God's Human Presence: With Us To Serve, To Help?

 

17 October 2021: Trinity 20, Year of Mark

 

Gospel: Mark 10:35-45

Reflection (Sermon)

 

Sometimes the gospel passage we are given is complicated. Then we have to spend a fair bit of time trying to work out what it might be saying. Not always. And not so today. Today the message is, I suggest, simple. Plain and simple.

 

James and John come to Jesus, with a request. Can they sit at his right and left side? Can they, in other words, share in his status, power, and glory – more than all the rest, more than the other disciples? Jesus says No. But he says more. He says that they came to ask that, because their way of thinking was wrong. They need to change, but the change isn’t a gentle nudge. It is a complete turnaround in how they think. How they think about such things as status, power, and glory.

 

So far, so bad, at least for James and John. But it doesn’t get any easier when Jesus addresses the disciples as a whole. He tells them – and so he tells us – three things:

1.     You have to serve one another (be each other’s servant).

2.     You have to be slave of all people.

3.     This, because Jesus himself came not to be served, but to serve. To help others, and not to have others wait on him.

 

Jesus says we are not only to be servants (where a comfortable-enough life is at least thinkable), but slaves (and it’s hard to think of a comfortable slave). But here I can bring a little morsel of good news: the Greek is actually not as strong as the English. The word here translated as slave [doulos] can also be another word for servant.

 

But! But, even allowing for that:

1.     You have to serve one another.

2.     You have to be servants or slaves to all people.

3.     Because that is what Jesus himself did.

A simple message. Not an easy message. But easy to summarise, in its sharp challenge.

 

When the message comes to us as straightforward - as if straightforward - there is something we can always do. This: we can ask ourselves if we believe it. 

No, really, we can either talk it through with others, or just sit with the question, of whether we believe this simple, sharp shock of a challenge. Remember, when we ask ourselves this question, it’s not necessarily a Yes or a No. It’s perfectly possible, and often right, to answer (say): I feel I am coming to believe this.

 

We are here to help one another. I think at one level we all know that. There are two aspects to this. One is that pretty much every worldview says as much. It’s a message heard and known the world over. If we are here (and here we are), it is because some people helped us grow up from helpless baby to adult. And we can now care for others in turn. The other truth is that a life dedicated to simple selfishness may sound exciting. But the evidence is that it can soon turn into something dull, tedious, and strangely frustrating. What makes life worthwhile is a rich pattern of links with others, links that are made naturally, and become strong, when we help each other.

 

So far, so normal. I say again: that we are made to help each other is a claim made by every religion or school of thought, worth its salt. It is said by evolutionary biologists, for that matter.

And we try.

Often we try.

Sometimes we try…

It’s not always easy. In our lives it is easier to ricochet between 

really exerting ourselves to help those around us, 

and 

falling back into selfishness, greed, and resenting others for not serving us up with what we think we want.

This is natural. This is natural, and God knows our natural selves, and can and does forgive us those lapses into selfishness.

 

But there is more to Jesus message. So we need to ask ourselves if we believe something more too. Do we believe that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve”?

 

Do we believe that God’s human presence in the world came not to have others serve him, serve him delicacies on some golden throne, but to get his hands and feet dirty, helping others out, helping out those in need, those in bitter need, those who may feel helpless, despairing, and lost?

 

Now, that is not something that every worldview says. And it’s not a natural idea. God’s human presence in the world as one who serves, who helps out, who goes out to the forgotten. It is hard to find words to show how shocking this idea is. (I am not saying it is unique to Christianity. I am saying it is shocking for all people, Christian or not.) No doubt I have failed to shock you. But I will dare to ask you again:

 

Do you believe it? That God’s human presence is there to help others?

 

Well, to work out if you believe it, you may well ask the Why question. Why is it, that God’s human presence is there to help others? And here different answers are possible. The most obvious answer is: God does this, because there is so much need in the world. But I think that doesn’t really work.

 

It is quite possible to imagine God’s human presence in the world being waited upon, and from his throne giving orders about how his subjects are to obey him by caring for one another. And from his throne he could threaten us all with terrible, terrible things, if we don’t put the world right by our efforts. With clear enough divine instructions, and promises and threats, would we still be astray? It’s a question we can’t necessarily answer, but we may feel it might work.

 

But that is not what God’s human presence does. 

And, as for why God’s human presence is here to help… funnily enough, the deepest Christian answer is really this: it is 

because that’s what God wanted to do. 

That’s it. God, in other words, is so keen, so eager, so desperate-as-it-were to be with us, that God will be with us in the way that works best for us.

 

God wants our company. God sees our need.

God sees our need. God wants our company.

God, who loves us and who is Love, brings the two together.

(How would Love not?)

So God comes to us and meets us in our need.

And then, then we are really freed to meet others in their need.

It is shocking. (I stand by that.)

But it’s also the greatest comfort we might have.

Now... do we believe it?

Amen.