The Joy of Being Least, Last, and Lost

 Sermon preached on September 19, 2021 at St. Thomas' Church, Bath, NY. Proper 20B:  James 3:13--4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

You can listen to this sermon by clicking this link:  https://soundcloud.com/user-263153813/least-last-lost-and-loved

              Jesus did not fail for lack of trying.

               In Mark’s Gospel, the disciples are portrayed as just not getting it.  Over and over Jesus tries to teach them about the upside-down kingdom of God, what life looks like for those who would follow him.  In the middle of chapter 8 (8:21), he throws up his hands and says, “Do you not yet understand?”

               Last week, after that bit of exasperation, we heard him ask the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter seems to get it right. “You are the Messiah,” he says. You can hear the hopefulness in Jesus’ voice.  So he tries to go a little deeper and teaches them that he must undergo great suffering and rejection, and be killed, but rise after three days.

               Peter says, “No.” That is ridiculous.  So Jesus’ exasperation comes out again, “Get behind me Satan! You are thinking in the ways of the world, not the ways of God.”

               If you want to save your life, you must lose it, he says.  Following me means taking up your cross.

               After this Jesus takes three of the disciples—Peter, James, and John—with him up a high mountain and they watch his transfiguration. God is putting his stamp of approval on Jesus’ ministry.  “This is my Son, my Beloved; listen to him!” And yes, that is exasperation you can hear in the voice of God.  I’m begging you, listen to him!

               They come down the mountain to find the rest of the disciples have made a mess of trying to heal someone who is possessed by an evil spirit.  “Why did we fail?” they ask.  I find Jesus’ answer to them devastating. He says, “This kind can come out only through prayer.”  Really?  They hadn’t figured out even that much by this time?

               Then we get to this morning’s story and we go from one degree of ridiculous to another.  Again he tells them of what must happen to him.  “But they did not understand what he was saying,” Mark reports, and then something much worse: “They were afraid to ask him.”

               And what do they do instead?  They argue with each other about who among them is the greatest.  OMG.

               Using a child as an illustration, he says to them, “Look, if you want to be first, you have to be willing to be last.  You have to let go of trying to be a ruler, a winner, and be a servant, a loser. You have to live like you’re welcoming a child, someone who cannot give you any status, a leg up on nothing.

               It keeps going on. In the next chapter James and John will approach him asking him to give them the right to sit and his right and left hand in his glory.  The kingdom of God still looks like power to them.  Again he says, “If you want to be great you must be a servant, a slave.  I came not to be served but to serve, to give my life away so that others might have life.”

               It is easy after all this to mock the disciples.  How slow, how dimwitted, could they possibly be?  But I think Mark’s purpose in portraying them in this way is so that we can see ourselves in them.

               Who really wants to be a slave to others, or even a servant?  Who wants to live a life being least or last or lost?  Should we not be people of ambition, who want to make a name for ourselves, to do if not great at least good things.  One of the worst things anyone can say about us is, “What a loser you are!” If we don’t figure out early on that life is a competition, then we risk amounting to not much or nothing at all.

               These are the ways of the world.  They drive us on a personal level. They drive us as a nation. They drive us as a church.

               If you want to love that way, the writer of James says, if you want to be guided by competition and self-ambition, then get ready for the consequences. Conflicts, disputes. Cravings and war within, cravings and war without.  “You do not have,” he says, “because you do not ask, and when you do ask you ask wrongly.”

               In other words, you think you must win this game called life and that you must do so on your own strength, your own merit, your own reputation, your own power.

               Now I have never thought that God wants us to be doormats. We are called by what James elsewhere calls “the royal law:” Love your neighbor as yourself.  Love of self is part of the gospel equation.

               But love of self Jesus’ style is to allow God’s love for us to rest and grow and shine forth in us.  To love myself is to accept my acceptance, by a God who chooses to love me for no good reason other than I am a living, breathing creation.

               How hard it was for the disciples, how hard it is for us, to love ourselves and others with no strings attached, with no need to deserve anything, to have no need to rest on our reputation or accomplishments or the things we have acquired.

               I speak to you as one who has struggled with this upside-down vision of life that we are called to, struggled with it mightily.  I have been driven to be respected, not only to be good at what I do but at least one of the best.  I felt like I was in competition with everybody.

              Then one day my spiritual director asked me the most devastating question, “Are you willing to be just good enough?”  It knocked me on my keister.  I’m still reeling from the question, and it’s been eight years since she asked it of me.

               What I hear Jesus saying to the disciples is can you find the joy in being least? The joy of being last? The joy of being lost?  Because you have no need of being found if you are not lost.  You have no need of being accepted if you are not least.  You have no need of being loved if you are not last.

               Jesus is saying life is not a competition.  Life is not something you win or lose.  Life is a gift, and only a gift, a pure gift given for no reason at all but for love.

               We all struggle with this personally.  We all have the devil on our shoulder saying that is not how life works.  It is not how the world works.  In this world there are winners and losers, period.

               But what would our life together look like if it truly weren’t a competition.  If we could even disagree with each other about very important things, without stopping loving each other?

               What if? What if our true joy was knowing we are among the least the last and the lost and that’s Ok because we are also among the loved? And we did not do one damn thing to deserve it.

Note:  the title and basic concept is inspired by James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong:  Original Sin through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad, 1998).