Josh Bascom, “Your True Story”
Martin Luther once said, “the thirst for glory is not ended by satisfying it, but rather by extinguishing it.” We all have a thirst for glory in our own sort of ways. Getting good grades or getting fit. For some it’s the classics of money, power and fame. Many of us even glorify virtue, piety and charity, never missing an opportunity to broadcast our acts of kindness and altruism out into the world for recognition, or being sure that folks around us know that we’re on the right side of an issue. We’re all guilty of pursuing glory and trying to win at life in one way or another.
In the passage from Mark this week, two of the disciples really show their hand. James and John come up to Jesus and in ridiculous fashion say to Jesus, “we have a small request, do whatever we ask!” Jesus, I’m sure rolling his eyes, asks what they want. And the disciples ask to be given seats of honor at Jesus’ right and left hand, they ask to be put in a place of glory. But Jesus simply responds, you don’t know what you’re asking.
They think they’re asking for a place of power, to be in the inner circle of Jesus who they think is on the way to rule as a powerful king. But Jesus tells them you don’t know what you’re asking for, I am on my way to displaying my glory and power, but not in a way you would ever conceive of. I won’t be sitting on a throne, instead I’ll be hanging on a cross, with a criminal on my right and my left hand. The disciples’ idea and our idea of glory and Jesus’ true display of power and glory are two completely different things.
“whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
The pursuit of glory and winning at life is a universal experience. We all do it, in our own sort of ways, but at its root, I think the desire for glory comes from a place of pride. Yes, we want to be admired and loved, but we want to be for our own achievements, for our own successes, and in ways that set us apart as anything but ordinary. We want to be seen as self-sufficient, so well-rounded and put together that we don’t need help from anyone else, instead others will come to us for help, and maybe even ask, how can I become more like you?
There is something really funny and almost ironic about what goes on here with the disciples. Even in their pursuit of glory, even in their attempt to find their way to the top, they still have to come to Jesus and ask for His help. Even their foolish attempt at glorious independence and power begins at the feet of Jesus, asking for just one more ridiculous favor.
I went to an all-male college where there was a definite culture, I’m not sure that I would attribute it to the school and it’s administration, but there was a definite culture among the student body of clearly defining what it means to become a man. And more often than not what that looked like was becoming someone who was wise enough and strong enough and hopefully eventually wealthy enough to care for themselves and the people closest to them. Now in many ways there’s nothing wrong with that, but quickly that in and of itself can become our ultimate goal in life—the pursuit of being recognized as a successful, self-sustained and sufficient, powerful and glorious person. And that pursuit doesn’t always end well.
I quickly fell into this mindset as a college student, I’m still guilty of it at times, I would get into argument after argument about who was the greatest about all sorts of things, much like the disciples in another passage from scripture. One night my freshman year my friend Luke and I were walking home from a party with a group of friends, and as we often did, we began to argue. Luke and I had been friends since kindergarten, so much like brothers we were often in competition and dispute over who was the better athlete, who was smarter (not who was the better student, that was an important distinction), who was the alpha among us, and ultimately who was more impressively in control of their lives. And as we argued, like most mature adult 19-year-old men, we began to wrestle and I flipped off the sidewalk, into the woods, and into what turned out to be an enormous patch of poison ivy. My right elbow swelled up twice the size of my left, I was a mess, I could barely get out of bed. My mommy had to come take care of me, Luke’s mommy had call me in a prescription, I missed class. Needless to say I was a pretty pathetic mess and I was forced to sit on the sidelines of any conversations about who was the greatest for some time.
More often than not, the pursuit of glory, self-sufficiency and high status result in failure. That’s just life. And what we experience in those moments is a feeling of helplessness, the opposite of glory. We experience the feeling of being stuck and the need of a gracious hand to deliver us from ourselves.
Jesus summarizes the entire Gospel message in the closing verse of this passage, declaring that he came “not to be served”, not to be worshipped, not to be set up at the end of the table for us to honor or emulate, not to show us a path to glory, no, Jesus came “to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
The key word here is ransom. When a ransom is involved, when a ransom is paid, it serves the purpose of releasing someone from a situation they can’t get themselves out of on their own. To say that he is our ransom, is to say that he is our salvation from the disappointing reality of just how stuck we are. And that’s precisely what Jesus did on the cross. Delivering us from the bondage of sin and death, Jesus rescues us, over and over again from our futile search for glory. As Luther put it, Jesus extinguishes our very desire for glory by giving us the wonderful status of His redeemed and beloved child.
It’s not your glory that will make you feel whole. It’s not your glory that will sustain you, heal your relationships or finally make you happy. And that’s good news, because the reality is that either the glory you’re seeking, you’ll never find, or if you do, it will be painfully fleeting. Instead, what will make you whole, what will sustain you and give you hope and maybe even joy amidst the suffering and celebrations of life, what will provide you that is the ridiculous and scandalous truth of the Cross.
As St. Paul writes (Galatians 2:20); “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The Cross replaces our glory stories and makes us part of its story. The cross becomes our story. You are not just Steve or Janice or Paul or Sally, you’re someone who’s life was saved because someone else, someone blameless, lovingly sacrificed their very own life for you.
Our search for glory can take us to some pretty inglorious places, but even then and there we are met by Christ in all his magnificent mercy. Even in those places where we feel stuck, lost and forgotten, helpless and cracked, even then the Cross is your story, the story of the sinless servant, serving humanity by hanging upon a cross, atoning for the sins of all of us glory-seekers, and raising us all up from the ashes to the truly glorious place of His beloved child. Thanks be to God.
Amen
