It takes a long time, in most cases, for the Word of God to sink into a person’s heart.  It has for me!  There’s so much there, already!  Certainly, we want that Word in our hearts.  The rich young man did—thought he did.  Then Jesus explained that, in order to make room for God’s Word, so that the Word might grow there, other things would have to be thrown out.  Ground would have to be cleared in that garden.  Of all the things already in your heart, things that have been there a long time, what are you prepared to be rid of?  “Oh!” we say, “the hurt!”  The sorrow!  The guilt!  The anger!  The resentment!  Good, yes, let’s be rid of all that.  Only, we find it’s not so easy.  That may confuse and frustrate us, leave us feeling even more sad, more hurt, feeling more guilty than before.  God’s Word is supposed to help, to heal, but when?

It’s happening now; it will be finished when we depart this life.  Oh, how much will remain undone, unsaid, when we die, but God has promised in that moment to finish, perfectly and all at once, all that remains to be done.  That help and healing is happening even now, hearing God’s Word, even now, listening to this sermon, like a medicine, a balm as from the Gilead of God.  Preaching isn’t really to help you balance your checkbook God’s way or control your unruly kids the way Jesus would; if you’ve endured my preaching long enough, you certainly know this preaching isn’t to congratulate us.  Be encouraged rather by the relationship God establishes with you in Jesus Christ, cultivates in you by the Holy Spirit.  God isn’t building egos, the kingdom of Me; He’s building a kingdom of saints, the kingdom of Thee; He’s building a holy Church for Himself.  Preaching is for healing, teaching, blessing, filling, hoping, praying, living Christ’s way, this cross-bearing way, this way of victory, and sacrifice.

Most often, I think, God’s healing happens in small increments, the way all healing happens.  Sometimes we help, sometimes we still get in the way of our own healing.  The grace of God is healing and helping us, grace given through Christ’s gift, help and healing by the power of the Holy Spirit, alive in us.  It takes a lifetime!  How do you want to spend your life?

Jesus has spoken much already about sacrifice, service, humility, putting aside self for the sake of our relationship with God: let God sit on the throne of your heart—that’s not easy, not even for the apostles, for James and his brother John.  I think of John as very gentle, a mystic, grandfatherly, protective, wise, tender, full of radiant love.  John loves love!  That’s not how he comes across in what I read to you today.  No, the “Sons of Thunder” want to be enthroned on either side of Jesus, sort of bracket him, govern access to him, major-domos.  You have to go through me.  They must think they merit that, have earned it.  As these two see it, if everyone were being absolutely honest, they would agree James and John have earned that position.

A few weeks back, I mentioned that some regard James and John as cousins of Jesus by their mother, whom they take to be Salome, whom they take to be Mary’s sister.  That could be.  Scripture doesn’t say; they never call Jesus cousin or brother.  Thus, I proceed with caution, but, if true, that could explain why the brothers make this otherwise shockingly presumptuous request: they’re family, you see!  “‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask’” (10:35). That last part sounds like something Jesus should say to us, rather than his followers to him.  We want Jesus to do all manner of things for us, not all of them just selfish, some quite commendable, but what are we prepared to do for him?

Hearing them, he says, “‘You don’t know what you are asking.  Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?’” (10:38).  The cup of suffering.  The baptism of fire.  Only Jesus, beloved—that suffering, that fire.  This is why God sent Jesus, sent His eternally-begotten, well-beloved Son: because only he could, only he can.  Jesus is going to do something for us, not just serve as a moral example.

James and John must have been listening attentively when Jesus spoke of sacrifice, of sacrificing everything here to gain everything there.  Fired up, motivated and ambitious, passionate for the Lord, the brothers just know they are ready: “‘We can,’ they answered” (10:39).  They can persevere, endure; they’ll testify come hell or high water.  They aren’t afraid.  Oh, they will be.  “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with” (10:39).  If we remember the Acts of the Apostles, we may recall that James is beheaded.  Back then, that was about the quickest way to go, if it was done properly, yet I shudder to think what they did to him before they cut off his head.  We may remember that John, very elderly, is exiled to the island of Patmos, cut off from communication after some seventy-plus years of suffering for the sake of the Gospel.  The cup comes to each of the faithful differently, beloved, and the cup comes to us all.  How shall we drink but for the grace of God?

God’s grace is woven all through God’s plan, that strong, supple fabric: His purpose from before creation to be acknowledged, and glorified.  That may make God sound sort of self-centered, but this is God we’re talking about, not any human being.  God is love, as we are reminded and as we remind ourselves.  The essence of love is not self-love, self-pride.

The Son, the expression and fullness of God’s love, comes among us according to God’s plan and purpose; all things are harnessed to this plan.  The Son, fully God and fully man, seems to defer to the Father when he tells John and James that “to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant” (10:40).  We may wonder whether the Father and the Son are truly one, after all, truly equal.  Consider, however, that this might not be deference so much as the Son teaching that God’s plan is at work, and all things are harnessed to this plan: “These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared” (10:40).  God rules and overrules.  Things are not out of hand, not out of control—though Lord knows we can feel as if they are, often!  God is always bringing order, His order, out of chaos.  Here in Bedlam, we can yet perceive and receive His peace.

John and James were eager for the glory, the power and authority: they are young men, and young men often dream dreams of conquest, dominance, because the old story of the weakness and failure of men is there, surrounding them, and they are afraid they too will fail, and in their “forbidden ear the distant strains of triumph burst agonized and clear.”  The agony of defeat.  How we hate failure!  Is that why so many have such aversion to Christ crucified?  Yet great successes come only at the end and as the result of failure and costly sacrifice.  What does success look like?  Jesus has been trying to tell them, teach them, but he’s teaching something very difficult for us, hard to hear and hard to learn!  To succeed, one must fail.  To rule, one must serve.  To be first, one must be last and least; to be great, one must be as nothing.  This sort of talk made Nietzsche’s scalp crawl.

John and James, and I don’t doubt the other apostles also, including Peter, are still thinking about pride of place: this is the way of the world into which they were born and schooled.  Achieve prestige on the backs of the vanquished; stride over the losers.  There are many ways to climb the ladder, beloved, but the point of climbing that ladder is one: to be higher than others—by whatever measure you measure by.  “Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them” (10:42).  Oh, boy.  Yep.  What’s the point of having authority if you never make it felt?  The sixteenth-century Italian priest Philip Neri said, “He who wishes to be perfectly obeyed, should give but few orders.”  Not just servant leadership but leadership by example.  Don’t demand that others do what you aren’t yourself also willing to do.  The disciples, even the twelve—human, all too human—remain focused upon obtaining authority, yet another treasure of earth.  Prestige, rank—to get somewhere in life, to be something, someone big, or at least big enough, bigger than that guy, anyway.

“Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:43-45).  Serve as the slave of all.  I think it’s important that the word here is not only servant but slave.  We’re not enamored of that word.  Servant, okay, but slave?  Uh uh.  In Greek, the terms blend together.  Bound.  Bound to your master; bound to your master for life.  No one can serve two.

What does it mean to be great?  Jesus tells us, but how can we hear him?  Humility, meekness—oh, how that word drives me to distraction!  What does it mean to be great?  Have a higher goal than any of the goals the world offers.  Paying the price to set others loose.  Some amass treasure here, but let us store up treasure in heaven, for where our treasure is . . .

An immigrant worked as a janitor for most of his working life.  He lived a long life.  Upon his death, it was discovered that he had left $1.1 million to a Baptist college in Iowa.  You might just remember a more recent story of a New England janitor who left some $6 million to his local library and hospital.  I wonder how many people who lived and worked right next to these men knew their names.  These men were there all along, for decades, but who really noticed them?  Most of their work was done after people had left for the day, behind the scenes, after the action, no one else there to see, to notice, cleaning up the mess others left: there’s a thankless, endless labor!  Yet they enjoyed their work.  It suited them.  They had found their calling.  They did not work for the notice it would get them: it got them none, here.  They did not work for the glory of the work: it was not glorious work, as the world regards glory.  They did not work in order to become wealthy, here: janitor was not the way to do that.  They had a higher goal in view; they worked for that higher goal.  Along the way, they did what was needed, putting things back in order, restoring, repairing, cleaning, clearing . . . small, humble, regular, ongoing acts of anonymous forgiveness.  The sum of it was blessing, abundance, miracle.

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  For from God and through God and to God are all things.  To God be glory forever.