Lottery

Mark 10:36-37

      I had someone tell me this week that they wanted to win the Lottery so they would have no financial worries. I wanted to tell them to look at the history of previous Lottery winners and them modify their wish. Almost all who win make their lives even more miserable than they were before. They might have a temporary blip in their financial wellbeing, but in the long run, they end up back where they started.

      Never say “Yes” to a request before you know what the request is. To put it another way, don’t jump until you know how deep the water is. Impulsive commitments can cost you much more than you ever imagined.

      On the other side of the equation are those people who never make decisions. They take so long to come to a decision, to make a commitment, that they end up doing next to nothing with their lives. They are always observing the action, but never participating. They have plenty of time and energy, but are always complaining about how busy they are.

      Jesus recognizes that something is up with two of His disciples. They want something from Him and they don’t trust Him to give it to them, so they resort to an arm-twisting tactic. Jesus doesn’t fall for the arm-twisting. They begin to make their demand, but Jesus never tells them He will grant it. They wanted a blank check request from Jesus.

      When the magic lamp gets rubbed, the Genie must grant the three wishes. These two disciples were trying to rub their lamp. Jesus takes their hands away from the lamp. He won’t bow to their request. He won’t fall into their trap.

      So what are the disciples wanting? They want the seats of honor in Jesus’ Kingdom. They are probably envisioning an earthly kingdom, with an earthly power structure, an earthly throne room, a golden carpet and a raised platform on which Jesus and they would sit. They wanted all the kings of the earth to come and bow before them, and of course before Jesus. They wanted positions of power and honor for themselves.

      There is no blank check request we can make to Jesus. There are always caveats. Instead of asking Jesus what He can do for us, perhaps we should be asking what we can do for Him!

The First Step

Mark 10:35-45

      When jumping out of an airplane, the first step is the most difficult to take. After that, the thump doesn’t take any effort on your part. That first step can tell so much about a person. Some who enter the US Army’s Airborne School’s three week course think it will be no problem to jump, that fear won’t affect them. Some stand at the door of the plane and freeze, unable to take the next step. They return to the ground in defeat, safely aboard the aircraft. Needless to say they don’t get the badge of distinction.

      I never gained that badge of distinction. I knew I didn’t want to jump from a perfectly good airplane, as the saying goes. I never volunteered to go to Airborne School. I have many good friends who did and were successful. I served with many who did so many things that I never did. I was honored to serve with them, these men of courage.

      Two of the disciples in particular were thinking ahead, although naively. They were picking their seats in Jesus’ coming Kingdom. They wanted first and second chair. They wanted to be in every picture taken. They wanted to be people who were known as those who sat next to Jesus. They wanted to be in the ‘in’ crowd. They were inside the beltway people. At this point they were serving as their own lobbyist. So they took the first step and asked Jesus for the spots.

      We know the other disciples questioned their motives because they get upset with them. And Jesus puts them all in their place when He tells them that the road to the top goes through service and ends in service. The top spot is the place of the greatest service to others. If only our politicians could remember that they are public servants! They are too often self servants. But they are not alone in this.

      The two who request these places of honor learn that they will follow Jesus in suffering and death. Their lives will end suddenly at the hands of injustice. Just as Jesus chooses death to serve a higher purpose, these two will die for their faith. They will die with the sure hope of the Resurrection. They will die humiliating deaths. And yet they chose to stay true to what they know.

      I don’t know what your cup is. Right now Christians in Iraq are being slaughtered simply because they are followers of Jesus. Children are beheaded. Women are raped and killed. Men are hung. If we don’t face the reality of Islam, this could very well be our future. Are you willing to drink this cup? Are you willing to die for Christ?

The Touch

Mark 1:41-42

      A potentially explosive situation arose. Have you ever had this happen in your life? One minute you are minding your own business and whammo, you are face to face with a situation and you don’t know the outcome. It can be pretty uncomfortable to be in that spot. And yet, most of us have been there at some point in our lives. The unexpected arrives at our doorstep, and we haven’t prepared a response.

      A man with an incurable skin disease has just plopped himself down in front of Jesus. He has placed his fate in the hands of Jesus, hoping Jesus is willing to cure him. He doesn’t have any doubts that Jesus can cure his incurable illness, but only that Jesus might not be willing to cure him. Talk about low self-esteem!

      When Jesus responds He is either angry or compassionate. There is some question about which of two words Mark included here in the text. Having Jesus be compassionate is certainly an easier fit for the character of Jesus. But having Jesus be angry, perhaps at the man’s question of his willingness to heal him, would also fit. And depending on which translation you are reading, one of these two options was chosen by the translator. To be honest, we are not 100% sure which word Mark used in this passage.

      What we do know is that Jesus reaches out his hand and touches the man and the disease goes away instantly. This is a very unusual thing. There are only two recorded incidents found in the Scripture (Num 12:10-15; 2Kings 5:1-14). So for Jesus to do it is remarkable. And being a visible disease, everyone present and in the future would be able to attest to the reality of the cure. Mark wants us to know that even the impossible is possible with Jesus.

      Jesus did something unnecessary during this curing process. He reached out and touched the man. He could have just spoken to the disease and that would have been enough. But Jesus reaches out and touches this unclean, rejected man. In the process He Himself became an unclean, rejected man. Every person who knew something of the Old Testament Scriptures and the prohibitions listed there would know that the touch pulled Jesus into this man’s world in a way that no other activity could do. Jesus fully identified with this man through a touch.

      This act of fully joining in with us is what being a servant is about. The servant does the tasks that are assigned them. A servant enters the world of the master and connects with the lowest portions of life. The servant does the cleaning. The servant cleans the toilets, or the chamber pots. Jesus identified with this man in this way so that we would know that He is able to identify with our most undesirable traits. And in the process He takes away the shame and stigma attached to that lowly thing that drags us down, that defiles us, that makes us unclean.

      But we must be willing to allow Jesus to touch those shameful, hidden areas in order for the cleansing to take place. He wants to identify with us in these things so that we can identify with Him in His glory.

Occupation Makeover

Philippians 2:5-8

Why is it so tough for us to serve others? At least that is how I feel so often. Do you every resent having to serve rather than being served? Serving others involves honoring them, lifting them up, raising their importance above our own (at least temporarily).

We all like to be served, at least I do. I like going to a restaurant and having someone ask me what I want and then bringing it. No dishes to clean. No food to prepare. No shopping to do. The food just comes. The drinks get refilled automatically. It all gets cleared and cleaned up. I don’t have to do anything except pay the bill.

I want you to think about this. You have really been the servant of the people in the restaurant. You earned the paycheck. The hours you spent at work were service. You exchanged your service for cash. You take your cash (service in paper form) and bring it to the restaurant and pay their salaries. You are serving them just like you served your employer! We are all serving. We get something in exchange for our service.

Jesus got nothing positive in exchange for His service. He had the right to have us serve Him, being the Creator and King of the Universe. But He chose not to exercise those rights. He flipped roles. He served us.

And this was no “Occupation Makeover” event. He didn’t just paint “Servant” on a t-shirt and wear it for a while. He became a servant, our servant. He had no corporate sponsors who would pay the bill, no support crew to do all the labor. Every act of service was His. He bore the full burden of the service. He was a servant through and through.

The One who should be served, served us all.

Really!

Philippians 2:5-8

It’s hard to be a nothing! Everyone wants to feel important, like we matter to someone. It is wired into our brains by God to need other people, to be safely connected to others.

We also want to feel like what we are doing matters, that we are making a positive difference in the world. There is something inside us that drives us on toward this goal, unless we repeatedly tell it to shut up.

We also want to be able to make choices that suit our needs. We don’t always want to do what the other person wants. Sometimes we want our way.

These are exactly the things Jesus had to purposefully choose to ignore when He was here on earth. He made himself nothing. The things He wanted to do, He didn’t do. Other people, including you and me, were more important than He was in His life. To put it another way, He choose to not be safely connected with others in order that we could be safely connected to God. Jesus knew what was in mankind, so He didn’t entrust Himself to us (Jn 2:24).

Our passage says that we are to have the same attitude as Jesus had. We are to think of others ahead of ourselves. They are supposed to be the priority in our lives. Jesus is God and had every right to exercise His authority here on earth, but He chose to hold back. We may be in positions of authority right now and with those positions often come perks. We can choose to not use our perks in order for someone else to get the benefit. We could give our bonus to someone else who needs it more than we do, even though we earned it.

But wait a minute! Don’t I get my fare share? Don’t I get what I deserve? Well, to be honest, you and I both deserve the punishment that Jesus took. Do you really want the beating, public humiliation and crucifixion? Well, I don’t deserve that. I haven’t done that much wrong. Maybe I just deserve 30 lashes with a wet noodle! Really, are you going to be that stubborn and deny what other people see, what God sees, and try to walk around with that holier than thou attitude? It is exactly that attitude that Jesus is getting at. He truly didn’t deserve the rejection He received, but He took it because it was what was necessary to bring us back into relationship with God.

He made Himself nothing. Maybe we need to work on thinking of ourselves a little less, a lot less. We can learn t set aside whatever privileges we might have and learn to serve others.