Greatness

Mark 10:35-45 (1 Corinthians 9:23-27)
For Calvary's inaugural "Sport Spirit Sunday"

I am still high from Tuesday night - still high from the first post-season series victory at Wrigley Field.

Last night’s game didn’t dim it - it only added to the fire, because after years of slogging through almost and no-chance and next-year as a lifelong Cubs fan, this year I get a taste of glory. And oh, it’s good.

I wasn’t a player on the field Tuesday night or any time this season. I wasn’t in the stands that day with the cheering crowds and the chance to touch victory as players reached out with high fives. I wasn’t on the streets outside of Wrigley, adding to the festivity and holding on to the occasion by sheer gridlock, but I sure was claiming the glory as my own:

“Flying the W” on Facebook and Twitter, jumping up and down in front of the TV, screaming We Won!

We did it!

We.

I couldn’t hit a major-league fastball if my life depended on it, and probably couldn't hit a slow-pitch softball gimme, either. I don’t manage, or coach, or tend injuries or pay the salaries, but I was all we on Tuesday night, and I’m not giving up on my share in that glory.

I get you, James and John.

I really do.

I believe it is the heart of a fan, the excitement of the committed, that brought you to Jesus asking for the promise that you’ll sit right next to him in his glory. It’s the natural expression of that we feeling, the seriousness with which you take your commitment to the Jesus team. You don’t hesitate for a minute when Jesus asks you if you’re in it through thick and thin, if you’ll be there saying “we” for the losses and the misery and the grind.

Sure, there’s some greed in it, in your angling for the best seats; and sure, your buddies resent it because they don’t want to be left out of the glory either, and it looks like you’re trying to keep it to yourselves. But I can see your bid for glory as the truth of your commitment - heart and soul and attention and time - even if you never turn a game-changing double play or get anywhere near that dangerous and life-changing cross.

There is a glory to simple commitment - to your team, to your country, to your God- that Jesus recognizes. 

And then, of course, he invites you to go deeper.

Jesus’ baptism, which he invites James and John to share, is a daily commitment, just like our baptism: the ongoing, constant work of living good news in a world that’s mostly bad news.

There’s certainly some kind of reference in the “cup” and the “baptism” to Jesus’ passion, to his self-giving death and to his resurrection, but I think he’s trying to focus not only James and John, but all the disciples, on the ongoing work.

That’s why he tells them all that greatness requires service. Greatness requires self-sacrifice and self-discipline, and attention to the other much more than to yourself.

It’s a holy truth, and it’s one you’d hear from coaches and champions as well as from Jesus.

Greatness requires selflessness, requires caring about the team more than your own interests: 

passing so someone else can score the goal, 

throwing to the cut-off man instead of going for the glory of a solo throw to the plate,

blocking when you’d rather catch the touchdown pass.

Greatness requires self-discipline, too.

There are early morning workouts, putting every ounce into practice that you didn’t really want to go to, drilling teamwork until it’s second nature to give and receive, focusing on the little things, over and over.

Those things produce greatness on the field - or the track, court, pool, ice.

But these things also become greatness, in and of themselves, when we do each of them for the sake of the game, for the rhythm of the workout that grounds you in your body, for the beauty of the pass or stroke or leap itself.

And that discipline - the training runs, the practice drills - shapes our faith and our relationship with God just as much as the power and skill in our bodies. Teamwork drills and strength training and the joy of the game all teach our hearts about service, hope, and faith, whether we intend it or not.

You don’t have to win the World Series, Stanley Cup, Chicago Marathon or an Olympic medal to be a great athlete.  There are great athletes - strong and skilled, excellent teammates, shining examples - who never make it out of the minor leagues or even the high school leagues. There are persistent, gifted, gracious stars who inspire as much in defeat as in success.

Greatness isn’t the same as fame or victory.

It’s true in our faith, too.  That’s what Jesus tells the disciples today.

Great Christians, great disciples, are found just as much in the middle pews of little churches as in the Vatican, the mega-church, and the calendar of the Saints.

Faithful people, great in their self-discipline in early morning prayer workouts, showing up for practice at pantries and shelters and hospitals and schools that you didn’t really want to go to today, drilling “stewardship” and evangelism and pastoral care until it’s second nature to give and receive.

And there are great disciples who give their hearts to God through victory and collapse, who hold the love, and make space in the holy, to help the seasonal fan be inspired and transformed.

The metaphors come easy, but God’s glory can sometimes seems a long way off, for James and John and for you and me.

We are not all the way there yet —  and God forbid I jinx it, for the Cubs or for God’s kingdom! — but we can already accept Jesus’ invitation to go deeper.

We can go deeper into training as athletes for the gospel, training our hearts in strength and trust and discipline through the ways we train our bodies.

We can go deeper as fans - as wholly, deeply committed believers, practicing faith and expectation through both misery and triumph.

Be an athlete for God this season, like Paul, like the disciples who learn to serve, disciplined in the practices that build up faith, build up the kingdom of God, here and now and among us.

Be a fan for God this season, like James and John, giving your whole heart to the pain and the triumph.

Practice the skills of faith on the field, in the stands, and in front of the TV, and let your faith shape your body, and your commitments on this earth,

because the kingdom and the glory are near, always
and, yes, This Year.

Something More

Mark 10:17-31

The hardest thing to believe in the gospels may not actually be the story of the resurrection. 

It might be this.

It seems like nobody really believes Jesus when he tells us it’s basically impossible to enter the kingdom of God. That starts right in the original text of Mark’s gospel. As soon as Jesus says it’s tough for rich people to enter the kingdom, the disciples push right back. Jesus must be wrong about this somehow, because if the people obviously generously blessed and loved by God are out, then can anybody really be saved??

And nobody - including the dedicated disciples who believe they’ve already done this - really wants it to be true that we have to give everything away to get into God’s kingdom.  Even the most generous among us find it hard to get rid of all we have.  And the more we have, the easier it is to believe that being rich can’t really keep us from following Jesus.

So it’s no surprise that the tradition of preachers and scholars for centuries has been to adapt and manage this story, to blunt the sharp edges and make it easier.

An early biblical copyist slipped in the idea of trust in riches as the barrier to the kingdom - letting wealth itself off the hook. You’ll find that scribe’s work preserved in the King James translation of the Bible, though today’s translation goes back to the original statement that it’s simply hard for the rich to enter the kingdom.

Interpreters in the Middle Ages came up with the idea of a “Needle’s Eye” gate into Jerusalem narrow enough to force a camel to unload to get through. (The actual gate in Jerusalem now called the Needle’s Eye was built much later.) That makes the metaphor easier to handle - it’s about a temporary and practical unloading of possessions.

And more than a few preachers have read this as a challenge to the man’s heart, not his riches — so that you and I, in imitation, are challenged to find and clear away whatever is most in our way when it comes to entering the kingdom, not to literally give away all we own.

(That’s actually a good enough idea that if you’ll commit to the necessary soul-searching to truly clear your own way this week, I’ll give you a pass on the rest of this sermon.)

But the text itself is stubborn.

A blessed, faithful, committed man asks Jesus how to participate in eternal life,

is told to give everything he owns to people in need,

and leaves because this is too hard.

And he’s right - it is too hard.
After all, Jesus goes on to tell his shocked and perplexed disciples that it’s hard - very hard - for anyone to enter God’s kingdom, and effectively impossible for the rich.

This is bad news for us, because compared to Jesus’ first disciples, every one of us here is rich in possessions, no matter how poor we are by contemporary American standards.

It puzzles me, too, since through the rest of the gospel, Jesus seems to go out of his way to make God’s kingdom accessible - always challenging, but definitely accessible to you and me.

I can’t get comfortable with this story,

and in that way it reminds me of another story about giving all you have.

I first encountered Shel Silverstein’s story of The Giving Tree as a child, and enjoyed its abundant generosity and a sense of unconditional love.

But it bothered me a little even then, and I can’t get at all comfortable with it now.

Because as that tree gives everything she has,

it’s heartbreaking.

When the playful, joyful, companionable boy she loves becomes 

first a youth longing for money and its power,

then a man wishing for security,

and then for escape,

the tree gives her apples to be sold for cash,

her branches to build him a house,

and her trunk to make a boat to sail away.

And each time the tree is left lonely and without thanks.

Until the end, when the boy returns to her as a tired old man wanting only a place to sit and rest,

and the tree offers her barren stump, and is happy when he sits and stays.

It’s easy to see how the Boy’s desire for money, security, things, and their power pulls him away from the tree and makes him wish for whatever he doesn’t have; easy to see how he loses his joy in the relationship when possessions and riches gain his attention.

It’s a sharp metaphor for how money and things can draw us away from relationship with God.

But like any parable, it has sharp edges all around.

God is not a tree, depleted by giving us the things we desire —though God no doubt longs for that joyful relationship with us that the tree longs for with her boy.

If we’re heeding Jesus’ call to give away all we have, it’s the tree we might take for our model.

But it’s a heartbreaking one.

The tree becomes lonely by her giving, and less than she was.

And when her boy comes back for the last time, she’s heartbroken herself that she has nothing left to give. She offers the boy a litany of her regret that she has no apples, branches, or trunk - or anything - to give him any more.

But it turns out that after she’s given all that she can, she’s still not done.

When she truly has nothing left,

she still has something to give.

Her boy wants a resting place, and she gives her stump.

Silverstein’s story ends, but the giving doesn’t.

And I wonder if this is a part of what Jesus means when he says that it’s effectively impossible for those who have to enter God’s kingdom.

That even when you and I, like the tree, have given all we can, we still have something left.

That even when we truly have nothing left, there’s still something more to give.

We cannot earn our way into love, relationship, or eternal life by giving all we have,

because we will always have something left.

We cannot give our way into love, relationship, or God’s kingdom any more than a full-sized camel can get through a literal sewing needle’s eye, because when we are all done giving, there will still be something left to give.

That’s why Jesus has to tell us that while for us this is truly impossible, nothing is impossible with God.

We need to feel the pain of this story, need to feel its sharp edges, and let the truth of its impossibility break our hearts. Because the kingdom of God is just as accessible, and just as difficult as Jesus says. It’s nearby and open to every one of us, but only on the other side of impossibility, only — and gloriously — given to us when it’s patently impossible.

Because the impossible is God’s possible,

God’s delight.