'T think so!
So maybe we don't want to rule the whole world. But we can still want to be the ‘big fish in
our own little seas’. We still want to be the center of our own small world. "It's a small world after all."
And sometimes our worlds are so small. That was part of
James and John’s problem. They were so caught up in what was going on, in being disciples of Jesus, that it went to their heads. Jesus tried to bring them back to reality.
"You don't know what you are asking for! Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the
baptism with which I am baptized?" (Mark 10:38).
William Barclay, in his commentary on Mark, points out that the cup was to the Hebrew mind a
metaphor for the life and experience that God gave to people. So the Psalmist speaks of having a "Cup that is running over" (Psalm 23:5) to express joy, whilst Isaiah pictures a time of darkness in the nations
life as being "the cup of the Lord's fury" (Isaiah 51:17).
The word used here for baptism is well translated as "submerged." In Greek the term is frequently used to describe anyone submerged in an experience. For example, a bankrupt person may be described as submerged in debt, or a ship that has been wrecked will
be submerged beneath the waves.
So Jesus is asking the disciples, "Can you really bear to go through what I am about to face? Are you
as prepared to be submerged in hatred, pain and death as I am?" Of course they weren't.
That wasn't what they wanted. They wanted a crown. They didn't want a
cross.
So, I return to the question we started out with today;
“What do we want?”
By our presence in a service of Worship this morning we signal that one thing we want is the
blessing of God on our lives. It is also a reasonable assumption on the grounds
of Scripture that God wants our lives to be blessed. That's why Jesus went to
the lengths of dieing on a cross for our sins and why He was raised to life. God
wants to bless us.
But God is going to do it God’s way, not our way. And scripture gives to us a number of pointers
on how to do things God’s way.
- Blessing comes when we do what God wants, rather than seeking
for God to do what we want.
- Blessing comes when we, who are the baptized members of
the church, submerge our lives in the life of Christ.
- Blessing comes when we stop saying "I want" and start praying,
"Lord, what do You really want to see happening in my life right now?"
- Blessing comes when we give ourselves to helping others
instead of helping ourselves.
So.........
What do we really want?
What do we really want to see happening in our lives and the lives of those
around us?
What do we really want to see happening in this church as we worship God?
What do we really want for this town and this community?
If those "wants" are our idle dreams for self advancement, if such "wants" are for a comfortable life
in which we can remain immune from the problems that beset the rest of creation, if those "wants" have the nature of "Grant
that we may sit in Your glory, one on your right and one on your left", then we had better not bring them in prayer to
God.
Why? Well…God has a habit of turning such things around and revealing to everybody just how foolish
we are. At least that's what happened to James and John and the other disciples
as they dreamt of their own importance. Worse still, God might occasionally let us have what we want in order that we discover
just how hollow an experience "getting what we want" can be.
Last week in our Senior High Sunday School Class we took a look at the movie ‘Bruce Almighty’.
In the movie, Bruce, mad at God because life took a turn for the worse, is granted the responsibility of being God for a while.
The result is total chaos. Bruce learns that being God is not the answer to all we want in life. That it is better to be ourselves,
use the gifts that God has given us to the best of our ability, and build on the love we know in order that others may also
find love.
Now… here is the good news. If our wish list is actually an echo of things God has born in our
hearts, then we are free to go ahead and dream great dreams and envision great visions. And the dreams God places in our hearts
can be built upon by undeserved grace, by active faith and with servant courage.
It’s Stewardship season. In this season we are reminded that God loves us enough not to ask that
we come to Christ with a preparedness to give a little, but that God asks everything of us. For God knows that it is only
as we abandon ourselves to God’s care that we can freely flow in the life of the Spirit. As we do so God offers the
discovery of joys unspeakable, experiences that will be too precious to put into words, and a daily strengthening of our life
by the power of God’s love.
Jesus asked James and John, "What do you want me to do for you?"
What was on their mind was something that would neither be good for them or was an appropriate thing to ask for.
Consider this morning the sort of things that your life is saying to God.
By the action of the Holy Spirit on our lives,
may God lead us to seek those things that are the work of Christ’s
Kingdom.
To God be the Glory.
“So be it.”
AMEN.
Rev. Adrian J. Pratt
