Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, 2015 – Job 38:1-7; Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45
Who is Jesus?
Is he, as some have claimed, a holy and nice man, but who his disciples mistakenly asserted as god?
They were illiterate and ignorant people after all.
Is he as others claim a good teacher with positive life lessons, possibly a Jewish Dalai Lama if you will, but a man nonetheless?
Or is there something more to him?
Something about this mysterious person that has kept Christianity alive and growing 21 centuries later?
And even so, even if we know who Jesus is, what does it matter?
I would like to suggest to you today, if you will, that Jesus is more than a case of mistaken identity, and he is more than a Jewish Dalai Lama.
And knowing who Jesus truly is, is what brings us freedom
Knowing who he truly is draws us into a life-giving relationship with the Creator of the universe.
Let’s look at the passage that was read the most recently—Mark’s Gospel.
Mark’s Gospel is a biographical account of Jesus Christ written around 65AD, a mere 30 years after the events surrounding Jesus’ life.
And now if you remember what was read, I want you to imagine this:
Imagine your favourite politician running for prime minister and imagine that you are in his trusted circle of aides and confidants.
Now imagine that two cronies from within this circle approach our favourite politician and try to make a power grab.
They ask to become minister of defense and minister of finance when our politician wins the election.
Now, how would you feel?
Perhaps indignant?
Perhaps rightfully angry at their self-importance?
So it makes perfect sense that the other disciples also feel angry, as it says in Mark 10:41, doesn’t it.
Yet, Jesus, without missing a beat, uses this as a teaching opportunity for them and for us today.
He says, “You know that the rulers of the World lord it over people. But not so among you who call yourselves my disciples. Whoever among you desires to become great must become each other’s servant. And whoever desires to be first, must become last, a slave of all, the lowest rung on the socioeconomic ladder.”
Because for Jesus, being his disciple means changing how we view ourselves.
For those of us who are baptized into Christ as his disciples, we can no longer view ourselves as self-centered individuals.
We are now called to be servants and slaves of others.
Now if we were to only stop here at what Jesus said, of course he sounds like a good teacher, he indeed sounds like a Jewish Dalai Lama— “be humble, be nice, be a servant”.
But if you remember something else I said earlier today,
Something else about how knowing who Jesus truly is brings us freedom.
… This passage does not sound like Jesus offers that, does it?
Doesn’t Jesus sound extremely moralistic in this passage?
How does expecting people to become each other’s servants and slaves bring us freedom?
I mean, we love it when people sacrifice and serve us but sacrificing and serving for others is hard work!
Becoming someone else’s servant and slave is tedious and exhausting!
If we are honest, this sounds very much unlike “freedom”. In fact, this sounds far too moralistic, and far too unfeasible.
If we were to stop here, we would be missing the full force of what Jesus says. He continues to say that that we should do these things
“Because” he continues, “the Son of Man” (a title that Jesus uses to refer to himself), “came not to be served but to serve,”
Jesus challenges his disciples to be servants and slaves, because that is what Jesus does for us.
He came not to be served by us, but to serve us. To give his life as a ransom for many.
What does that mean—to give his life as a ransom for many?
In the context of Mark’s biography, Jesus means he sacrifices his life on the cross for the sins of the World.
But, why would that be necessary? Why do our sins need a sacrifice?
One of the most predictable tropes in Hollywood is the husband who forgets his wife’s birthday or their wedding anniversary.
The wife has perhaps made a wonderful candlelit dinner. The husband forgets and inconsiderately saunters in late.
The wife is understandably upset and angry. The husband tries to pacify her anger and repair the breach in their relationship with apologies, bouquets of flowers, expensive jewellery…
It is an offering if you will, a sacrifice of great expense and cost. I suspect one of the reasons why this is such a predictable trope in Hollywood, is because it is such a relatable and familiar trope.I think we can all remember times in our relationships, where we have offended or hurt someone, and we have tried to pacify their anger and frustration or repair the relationship through some costly and expensive offering or sacrifice. We might not call it that. But that’s what it is.
Now we understand this intuitively within human interactions why such sacrifices and offerings are necessary. But let’s expand this analogy a bit.
Let’s assume a few things about God and our relationship with God.
Let’s assume that God is whom the ancient Hebrew poetry in Job describes in our first passage from today.
Let’s assume that God is the Creator of all existence, the one who lays the foundations of the earth, who has all life, all wisdom, knowledge and power, enough to challenge our “knowledge” and instead prove our ignorance; that God is the One who created us and gave us life, and to whom we belong.
And let’s also remember that in our passage from Mark’s Gospel, we are challenged painfully, to be self-giving, to be servants and slaves to all.
We understandably recognize how hard it is to do that, we recognize how often we fail at doing it and how often we would rather be self-absorbed.
If God is who the ancient poetry in Job describes, and we are what Mark describes,does it not seem reasonable that we would owe God something?
An offering for wrongs committed and offences towards the One who lovingly and delicately created us with the palms of his hand? And not just for our selfishness towards God, but also for our selfishness towards his Creation, towards others, family, neighbours and strangers that he has also lovingly and delicately created with the palm of his hands?
But how many sacrifices would you and I have to offer to God?
I imagine something in proportion to as many times as we have been self-absorbed but that sounds rather large, doesn’t it?
But even if we could get the right number, what could you and I offer to God?
What could you offer to someone who already owns everything, who made the whole universe and everything in it?
A tree? … Perhaps, a lamb…. ? But God already owns all of that.
Your money… ? But what would God do with your change?
Your life…? But, technically that already belongs to him because he made you.
So, what could we give to God?
It turns out we have nothing to give. We are empty.
We are unable to change ourselves or give anything of worth for our sins and we have found ourselves in a hopeless state.
This is why Jesus says “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many”.
Jesus serves us by giving up his life to God as an offering, for our sins. Jesus earns what we owe in sacrifices and offerings.
And Jesus shares that with us. He serves us. By becoming our ransom for our sin.
But how does that work?
And this is where we need to read our passage from the letter to the Hebrews.
Hebrews is a letter written around AD65 in very polished and eloquent Greek by one of Jesus’ early disciples to the first Christian converts living under Roman and Jewish persecution.
This is how Jesus is described towards the end of Hebrews Chapter 4,a few verses before our passage begins.
“Since, we have a great high priest Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”
Did you catch that?
Did you hear what the author said, that Jesus was tested and tempted just like us, but remained sinless?
When we are tempted, we sometimes, if not often sin.
When he was tempted, he remained sinless.
When we are tempted, we sometimes, if not often, give in.
When he was tempted, tempted to be selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed…tempted to seek to be served, instead of to serve others, he remained obedient.
Even if it was hard work, even if it was tedious and exhausting, even if it meant suffering, even if it meant dying.
Through his suffering, Hebrew 5:9 says, he became perfect.
And this is why Jesus is qualified to give up his life for our sakes, for our sins.This is why he is our ransom.
He has became the source of eternal salvation, of freedom, to all who obey him, believe in him, turn to him, are baptized in him.
In Jesus, God gives us freedom from our sin.
But, lest we think that Jesus is a man that lived a nice life and then became a god, the author begins this entire paragraph by saying “Jesus is the Son of God”.
Jesus is the Son of God, fully divine.
Jesus is the same God we read about in the ancient poetry of Job through whom the foundations of the world were laid, who determined the measurements of the earth.
Yet, he is also the one who became human, and entering humanity as a helpless baby.
This is why every week, when we share the ancient Nicene Creed together, we say that we believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.
God is Jesus who sacrifices himself for us for our sins.
God is Jesus who sacrifices himself for us.
Jesus really loves us.
This is why, every week at Communion we break bread and share wine, as signs of Christ’s body and blood, Christ’s sacrifice, for us.
Signs of his offering for our sins.
Signs of his love for us.
Now this might seem like a lot of information.
I started off saying that Jesus is not merely a man, to saying that Jesus Christ sacrifices for us so that we can experience freedom, to saying that Jesus is God who sacrifices for us.
But you might say, wait a minute.
Jesus is God… isn’t that merely a story the disciples created to gain power and influence in the world?
Perhaps. But let’s look at the history.
The first Christians were Jewish converts to Christianity.
Pretty quickly after their converstion, they were persecuted and executed by:
A. the Roman Empire for saying that Jesus is God, and Caesar is not.
And B. their Jewish peers because they said that God was Jesus.
For Jewish ears, this was utter blasphemy. Similar to saying to our Muslim neighbours that this random human person is Allah.
Now you’re right, Christianity did gain power and influence in the World
But that was around 310AD when Constantine, the Roman Emperor at that time converted to Christianity and changed the political laws to favour Christianity, 250 years after the events surrounding Jesus’ earthly life. But from 35AD to 310AD, Christianity was illegal precisely because Christians claimed that the Roman Emperors were not divine, only Jesus was.Christians were brutally executed and martyred for claiming this and our Letter to the Hebrews, as I mentioned before, was written in AD65 before even Constantine was born.
Now, why would the author of Hebrews create a story saying that Jesus is divine, if they knew that it would get Christians thrown to the lions or into pots of boiling oil? Why would they do that?
Why would you knowingly and consciously lie about something when it has no foreseeable benefit to you? And why do we assume that they were lying? What biases and assumptions are we bringing to the table when we say that they were either ignorant or primitive, yet wrote in very eloquent Greek?
Let’s assume for a minute that this criticism has merit; that Jesus’ divinity is a made up myth, and we bring no biases to the table.
The question still remains… What are we going to do about a man hanging on a cross who claims that he does this for our sakes?
Who else has come to serve us, to become a ransom for our sins?
More importantly, what are we going to do for all the times we have been self-centred?
What are we going to do for all the times we will continue to be self-centred?
How are we to become self-giving, sacrificial slaves and servants to all?
For those of us here who are new or visiting, perhaps this is something for us to consider.
If Christians say that this is who Jesus is, why not explore it more?
Why not look into who Jesus truly is? Why not explore if the Christian version of Jesus does indeed give us freedom from our sins through entering into relationship with him?
And for those of us here who are baptized members of Christ, we can read this passage and feel like we haven’t been good enough servants, yet, we know that because we are baptized into Christ, he is our ransom.
His perfection is given to us and he earns our goodness for us. We can therefore approach the altar boldly, trusting not in our own goodness but in Christ’s mercy and love towards us. We can fail but we have our assurance in Christ.
This is freedom.
Additionally, every week at Eucharist when we eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood, we remember that one day we will become like Christ because his Spirit lives in us. His Spirit lives in us. This is the promise of our baptism.
Day by day, moment by moment, we become like Christ.
We become servants and slaves to those around us, like he is to us.
This too is freedom.
I speak to you in the name of Christ who loves us and gives himself up for us. Amen.
