Dying to Live
Sermon for 21st Sunday after Trinity – 20 October 2024 – St Margaret’s Playford
Text: …whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ (Mark 10v43-45)
God give you peace my sisters and brothers.
I would like to begin with an apology.
In what, we’re already feeling to be our too short two year stay in this Benefice, you will discover that my sermons will be littered with quotes from Misanthropomorphic worlds such as Narnia and Middle Earth and the Science Fiction Universes of Isaac Asimov, Margaret Attwood and Star Wars. Today it’s the turn of Star Trek and the activities on the Space Station Deep Space Nine.
In the episode titled appropriately ‘To the Death’, the Federation make an unlikely alliance with the Jem’Hadar and go on an away mission to counter a common enemy.
As they prepare to beam to the surface of the planet where the enemy is in hiding Omet’iklan, leader of his troops addresses them thus:
Omet’iklan : I am First Omet’iklan, and I am dead. As of this moment, we are all dead. We go into battle to reclaim our lives. This we do gladly, for we are Jem’Hadar. Remember: victory is life.
To which his troops respond:
Jem’Hadar : Victory is life!
To follow this challenge Star Fleet Officer Miles O’Brien faces the Federation officers, gulps, and says:
O’Brien : I am Chief Miles Edward O’Brien. I am very much alive, and I intend to stay that way…!
Needless to say they win the battle and all live happily ever after until the arrival of the next Spatial Anomaly that is…
Fierce warriors that they are the Jem’Hadar are to the Gamma Quadrant what the Klingons are to the Beta Quadrant but on steroids. Well not steroids but a highly addictive drug called Ketracel White. Enslaved warriors they are drugged daily with ‘The White’; without it they die in a few days. If they refuse to go into battle their drug supply is withdrawn and they soon become dead unless they ‘go into battle to reclaim [their] lives.’
Slavery in turn for ‘reward’ is something which, sadly, we do not need to travel into the Gamma Quadrant to find. Only when Apartheid finally came to an end did South Africa get rid of the ‘Dop System’. This kept low paid vineyard workers tied to their master because they were addicted to the ‘free’ alcohol they were given. Here in Playford we are privileged to have outside this very church the obelisk which remembers the lifelong work of Sir Thomas Clarkson to eradicate slavery. A daily reminder to us that our task, with Jesus, is;
to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and… to set the oppressed free. (Luke 4v18)
But what if people choose to be slaves?
What if to find life we must first die?
What if Jesus really meant it when he said we must take up a cross like Him?
What would our lives, our church, our village and our nation be like if we really did learn the lesson of Jesus that we only find our life when we lose it?
‘As of this moment, we are all dead. We go into battle to reclaim our lives.’
Perhaps Christians have, or should have, more in common with the Jem’Hadar than first meets the eye….?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writing from Tegel Prison whilst wating for the hangman’s noose at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, reminds us of our calling;
‘When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.’
Or as my beloved friend Desmond Tutu, when he was Bishop of Johannesburg, used to remind us about the perils of following the path of Jesus. ‘Always remember’ he would say ‘To become a saint you usually have to die first…’
This is the whole point of the Gospel of Mark, and especially Chapters 8, 9 and 10 which we have been reading these last few weeks.
Unlike the other three Gospels the climax is not Calvary and the Resurrection. The earliest versions of his Gospel have only an empty tomb and no encounter with the Risen Lord. In Mark’s Gospel Calvary is a place of deeds not words. Jesus is silent before Pilate. He does not speak to anyone on the climb to Golgotha, not even to those crucified alongside Him. No words from the cross except ‘Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?’ (‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’) Jesus has done with talking from now on its all about doing.
But this is what he said would happen. Listen again to His words in these middle chapters of the Gospel
In Chapter 8: ‘Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. (Mark 8v35)
and
In Chapter 9: Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’ (Mark 9v35)
also
Earlier in Chapter 10: ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ (Mark 10v21)
And finally today:
…whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ (Mark 10v44-45)
Do the disciples get the message? Nope, not yet anyway.
Even though they are on the road to Jerusalem, to Calvary, and Jesus has been telling them again and again that they have to Die to Live they continue to be involved in a power struggle.
James and John, not called the Sons of Thunder for nothing, are the first to make a bid for glory;
‘What do you want me to do for you?’ [Jesus] asked. 37 They replied, ‘Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.’ (Mark 10v36-37)
After Jesus reminds them that this religion thing is not about glory, the other disciples are indignant and pile on to the twins. Mind you I do get the impression that their anger is because they are just a tad upset that they didn’t get their bid for glory in before the Terrible Twins did!
Jesus tells them (and us) that life is all about giving yourself away (Acts 20v35).
The disciples (and sometimes we as well) think life is all about getting our own way…
Jesus reminds us that we are called to be slaves, too often His followers want to be like officials who ‘Lord it over’ others.
Not rulers, but slaves.
If we are to find any glory or power or influence it is to be found in the Cross not in getting our own way.
As William Penn, Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania wrote whilst imprisoned in the Tower of London:
No Pain, No Palm
No Thorn, No Throne.
Ouch!
But this is the only way out of this life, which is really a death, that we have.
‘As of this moment, we are all dead. We go into battle to reclaim our lives.’
We are called to:
…have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a slave, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross! (Philippians 2v5-8)
We are called to be slaves of Christ not self-servants.
The only power struggle in the Church of Christ should be that of competing for the last place!
We are in a race to the bottom not climbing the ladder to sit on the right or left hand of our Beloved Redeemer.
True greatness is not found in ruling.
True greatness consists in serving!
In the end the disciples got the message. Of the twelve disciples eleven were martyred, many of them crucified as was the Christ they finally learnt to follow, with John spending his last days imprisoned on Patmos a forerunner of the USA’s Alcatraz and South Africa’s Robben Island.
Now it’s over to us.
Will we grab or will we let go?
Will we rule or will we serve?
Will we die eternally or will we live for ever?
‘As of this moment, we are all dead. We go into battle to reclaim our lives.’
‘When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.’
Join me as we enter the fray of giving our lives away that at the end we may hear the words of our Lord;
‘Well done, good and faithful servant! …Come and share your master’s happiness!’ (Matthew 25v21)
oooOOOooo
This blog ‘Dying to Live’ is copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2024. It may be reproduced free of charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.
The request of James and John
35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask.’ 36 ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ he asked.37 They replied, ‘Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.’ 38 ‘You don’t know what you are asking,’ Jesus said. ‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with?’ 39 ‘We can,’ they answered. Jesus said to them, ‘You will drink the cup I drink and be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with, 40 but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.’
41 When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. 42 Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 43 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,44 and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’
(Mark 10v35-45)
Suffolk Vicar 