Sunday 17 October 2021, Trinity 20

Lectionary Readings for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Isaiah 53: 4-end

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But 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. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice, he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain. When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Mark 10: 35–45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’ When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘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. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become 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 a ransom for many.’

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Whoever wishes to become 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 a ransom for many.’

Image on the cover of the order of service:

Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) Christ Carrying the Cross (1920)

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I am helping to prepare two fifteen-year-olds, Maia and Bea, as well as Maia’s mother, for the great Christian rite of confirmation they will experience in three weeks. A great privilege and pleasure. As I was going back through the book we use, I once again came across this poem about the life of Jesus. Because the question we all keep coming back to, again and again, up against all that our life throws at us—-

coronavirus, cancer, aging, death—-the question is, what does it matter, to try to follow this Jesus? What does it matter?

So let me read you this short poem included in our confirmation book.

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant. He grew up in another obscure village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn't go to university. He never lived in a big city. He never travelled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothes, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Twenty centuries have come and gone; he is still the central figure of our Western civilization. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned--put together--have not affected the life of human beings on this earth as much as this one, solitary life.

This was written in 1926; I hope you still get the idea.

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How do we measure ourselves—-how successful our lives are, how successful they have been? If we are fifteen, how do we set the goals we strive for in our lives? It does matter, these questions.

If we want to have a lot of money, stylish clothes, and jet-set around to resorts, not many of us here this morning might consider ourselves successful. But I am not even going to use that word, success, as I don’t like it. And, in the end, it isn’t even relevant.

I am going to ask a different question. Is your life full of meaning? Does it possess a richness of joyful purpose, so that you wake up in the morning and cry out—I am glad to be alive! And leap out of bed with excitement and anticipation, rushing to embrace the reason for which God created you?

That may sound a little dramatic. Yes, sometimes we haven’t slept so well, being preoccupied with some small problem that stayed in the back of our minds.

Something you said to someone in impatience, or irritation, or frustration with the bureaucracy—-that something should have happened for someone, but just didn’t. And you don’t know how to make it.

Life throws at us all kinds of things, things we never chose.

We would like to change a lot of things—-about the world, about ourselves. But we can’t. We are one individual person, and only human, with weaknesses and tendencies to mess things up, even when we have the best intentions. In the midst of life’s messiness and incompleteness we come here to reflect, with one another: who am I, and why am I here on this earth? How can I get through all this that life is throwing at me, better?

And so we come back to the figure of Jesus.

The life and death and rising-to-life-beyond-life of Jesus is what this service is all about. We are here to ask the question: What does it matter, to follow this Jesus?

 When I was small, my family attended a Southern Baptist church, First Baptist Church of Lubbock, Texas. And then we changed after two years to what you might call a mission branch of that church, Second Baptist Church, of Lubbock, Texas. And every Sunday morning I went to my Sunday School class and then to the worship service with my parents and brother and sister and every Wednesday night we went to the Fellowship evening at Second Baptist that was dinner and then another class, all about the life of Jesus.

My mother also signed us three children up for CRP, the Character  Research Project, that was a kind of intensive study of how children learn to behave in a way parents hope they will! One of the words we learned, at age eight or so, was magnanimity. You did not want to be going around acting like Mr. Big, in other words! We also learned an even bigger word, two words together: vicarious sacrifice.

And though I can’t remember if the teacher used a game or puppets or a puzzle to help get that complicated concept through to us, I will never forget the words: vicarious sacrifice.

 What difference does it make to act in a certain way, for someone else?

 I think that it is this notion that lies at the heart of why Jesus’s life and death and Resurrection still matters for us.

 Vicarious sacrifice.

 You can live and die for yourself, or you can live and die for others.

 Of course, life being what it is, messy and unclear, there are all kinds of shades in between.

 Why would you want to live and die for others, the way that Jesus did? So that following Jesus, this is the heart of how you would try to live?

 Vicarious sacrifice.

Here are our words from Isaiah:

The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities….he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many.

And from Mark:

Whoever wishes to become 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 a ransom for many.’

Jesus didn’t set out to die; he set out to serve others with the kind of love that God alone has for us—unconditional, willing to give up everything for that particular beloved fellow creature you look in the eye and have in your gaze in that moment.

But as he lived this kind of life, a life of unconsidered self-giving love, it did lead him, in the end, to the sacrificial place of the cross.

 Turn over the order of service in your hand and look closely at the illustration on the front. It’s a painting—-like the poem, also from the 1920s. It’s by a British painter, Stanley Spencer, who painted Jesus as if he also lived in his beloved village of Cookham, not so far a drive to the north west of London, in Berkshire.

 In this painting—you can go to see it at the Tate—-Jesus is part of a procession of the people of the town. He is carrying a cross. There are all kinds of people hanging out the windows of the houses, and the curtains are lifted outward, as if they are wings on the people! As if they could be angels, lifting off to accompany Jesus across the sky to heaven. But there are also the people who are accompanying him in the procession, and who knows what they are thinking? There are two house painters with their ladders who just happen to be passing by—the two ladders they are carrying just happen to form a cross, as well. Some of the people have their heads bowed, others plod along. You can’t tell their expressions, because he hasn’t painted them. You just see the way the figures are carried along. And Jesus—-he is almost not visible at all, because he is swallowed up in the bodies around him. But you can see the cross, and his hands on it, holding it up. The way of the servant, even unto death, is the way Jesus marked out. To follow Jesus means to stay on this path, in the procession, accompanying him even to the end, wherever that is for each of us.

What does it matter, to follow this Jesus?

It matters. To God, to the world, to us. In love—-in endless, outpoured, sacrificial love—-it matters very much that we choose to follow Him, showing this love to the world He loved, He who has already redeemed and transformed us by this same sacrificial love.

 Though we can never fully understand the mystery of this love, we can show this love to others in His name, in every step that we take! That love has already changed the world, beyond our knowing. It holds up the cross.

 So may we continue to join in the procession….

 Amen.

 The Revd Dana English

St. George’s Church Campden Hill

London

October 17, 2021

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