How many of us have played musical chairs? It's interesting, when children play musical chairs it looks amusing. But when you see grown men engaged in such a game it becomes disturbing as men try to get the best seat in the house.
I guess it is human nature to want to sit in the best seat in the house. At sporting events it’s the skybox seat, or the seat on the fifty-yard line or the seat directly behind home plate. These places command the best view and the highest price. They also carry the greatest bragging potential.
This desire for the best seat in the house shows up in many places. Watch people in a parking lot sometime. The best parking places are usually the ones closest to the front door.
At a concert, the best seat in the house is probably the one closest to the musicians. Maybe and even better one might be a backstage seat where you get to meet the performers.
When you have a guest to your house and invite them to sit down, don’t you give them the best seat? If one of your kids is sitting there, you ask him to move.
What do you suppose is the best seat in the church building? The back seat, of course! I know that because it’s the one that fills up first.
Diplomatic negotiating teams spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars and many hours getting the seating just right so that visiting dignitaries are afforded proper honor by the placement of their chairs. A slip here can mean that countries go to war.
I seem to remember two disciples of Jesus named James and John getting into this "best seat" thing when Jesus asked them in Mark 10:36-37, "What do you want Me to do for you?" And they said to Him, "Grant that we may sit in Your glory, one on Your right, and one on Your left." They wanted the best seats in the kingdom - the places of honor and prestige. It’s a natural thing for the natural man.
Jesus had some specific things to say about the best seat in the house, and it’s what I want to consider with you in this message.
You probably recognize that what Jesus is teaching here is the opposite of nearly everything we hear in the world today about success. It is not easy advice easy to take.
As I've been reading this passage, at the back of my mind I can’t help but hear the echoes of Muhammed Ali's boxing war-cry 'I am the greatest!'
And both the text and Muhammed Ali make me want to ask:
What is greatness? What is power? How do we use our greatness and our power?
I'm particularly fascinated by Jim and John Zebedee's request: 'we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.' There's an underlying sub-text here of a sense of entitlement, perhaps, in the statement they make. And more 'echoes' in my head - this time not so much Muhammed Ali - but the voices who want power or privilege or some kind of entitlement in the wider community, and in the church community. In a small, dark corner of my mind I hear the words:
'so pastor, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.' This may be found in situations of proposed change... or even proposed non-change... in the form of 'if you change the way we have communion, if you don't let the choir sing an anthem, if you have all-age services, if you don't have all-age services, if you get rid of the pews, if you keep the pews... we will stop being an elder/ leave the church/ withhold our offering/ hold the church community to ransom so that we do get our way.' And effectively continuing to hold the One who gave his life as a ransom for many ... still to ransom.
Wherever groups of people are, there will be jockeying for position and a bit of an attempt at empire building: it's what we do as humans. Created in the image of God, maybe we sometimes set ourselves up as gods because deep down we feel small and powerless and it frightens us?
Conversely, maybe we are fearful of just how powerful a thing it is to be made in the image of God - what are the implications of that, we wonder?
So, perhaps it's a little precious to be looking askance and James and John and their attempt to do what most humans do - manouevring for position. Were James and John really interested in the broader, communal picture, or was this an exercise in self-interest? No. Yes. 'What will we get out of this? How can we get more? How can we manipulate the situation to our further advantage?' Perhaps we beat them up a tad too much... and maybe we even beat ourselves up too much because we forget our humanness, forget that we are not God?
If we think of the power context my sense is that consumerism, with its cult of the individual, and the sense of 'get more toys', if I want it I should have it' - irrespective of the cost to self and others, has insidiously crept into the church. The notion of body, of community, gets chipped away under the church-hopping about from one place to another - leaving a church because, 'after all I went there, but I got nothing out of it.' Every time I hear that phrase, I'm so tempted to say: 'okay, but what did you put into it?' I suspect if I did say it, I'd be looked at as if I came from Mars... but that's another story for another time.
If I step away from a small soapbox at this point and think on the text a little more, perhaps the concluding thoughts run a little like this: we all have some kind of power - some more than others. How do we use it?
Where or on whom do we focus it - God, others, ourself?What is, and what does, power look like in the kindom of God within the godly community?
Real power is understanding that you can let it go...when you don't need it...when you know it is not your master but is rather a tool.Real power is found in the context of kenosis - a self-giving - a giving away... demonstrated in the all-powerful God becoming all-vulnerable: human as we are human.
Are we ready to drink the cup of our humanity... and conversely are we ready to drink the cup of real greatness?
Amen
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