Where Do You Want to Sit, John?

October 22, 2006
Text: Mark 10:35-45

Last week the Greater Boston Food Bank held a luncheon for the people who work in what they call agencies. The Food Bank is where we get almost all our food for Faith Kitchen, and we are an agency. An agency is some organization that feeds people by giving them food or serving them meals, as Faith Kitchen does. Once a month someone from Faith goes down to the Food Bank in Boston, loads cases of fresh, canned, and frozen food into a van, and brings it back here so we can make meals for hungry people. Every month we pick up between 300 and 600 pounds of food. It costs us anywhere from nothing to $30 for all that food.

There are many agencies. We are one of the smaller ones. Last year through the agencies the Food Bank distributed 25 million pounds of food in the Boston area. That’s 70,000 pounds of food a day.

The luncheon was held on the 25th anniversary of the Food Bank, and it was held to honor the agencies. At the tables, about a thousand people sat, people who in one way or another worked to help people who were hungry get food to eat.

There were lots of congratulatory speeches, saying how great the agencies were. Tom Menino, the mayor of Boston was there, and so was Senator Ted Kennedy. The speeches and the bigwigs were there to make the agencies feel good about themselves, good about their work feeding hungry people.

The meal we ate was great. (Almost as good as a meal at Faith Kitchen.) And it was good to meet people from other agencies, just ordinary people. But I think all the praises made a lot of people queasy. It made us queasy because I bet there was not a person in that room who fed people in order to be praised. There was not a person in that room who fed people in order to get a pat on the back and a fancy meal. There was not a person in that room who fed people in order to sit next to a mayor or senator.

And it made us feel queasy because though there were lots of speeches telling us how good we were, we agencies were, there was not one speech about hungry people.

It is so easy to divide people into givers and getters. Between, in the jargon, providers and clients. In the hunger business it is especially easy. Some people serve other people. From there it is easy to say “people of a particular kind serve other people of a different kind.” At Faith Kitchen the structure tries to work against making those distinctions. People who come to eat help cook, and people who come to cook eat. That is happening more and more, but even so, differences appear to be evidence for judgment. Even people at the Food Bank seem to feel confident about who is the giver and who the getter.

James and John ask to sit next to Jesus. People see in this passage in the Gospel of Mark a power grab by the two disciples. We want to sit next to you, at your left and your right, they say to Jesus. And the other disciples get annoyed. Indignant, the passage says. We imagine them to be jealous. They wanted those seats themselves. Jesus tells them all, Sorry, those spots are not mine to grant.

Just before these verses, Jesus has told his disciples once again (for the third and last time), that he is on his way to Jerusalem, going to a certain and painful death. One way to look at the request of James and John is that they are looking beyond this prediction to a better time when their party will be in power, in glory, as they say. They are looking to escape the inevitable sorrows of this world. And they want Jesus to do something for them.

But perhaps not. Perhaps there is another way to read it. Perhaps their request is a sign of solidarity with Jesus. After hearing the horrible prediction, they say to Jesus, we are with you all the way. I’m on your right hand, says one. I’m on your left, says the other. We’ve got your back. They are willing to immerse themselves in the sorrows of the world. They want to do something for Jesus.

And when Jesus says to them, Do you know what you are getting yourselves into, do you know what you are asking, can you take it, they say, Yeah, we can. We are able.

Jesus makes it pretty clear to the disciples that being privileged is not what following him is all about. You don’t get special seats for being a Christian. You don’t get to hobnob with the mayor and the senator. What you get to do is to serve with Jesus. I’ve come not to be served but to serve, he says.

But we have got to be careful not to confuse service with authority, with goodness, with power. We have to be careful not to think that serving others is a way to establish our goodness, our righteousness. Do we think we are better for serving meals at Faith Kitchen than those who come to eat those meals? If so, I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said, I’ve come to serve.

We are called to serve others not because we are good. It is not our greatness of character that drives us to serve others. It is not our special skill, it is not our super-compassion, it is not our education, it is not the expectation of our mentors and parents. It is not the prospect of a fancy meal in Boston, or the praises of politicians, or days in heaven.

We serve because others exist. It is the call for help, quiet or loud, subtle or obvious, that leads us to serve. We serve food because others are hungry, not because we are such great food-servers. You give to the beggar because he needs you to. You nurture your young children because they need you to. You take care of your aging parents because they need you to. You visit the prisoners and the home-bound because they need you to. You listen to your colleague go on and on about her spouse because she needs you to. Our sacrifices—for our friends, families, spouses, neighbors, country, co-workers, teammates, strangers—giving up our time, our leisure, our chances, our money, sometimes our lives—we make sacrifices because people need us to. Not because we are so great.

Which is good for us, because people sacrifice for us not because they are so great, either. But because we need them to.

Serving others is not a chore or an obligation. It is how we bind ourselves together. It is why the guests at the Food Bank luncheon felt unduly acclaimed. In his remarks, Mayor Menino said that though the Food Bank had done great things in Boston, it was his hope that in the next 25 years there would be no need for a Food Bank, because there would be no hunger. He got it right. The Food Bank and all those agencies exist because people need them. Though feeding people is great and praiseworthy, we do it because people are hungry.

We come asking for help and guidance and healing and new life from Christ, who responds not because he is good—though that certainly is true—and not because he is powerful. But we know that Christ will serve us because we need him to.

Today, Tobias is baptized. Just now, he was welcomed into the Lord’s family, a child of God, and a worker with all in the kingdom of God. Now a follower of Christ, he has been welcomed to be cared for by Christ and, as he promised through his adults, to care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace among all people.

Loving and following Jesus is not an escape from the world. Jesus is not some buffer, some insulation and isolation from a demanding, difficult, and needy world. Jesus comes to be in that world. Impatient with the ten who are thinking not of human things but of heavenly things, he tells them he comes to serve. And it is because the world needs him to. To follow Jesus is not to escape from the world, but to be in solidarity with it.