“What is it you want me to do for you?”

This time of year, we are being inundated with ads and commercials filled with politicians telling us what they think we want them to do for us.  Each commercial, each debate answer, each interview, makes assumptions about the values of the people on the other end.  When a candidate makes a pitch or gives an answer or attacks their opponent, they are making an assumption about how we would answer that question: “And what is it you want me to do for you?”

And how would we?  What do we want?  What is it that we are trusting?  What is our name?

James and John come to Jesus.  “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.  Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” They were there when the rich man came to Jesus.  “Good teacher, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life?”  And after learning what a devout man he was, Jesus shocks him: “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  And they watched the rich man walk away despondent.  We heard that story last week.  And in between that story and what we heard a moment ago, Jesus took the disciples aside: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over… they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

This is when James and John come forward to him, telling him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.  And here is what we want: We want power.  When you’re in charge, we want to be in charge, too.  We want a hierarchy, and we want to be in charge of it.  We want to be on top.”

With every advertisement, every debate response, each interview question’s answer, our politicians make an assumption what it is that we want.  And over and over and over again, they assume that we want what John and James want.  They assume that we want to have a hierarchy and that we want to be on top of it.  “Here is the enemy.  There is the group to blame.  Elect me and you’ll be better than them.”  Sometimes it’s very explicit, and we see of certain types of people—migrants, trans people, homeless persons.  And sometimes we’re just told that we will be better than whoever is voting for the other person.  But over and over again—I approve this message—they tell us that they will make us feel better than “them.”  And they keep assuming this because this is what we keep telling them that we want them to do for us.  This is the world James and John lived in, a world of hierarchies, the world where some people simply matter more than others.  And this is the world we live in, a world of hierarchies, where some people matter more than others.  

We have learned, over and over again, over the years of our life, that who we are is wrapped up in who we are better than.  We are “this” because we’re not “that”.  We are “us” because we’re not “them”.  Over and over again, we have learned to build our identity based who we are not.  Over and over again, we have answered Jesus as James and John do: “We want to be over and against others.  We want to be on top.”

It’s always a curious thing that the Gospels depict the disciples as just not getting it.  After all, Mark and the Gospel writers are writing based on their stories!  That is, the disciples themselves are the ones who later told Mark, “We just didn’t get it.”  So it’s no accident that this story about James and John come on the heels of Jesus telling them what’s going to happen, and after this story of the rich man.  “We heard Jesus tell the rich man to give away everything.  And then Jesus told us that he was going to give away everything.  And we still didn’t get it.  Not until we saw it.”

In a world in which we all assume that hierarchy and power is the only game, Jesus shows the disciples, us, the whole world, an alternative.  Jesus didn’t need to put himself over and above anybody.  He didn’t need to build his identity against something he was not.  He was everything he ever needed to be because of the Father.  And so when he came into the world, he was free.  He was free to refuse our game of over and against.  He was free to refuse our game of hierarchy.

They thought he would come to win their game and instead he came to lose their game.  They thought he would come to rise to the top and take them with him and instead he went down to the cross and rose to new life.  They thought he would gather and grab and get all that he could and instead he gave it away, all of it, for the sake of others.

This is what the finally opened the disciple’s eyes on that first Easter, in the Upper Room, when Jesus burst in among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

And this is what is opening our eyes, in the waters of our baptisms, when Jesus came to us in the Spirit, and said, “Peace be with you.”

In the waters of our baptism, Christ comes among us to say, “Just as I have been joined to the Father, so too are you joined to me.  Just as I need only the Father’s love, so too do you.  I didn’t need to be over and against anybody and neither now do you.”

In these waters, our identity is found not in who we are not but in who loves us.  In these waters, our name is not an “us” against a “them,” it is “child of God.”

In these waters, we are freed to be those who are loved into life by Christ.

“Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  

And just as Christ was able to refuse the world’s games of hierarchy, so too now are we.  When the world tells us that who we are is found in who we are not, we can refuse to believe.  Who we are is found in the cross of Christ.

When the world tells us that we will be united in the hatred of any enemy, we can say no: hatred is our enemy.  

And when our leaders come to tell us what we want is to be better than “them,” better and above some scapegoat, we will say no, and we will work to build a different community, a different kind of world, where all are valued and loved as we are valued and loved.

“You know that among all the others, their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you; because whoever wishes to be great, must be a servant for the sake of all, and whoever wishes to be first, must be a servant of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, not to grab and get, but to give for all.”

“What is it that you want me to do for you?”

Give us the courage, Lord, to live this word for you, for our neighbors near and far, for ourselves.

Note: Due to technical difficulties, video is unavailable for this week’s sermon.