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Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost – October 20, 2024
Mark 10:35-45
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
I once went on a quest to discover the roots of my last name. The name “Spencer” has a long history in England, where it originated, and there are some prominent Spencers in British history, so I had high hopes. Perhaps there was some long-lost connection to nobility. Perhaps I was in the blood line of some prominent figure. One of our church members was recently visiting Westminster Abbey, where some of the most exalted figures from England’s past are buried, and he found a pin emblazoned with the Spencer name and the Spencer Coat of Arms in the gift shop, which he brought back for me. The Spencer line is established enough that it has its own Coat of Arms, represented at Westminster Abbey! While it turns out that I don’t appear to be related to any of them, but there are some significant Spencers sprinkled throughout British history.
However, if you go back far enough, if you research the origins of the name, it is not associated with nobility. It does not suggest prominence. In fact, the name means “someone who waits tables.” You see, many English surnames are based on occupations. The Millers were the family who milled flour. The Bakers were the family who baked bread. Well, the Spencers were the family who dispensed things for others. They were, at least originally, the waiters and waitresses in the houses of the nobility. They were servants.
I have to admit I was a little disappointed by this. But then I thought better of it. I thought what better last name for a pastor to have then Spencer! After all, I wait tables for Jesus, don’t I? I wait tables for the King! A pastor’s job is to dispense the gifts of Christ, given in Word and Sacrament. I’m like a Pez dispenser. I lift my head, and the gospel is supposed to come out! This is what it means to be a servant of God’s Word!
I went searching for nobility in the origins of my last name, and I found something better – at least from a biblical perspective. I went searching for prominence and found servanthood instead.
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, went looking for nobility too. In our gospel reading for today we hear them approach Jesus with an audacious request. “Grant us to sit,” they said, “one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
This wasn’t merely a request for a good seat in the Kingdom of God. They weren’t merely asking for a comfy chair up front with a good view. They were looking for positions of nobility. They wanted positions of prominence. The seats they were asking for were a reference to the seating chart in a royal court. To sit at the right or the left of a great earthly king or leader was a privilege reserved for nobility. That’s what James and John were looking for! What they found instead, however, was a call to servanthood.
“You do not know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? Are you able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Jesus was referring to his impending suffering and death. He was using common Hebrew euphemisms, or ways of speaking, to describe the overwhelming affliction he would soon face.
You see, Jesus was now on his way to Jerusalem. The throne he would soon occupy would be a cross, where he would give himself up for a sinful humanity. Jesus’ kingdom wouldn’t be about nobility or prominence or power – at least not in the way the world understands those things. Instead, it would be about humbling oneself. It would be about sacrifice. It would be about suffering for the sake of others. It would be about servanthood.
When the other disciples learned that James and John had been trying to jockey themselves into positions of nobility and prominence in Jesus’ kingdom, they got angry! Jesus saw this as a perfect teaching moment. He called them together and explained to them what his kingdom was all about. “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them,” he said. “But it is not so among you; whoever wishes to be 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 as a ransom for many.”
Jesus provides an example of what true greatness, true nobility, looks like in his kingdom, and it is not a matter of elbowing your way into a position of prominence or power.
Jesus’ kingdom isn’t like any earthly kingdom. It isn’t like the monarchies of the ancient world. It isn’t like the feudal system of medieval England. It isn’t like the meritocracy of our own time and place. Greatness in Jesus’ kingdom comes through servanthood. “Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all,” Jesus said.
Jesus calls us to servanthood. He calls us to humble ourselves and to live lives of sacrificial service to others. This servanthood can be expressed in many different ways. It can be practiced in ways big and small. We can be servants to the people around us, caring for them in their time of need. We can be servants to our spouses, to our children, to our families – not seeing them merely as a means to our own happiness, but as people God has given us to serve.
We can be servants in our workplaces, whether that’s milling, or baking, or waiting tables, whether that’s teaching or driving a bus or stocking shelves or maintaining airplanes or homemaking. We can bring a servant’s heart to any number of tasks, whether they are in positions of prominence or in things the world sees as lowly. When it is done in faith and with love, our work – whether paid or unpaid – become an expression of discipleship.
We can be servants to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ here in the church, treating each other with humility and honor and love in spite of our differences. We can be servants of the church, and not just consumers of its goods and services. A paraphrase of JFK might be appropriate here: “Ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church.”
Jesus is our example in all of this. “For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.”
But Jesus is much more than just our example. Before we see him as our example, we must first receive him as our savior. Before we can be his sacrificial servants, we must first grasp his great sacrifice for us.
As Isaiah prophesied in our first reading, “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.”
As Jesus himself said, he came “to give his life as a ransom for many.”
We are imperfect servants, to be sure. But through his sacrifice for us, Jesus has made us part of his noble blood line. Jesus donned the crown of thorns and assumed the throne of his cross, so that we would have complete forgiveness for all our failures as servants. He was raised for us so that we might rise again daily by his grace to walk in newness of life, serving him by serving those around us.
The only human being born of true nobility made himself a servant, humbling himself on the cross so that we could be part of his kingdom forever. He gives us all his name as we are called Christians. Through baptism he adopts us into his holy family, marking us all with his Coat of Arms and making us children of God. He continues to join himself to us through his sacrifice, putting his own precious blood in us, that we would be his own.
Our Lord Jesus continues to serve us with the gift of himself.
And so we willingly and joyfully live in service to him.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church