This Isn't What I Signed Up For! Mark 10:35-45

"This isn't what I signed up for!" my fellow student exclaimed as we looked over the syllabus for the college course we were going to take that semester. "I don't have time to put in this much work. This was supposed to be an easy 'A!'" He was obviously not ready to face the long reading list and papers and projects the professor required. So he dropped out before the second class
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There are times in our lives that I think we all want to scream, "This isn't what I signed up for!" We wanted a different outcome, a different turn of events, something different than what we think we have received. We invest ourselves in a dream of a possible future and work hard to achieve what we think we want and desire. Then something happens. The economy crashes and we lose the job we always wanted. A relationship goes sour and we are no longer with the person we thought we'd committed our lives to being with. Disease strikes and we are forced to adjust our lives to accommodate something that we never imagined possible.


So I believe it was for the disciples in Mark 10:35-45 when John and James asked for the privilege of being named Jesus' top commanders in the new religious government they think he will set up when they arrive in Jerusalem.

Jesus has been honest with them, in fact, in verses 32 to 34 which immediately proceed today’s reading, he has told them that he is going to Jerusalem to face tribulation, suffering, and ultimately death. But the disciples keep ignoring what he tells them. Why? Because: "This isn't what we signed up for." The truth that Jesus is telling them just doesn't fit with the dream they have created of what their future with Jesus would be like.

To demonstrate the truth of this, the other disciples upon hearing what the two have asked of Jesus get quite upset with their fellow disciples. Can't you just hear the squabble: "Well, if you're in charge, don't go expecting me to follow your orders." Or, the famous one my children always used on me, "Why does she get to be the boss? That's not fair!" Jesus has to get the boys together for a sit down talk and calm them down before they can work together again.

You can’t much blame the boys for their misunderstanding. They have given up everything to follow Jesus. They were the counter-cultural revolution of their day, but they were still trapped in thinking like the rest of their society. They have committed themselves to Jesus and that commitment should be acknowledged and applauded. They want Jesus to succeed, but they are having a hard time giving up their traditional viewpoint of what success will mean for Jesus and for them. However, this is entirely new territory Jesus is taking them into. It might look like the same thing they have experienced before, but it is going to be, oh, so different than they have ever imagined.

They base their idea of a successful Jesus on what they know: the ruling Sanhedrin council in Jerusalem and the formative power of the Roman Empire which has taken over the known world. Won’t success for Jesus look like it does for everyone else? You really can’t blame them. It isn’t that they are so dense and so stupid that they don’t understand what he is telling them, it’s just that this situation is so vastly foreign to their experience that they just can’t quite wrap their heads around the idea that being defeated, being tortured, being killed, could somehow bring about a positive anything positive for them. Why hitch your wagon to a sinking ship?

Jesus tells them that even if other people follow the pattern of "Lording it over each other," that kind of behavior doesn't belong in the New Community of God he is trying to create. He goes on to tell them "Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served-and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage." (The Message)

What does it mean to be in community together without anyone else "Lording it over" the rest of the community? What does it mean to be a servant, literally a slave, to everyone else? That concept doesn't sound quite right to most folks. But it is the truth that Jesus taught his followers-and that includes you and me. How will we live out that truth in the New Community of God we are creating at MCC Seattle? What would it mean for us to give our lives away as a ransom to release the captives that are being held hostage in our society by wrong ways of thinking, and wrong ways of acting?

First of all: what we become as a church may not look like what we think we know a church should be. We tout numbers and finances as the keys to success in the life of any church. How many members do you have? How many attend worship? How much money was given? How much money is being spent on mission and ministry?

We ask ourselves those same questions every single Sunday. We report those facts to you in the bulletin and in the weekly email newsletter. But do those facts really tell the whole story about what our congregation is becoming and doing? Are our own views of what it means to be a successful church being taken over and hijacked by what we have experienced in other churches, or what we have heard about from other churches?

Maybe we are looking at the wrong churches for our model. Maybe we should stop looking at the large evangelical churches that pack the pews weekly, that have the cutting edge musical groups and bands, and the video projectors and super-sized sound systems. Maybe we should start looking at churches like the Church of the Savior in Washington DC, founded in early 1940’s by Gordon and Mary Cosby and five other friends to be a different kind of church and have a different kind of ministry than any church ever had. They have never had large numbers or big budgets, but they have had a remarkable ministry that has affected not only their own community as their influence has reached literally around the world.

(From the Church of the Savior website) “From the beginning, church members sought to embody Christ in intentional and sacrificial ways, welcoming radical diversity and calling all to be ministers through the generous sacrifice of their own personal time, energy and resources. Interpreting the call to discipleship as the integration of two journeys in community—an inward journey to grow in love of God, self and others and an outward journey to help mend some part of creation—the church became the catalyst for numerous helping ministries...."

They are formed now by six independent community ministry groups that focus on their particular vision of ministry and make it happen in radical and revolutionary ways. Their membership orientation lasts three years, not two hours.

“Today, 60 years later, Gordon and Mary Cosby and others continue to play with new ways of becoming the authentic Church. What might happen in our hurting and distrustful world if people started coming together in small groups deliberately organized around perceived differences—of race, economic class, gender, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation, etc.—and from that point of diversity vulnerably opened their lives, told their stories, unmasked their shared addiction to a socio-political system that has kept them alienated, and then together they began to take steps toward healing and justice?”

Secondly, building the New Community of God will mean that we make sacrifices in our lives to be available to and for each other during the week. We cannot expect to make an impact on the greater metropolitan area until we begin to make an impact on each other. What does it mean to become a servant, or dare we say the word, a slave to others? Is that idea really as demeaning and degrading as we Americans tend to think?

Jesus and the disciples spent a lot of time together. They didn’t just meet on Sunday mornings for worship and then depart without seeing each other for an entire week. What will a stranger experience when he or she comes into our community? Those of you who have been around here for awhile should be able to answer that question. Are we treating each other like we should be treating each other? Are we making space in our lives for each other? Or is the thought of having to change your schedule to accommodate another appointment with another person, no matter how important the idea is of building community together, contrary to what you personally want for yourself? The New Community of God we need to create won’t just happen. It will need to be created by you and me as we work together, worship together, fellowship together and live together.

What have you done this past week to make space in your life for someone from our church that you don’t normally associate with, or spend time with? Are you making a personal effort to build the community we want to establish by what you do and say with those who God has called together in this place? Look around this room right now. Is there anyone you don’t know? Perhaps someone that you don’t know by name? You don’t know where they work, or even if they work? Do you know their favorite song or their favorite food? Do you know what’s really troubling them about life today? As long as there is someone in this church that you do not yet know, really know, then your work as a servant to them isn’t yet completed and may not even yet have begun.

Invite someone out to eat with you. Invite folks over to your home. Go out to the theatre with them and then talk with them over a cup of coffee about the play or the movie. The experience together isn’t about the food or the movie, or the play, it’s about talking together, spending time together, getting to know each other, discovering what another person needs in his or her life and then being a part of filling that need for them. That’s what being a servant to others means: caring, sharing, loving, and creating a life together. It will take personal sacrifice and commitment by each of us if it is to ever happen. Thinking about it won’t make it happen. Just talking about it won’t make it happen. It will take action by you and me to make that New Community a reality in our lives with each other…daily.

As long as we don’t put this concept of becoming a real living community into operation then this church will remain a disconnected, lonely, group of people who come together once a week to sing songs and pray. There has to be more to being a church than meeting together once a week. We have to become Christ to each other. We have to begin to feed each other with the bread of life.

Thirdly, we must become meek and humble like Jesus. But first we have to stop putting ourselves down. Jesus was a humble and meek person, but those words don’t mean what we think they mean today. Jesus wasn’t a namby-pamby person who let other people walk all over him.

Jesus was meek. Meek meant power under control. It was a term horsemen used to describe a powerful stallion that was under the control of its rider. Meek means “power under control.” Jesus was a powerful person who used his power wisely and properly with the idea in mind of setting others free from those things that kept them in captivity be it social order, religious practices, or economic and political institutions.


Jesus was a humble person, not proud or arrogant, who saw himself realistically. Yes he was divine, but Jesus was also fully human. Being humble doesn’t mean waiting around for someone else to recognize your worth and ask you to get involved. Humble means knowing who you are and getting involved in what needs to be done and using the power you have to effect change in the world.

We must begin to see ourselves realistically for we are God’s messengers sent to serve God’s people. Jesus said he was a ransom for many in order that they might be released from their imprisonment in the social, religious, and political order of the world. Being a ransom means Jesus was of great enough worth that his actions and words gave freedom to the prisoners of the world. Jesus released us from our own personal prisons so that we might continue his work and ministry to the world around us.

Jesus knew who he was and what he could do and he began doing it: creatively, energetically, wholeheartedly and without any reservation. Jesus saw the vision of God’s New Community and Jesus worked to achieve that vision in reality by giving and sacrificing himself. Do you know who you are? Do you know what you could be doing for the cause of Christ? Are you holding back from taking part in becoming all that this church is meant to become to this community? We can’t achieve the vision of the future of MCC Seattle without you, without your sharing the work and the joy with us.

Knowing who you are means that you understand what you might be able to do to help and that you won’t wait for someone else to ask you to volunteer, but that you will step forward and volunteer your time, your talent, your experiences, your education and training, your wisdom and most importantly your love with the rest of the people in this room.

This is an important week, an important month in the life of Washington State. Stand up for God. Stand up proudly as a Christian. Stand up proudly as a Queer person and vote to approve Referendum 71 to keep the domestic partnership law. Stand up also and vote no on Initiative 1033 which would only make the current economic conditions harder on working people, on schools, on governmental efforts to help the poorest in our society.

Be responsible Christian citizens and vote! Stand up, speak out, take action! Be Christ to the world today and every day. Be a Christian servant to others.