Some people just don’t get it. No matter how clearly you think you have explained something to them, no matter how slowly you speak, no matter how many times you say the same thing, some people just don’t get it. I know many people who have not understood plain information placed right in front of them, and I know I have been a person who cannot see things right in front of my face.
Some things that seem plain to some are surprising to others. Geography for example. I remember sitting on the north shore of Queens NY underneath the Whitestone bridge with some friends, we had a small radio and were listening to the song Dwyck by Gang Starr. My friend looked across the east river and said, “can you believe that is where all rap music started?” My other friend looked at him puzzled, and said, “but I thought rap music started in the South Bronx.” My friend and I responded, “That is the South Bronx.” To which he responded, “No it isn’t, it can’t be the South Bronx. We are in North Queens, so that has to be the North Bronx.” It took a few days of explaining, but eventually, my friend began to understand basic geography.
I’m also guilty of this, whenever I’m trying to find anything at all in my house, I will look for what seems like hours, and then I ask Kate to help me find it, and there it is right in front of me the whole time. I call that male pattern blindness.
Today we hear about James and John, two of Jesus’s disciples who, like my friend and I, just don’t get it. Just before our reading today, Jesus says this to the twelve, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.” Jesus just said that, and James and John ask, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
James and John like all the other disciples just didn’t get it, not yet anyway. Jesus’s response to James and John, and the other disciples is this, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Here we have a clear statement from Jesus that his mission, his life, is to be the atoning sacrifice for many. As Isiah prophesied about the Messiah, “Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
If any of you have any doubt that Jesus Christ came into this world to be the atoning sacrifice, that would allow all humanity access to the grace, and love of God, this should settle all those doubts. Jesus says it. He has come to serve humanity by becoming the new Passover Lamb and releasing us all from the debt we have incurred by our sins.
The Glory of Jesus Christ is the cross. We all have crosses to bear, we are all beset with weaknesses. Our struggles, our crosses that we bear, our suffering, are not a punishment from God, just as Christ’s crucifixion was not a punishment from God. Our suffering can enable us to learn obedience to God. Obedience to God means relying on God and accepting His will. It means not attempting to control every aspect of our lives, our jobs, our finances, our children, and our parents, but understanding that we are all free to accept the love of God, and free to reject it.
It’s very counter-cultural to think that suffering can bring us closer to God. But it can and if you let go of all the things you cannot control and allow yourself to be sanctified in suffering, you will grow closer to God. We are in a relationship with God, and he wants to be with us through everything we go through. Think about other relationships you have; if you only held your spouses’ hand when they were happy, how would they feel when they reach out to you in sadness? If you only called your friends for congratulations and never for sympathy, what kind of friendship would you have?
We all suffer, from time to time, some more often than others, but we can find joy in our suffering when we use it to grow closer, and more in love with God. If you are suffering now, or when you suffer in the future, remember Jesus Christ came not to be served, but to serve. Jesus is interceding for all of us, right now, Remember, when you suffer, the Son of God is there to serve you in your suffering.
Let Jesus sanctify your pain, sanctify your illness, sanctify your loss, sanctify your fear and your sorrow. When we suffer, it is time to lean on God, to lean on His Church. When you have come through your suffering, you are then to join Jesus, and through your prayers and relationships with others, serve anyone else who is suffering, especially those who are suffering something like what you have been through. Show them that Jesus is standing beside them, and teach them how to allow Jesus to hold them up.
It is in looking back on our hard times that we can see God’s hand enabling us to get through those trials and tribulations. When we reflect on our pain and suffering, we are no longer like James and John, the disciples who don’t get it. We become more like James and John the Apostles, who did get it, and who changed the course of the entire world by helping to establish the church.
You may not be called to change the world, but you are called to be there for someone who needs you, who is dealing with something you have already weathered. Pray that God gives you the chance to sanctify your suffering by leading someone else through theirs.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Christian M. Wood
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
23rd Sunday after Pentecost
21 October 2018