3 Lent March 23 2025 Meetinghouse, Mark 10:35-52
Rev. Dr. Kathy Monson Lutes
Help us lord to hear your words of mercy and healing, compassion and grace, and
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable to you,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Teacher, we have something we want you to do for us, James and John ask Jesus. And Jesus responds, “What is it you want me to do for you?” Arrange it, they say, so that we will be awarded the highest places of honor in your glory - one of us at your right, the other at your left. James and John ask Jesus for something Jesus has shown no desire to give, placing some above others. Or giving some more or better attention.
James and John are not ill-informed or ignorant. They’ve witnessed Jesus’ miracles and listened to his teachings. James and John are doing what humans do so well, hoping and praying that the world has not and will not change as much as it already has and as much as they know it will. The society in which they lived was built on a structure in which those who had much got more, and those who were like fisherpeople
scraped for whatever they could get. They really did understand the world as a limited quantity, like that pie, if you get a bigger piece, I get a much smaller piece. And James and John wondered if what Jesus was saying about how the kingdom of God worked, not a pie, but overflowing love, more than enough for all, really was true.
This misunderstanding follows the third time in Mark’s story that Jesus tells the disciples the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes and will be condemned to death. The disciples, even though this is the third time they’ve heard Jesus say this, find this news astounding, alarming, and frightening. And equally as astounding, I think it causes James and John especially, and the others as well, to be confused about their own calling, their own part in this story, and confusion about who Jesus is. James and John seem to think this is about seating order at a party, not life in God's kingdom. They don’t seem to remember that Jesus has just taught them about laying down their life, or about what greatness looks like, or the words about being last of all and servant of all. And so Jesus has to tell them again. Jesus says, this is hard, are you willing to accept that? Are you willing to drink the cup I will drink? Are you willing to be in this all the way to the end? Are you willing to participate in this earth shaking change? Are you willing to receive my love, my gift, for your freedom? You see, Jesus’ love for us, God’s beloveds, washes over all of us no matter what.
For James and John and the other disciples, and for us, there is no going back to life before they met Jesus. For us, there is no going back to life before the realities of hurt and dismemberment in this church and in the world. In our civic lives, there is no going back to any good old days.
But we try. And we have been trying. Hoping and praying that everything will just get back to normal. We are more like James and John than we care to admit. We fall back on what we know—what’s comfortable; how the world always worked. The “used to be’s”. For James and John, that meant glory as hierarchy and power as prestige. For the 21st-century church and world, it’s no different, with a bushel of denial of the truth
and a doubling down on a kind of privilege our culture never should have exercised in the first place.
But the world changed for James and John. Jesus went to the cross. The world has changed for us. What once was, is not working anymore. What is happening now, is not working either. We know that. Deep in our hearts and souls. What we do know, is that Jesus’ love for us, God’s beloveds, washes over all of us no matter what.
And we are a lot like James and John. I imagine Jesus saying to James and John, since when did you think this was about you? Since when did you think this is about your power, your prestige, your privilege? You see, it’s about Jesus’ love for us, and we are God’s beloveds. It’s about Jesus’ call to us to love our neighbor. Sometimes I think we have lost our way. We get frightened and confused about our calling as citizens of God’s kingdom, and we forget who Jesus is.
Jesus’ love for us, God’s beloveds, washes over all of us no matter what. The call that James and John seem to be missing is right there in front of them, and is really good news, whoever wants to be great must become a servant. In the household of God,
no one can claim privilege of place; we are all adopted children by our baptism. Jesus asks James and John if they are willing to dive into the water with him. "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized."
Jesus’ journey in the gospel of Mark began in the waters of the Jordan, in baptism, and that journey will be to the cross and resurrection. The grace in this story is that Jesus is the one who comes and shows the way of love, Jesus shows the way of vulnerability all the way to the cross. You see, speaking and acting in terms of who deserves what, who deserves health care or housing or hospitality, who deserves eternal life, who deserves to be on Jesus’ right hand, misses the point that all are worthy in God’s kingdom. The grace in this story is that Jesus, with his very life, death, and resurrection, puts himself in our place, in your place, and in my place, and says, every one of you is worth my love.
Jesus’ love for us, God’s beloveds, washes over all of us no matter what.
You are God’s beloved. You are baptized into Jesus' life, suffering, death, and resurrection.
Taking Jesus' cup is about diving into the waters of our own baptism, waters that bring the dead to life, waters that fill an empty soul, waters that give a heart the only thing worth living, and worth dying for. We get completely wet in these holy waters. There is grace in diving into the waters of baptism, and receiving the unconditioned, undeserved, underrated love that is God’s love. When we take the cup that Jesus drinks,
when we are washed with the waters of baptism, we, God’s beloveds, are called to respond to Jesus’ love, with love. We are called not to the seat of power, but to the posture of service. And our lives are made new, our lives are transformed, our lives become the wave of change. The wave of change, the wave of love, the wave of mercy, the wave of kindness.
The world has changed forever, there is no going back to life as it may have been, as it once was. But remember that when the heavens were ripped apart, the Spirit was let loose into the world, descending from firmament’s fissure and into Jesus.
It would be that same Spirit who would be present with Jesus in the wilderness, on the cross, and in that cold, dark, and seemingly hopeless tomb.
It would be that same Spirit who would stir the hearts of Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome to go back to that grave and look death in the eye once again.
And it is that same Spirit who is in and among us, with us and beside us, calling us to change our perspective, to see what can be, to trust that the kingdom of God has come near and still is.
It is that same Spirit who is inspiring God’s church once again to lead from and preach the gospel we know to be true: our God is here. Believe in the good news.
And then we continue with the gospel of Mark in the shadow of Jerusalem, on the way to the cross. We've been on this road for a while now, partners with those in the story who are also on the way. Before the followers of Jesus were called Christians, they were, as we are, people of the way. This story of the blind Bartimaeus is the last story of Jesus’ ministry before the cross, the passion, and resurrection. I think this story of Bartimaeus is in stark contrast to the story about James and John. James and John ask Jesus for power and status, Bartimaeus asks Jesus for healing. God lavishes love on them all, Jesus calls them as followers, and yet each of them must let go of something they’ve been holding on to, to live fully free, fully alive.
"What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asks Bartimaeus, it’s the same question that Jesus asked James and John only a moment ago. But the gulf between the request that James and John make, and the request Bartimaeus makes is cavernous.
James and John were somewhat confused, they ask Jesus for power, they think the kingdom is about a seating chart at a party. But Bartimaeus, Bartimaeus asks to see.
Nothing like the power and status, the place at the table that James and John were all about.
Imagine Bartimaeus, sitting in the road, probably at the main gate of Jericho, day after day, all day, in the hot sun, begging. Bartimaeus knows who Jesus is, he’s listened to the talk, he calls out to Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Let me see.
One thing here that is so unlike the James and John story; the request, have mercy on me, heal me. Have mercy on me, Bartimaeus asked, mercy. You know what mercy means? A heart for other people’s troubles. Bartimaeus was asking Jesus to have a heart for his troubles. That’s all, hear me, see me, and if you’ve got it in you, heal me.
And that’s what Jesus did, Jesus heard him, Jesus saw him, and having a heart for his trouble, Jesus healed Bartimaeus.
So once Bartimaeus is healed, what does he do? Bartimaeus’ profession is begging. Once he is healed, his life is changed, he can’t go on begging anymore, so he follows Jesus. Just like the others, he gets up and follows. Bartimaeus exchanges a life of begging, a life of blindness, a life of being on the margins, for this life of following Jesus. And you and I know where that’s going, straight to the cross.
No matter how much we think we have, no matter our wealth, our status, our power; or no matter what we think we don’t have, our lack of health, our lack of wealth, our lack of support, we leave it all behind when we follow Jesus, none of that matters. We get so wrapped up in our own shortcomings, or we spend so much time valuing our worth
by what others think is important, that we forget that we are God’s beloveds, and we forget to have mercy, a heart for other people’s troubles.
Jesus calls us to follow, Jesus calls us to surrender things that poison us, or things that keep us from seeing what is around us, Jesus calls us to be merciful, to have a heart for other people’s troubles. Jesus' call to us, the call to be followers, is to open ourselves up, to surrender the stuff that insulates us from our neighbors, to let Love win.
You see, I believe the healing in Bartimaeus’ story is not so much regaining sight, but in being restored to the community. In every one of the healing stories, that is the point.
Jesus calls people from the margins back into the community. Bartimaeus is called, and healed, and follows Jesus.
We are called, healed in obvious ways and not so obvious ways, and we follow Jesus. Not in a transactional sense, but in a deepening sense. The journey to the cross is as difficult as it is exhilarating; following Jesus is not for the faint of heart. But the good news is that we are all in this life together. When we are in this life together, the burden of a broken heart and a broken body becomes a bit lighter. Hope is born in and among us, Jesus is born in and among us.
And that is where mercy and love grow. Mercy and love and compassion grow out of the broken places. It’s like when you are hiking on the granite rocks of Lake Superior, and in the middle of all that hard rock, there is a fissure, a crack, and out of the crack there grows a tree. The good news is seeing, seeing, the grace, the joy, the wonder, in all that life throws at us. And unlike Bartimaeus and the others, we know the end of the story. We know that resurrection happens. We know that life always wins over death. We know that we are part of resurrection.
There is hope.
How about you? Now that you have embarked on this journey with Jesus, taken up your cross, even been healed, what do you do?
Let us pray,
Beloved God,
Help us to lay down our desire
to be at the head of the table;
help us to invite all of God’s beloveds
to the table.
Help us to have a heart for people’s troubles,
help us to merciful.
Help us
reach out to your beloveds,
those who sit with us in these pews
and those who are not yet in these pews
and show forth your love, and mercy, and compassion.
Oh God of grace,
we pray this in your most holy name.
Amen.
