Present Kingdoms, Future Potsherds 1 Sam. 8, Mark 10:32-45

What is your image of glory?
What event or what circumstance would make your life glorious?
Go ahead, think about it. I’ll wait.
We each have an image of glory,
Walter Mitty fantasies that make us the star of our own daydreams.
I’ve had those kind of images all my life.

When I was eight years old and taking piano lessons
I fantasized about how glorious it would be to play in a great concert hall.
But, after three years of tedious practicing and nerve-wracking recitals
I did myself AND my teacher a favor and asked that I be allowed to stop.
In high school I dreamed of being a basketball star,
of going to UNC and playing for Dean Smith on a national championship team.
But my stamina was so poor my high school coach once sarcastically ordered me
to leave practice immediately and go call my mother.
In seminary I saw myself in the shadow of great missionaries of the church,
a beloved humanitarian bringing hope and comfort to the masses.
The problem was I couldn’t seem to learn any language other than English
and I realized few missionaries go to the field without some practical skill,
medicine or agriculture or engineering, something I didn’t have.

I expect we all have dreams of glory,
even if it’s nothing more than having an adult child finally come up and say,
"You know, Mom and Dad, you were right all along."

James and John were no different -
no different from us, no different from the other disciples.
They had their dreams - of power, of recognition, of respect - of GLORY.
They were two local fishermen, mere spokes in the wheel of the Roman fish industry,
but since they’d been with Jesus, they seemed destined for bigger things.
Now they were nearing Jerusalem, the Jewish seat of power.
For days Jesus had been talking about death -
of an inevitable collusion between Roman guard and temple elite
to condemn, mock, spit, flog, and kill.
But HEY! Jesus had spoken in parables for three years now,
and while his language was creepy and a little weird
they figured he must STILL be speaking in metaphors.

They were jumpy as grasshoppers to tell the truth.
They knew Jerusalem would be mobbed,
a great, teeming, sweating mass of pray-ers and peddlers,
of vigilant pharisees and nervous soldiers.
James and John were men of the lakeside, spacious and green
but they were ready to move to the crowded streets and high walls of Jerusalem
if that’s what it took.
But they had one thing they needed to do before things got crazy.
They needed to approach Jesus about a promotion -
well not a promotion exactly,
but a clear, unambiguous affirmation of them as first among equals.
"Jesus," they asked, "Will you do us a favor?"
"What’s that?"
"Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."

I have this picture of Jesus when hearing this request,
a mental image of his face, his body language.
He doesn’t say anything right away.
He just looks at them - looks deeply into first one’s eyes and then the other’s.
His look holds in it love, also sadness, and a hint of irritation.
I imagine he sighs, shakes his head a bit, and then, staring into the distance, he says
"You do not know what you are asking."
Sure they know what they’re asking. They’re asking for glory!
They’re asking what any of us ask - to have our life count for something,
to make our mark so that somebody’s going to sit up and take notice,
to find a way out of mediocrity, out of mundane existence into immortality.
What they really DON’T know are the steps it will take
to achieve the kind of glory which is Jesus’ destiny.

I wanted to play Carnegie Hall.
I had no idea what kind of talent and dedication it took to achieve that.
I wanted to be Dean Smith’s go-to guy.
I was clueless about the drive and self sacrifice that would take.
I wanted to be Albert Schweitzer in darkest Africa.
I just didn’t want to go to medical school.
James and John want to achieve genuine power.
They just don’t want to exercise the kind of humility Jesus’ kind of power requires.

"You do not know what you are asking," Jesus tells them.
"Are you able to drink the cup from which I drink?"
"Are you able to be baptized with my baptism?"
In this exchange Jesus looks back to his baptism which began their adventure together
and he looks ahead to the cup of salvation they will share at the climax.
He challenges James and John to place themselves on the continuum,
to join him on that ALTERNATIVE path to glory.

James and John dreamed of riding Jesus’ coattails,
of being in the right place at the right time when Jesus marshaled his forces
and pulled off a coup,
replacing the current dominant power with his own dominant power.
They were tired of being low men on the power pole
and looked forward to reversing positions.
What they didn’t understand was that Jesus was not following that path.
People had been doing that from the beginning of time -
dominating with force, lording it over each other as tyrants.
Jesus’ plan was to break that cycle, to demonstrate with his own life
that true power is found not in violence but in service,
not in political manipulation and intimidation but in costly love.

It does run counter to our impulses doesn’t it -
to exercise strength through intentional weakness,
to find power in humility and sacrifice.
We look for glory in conquest, in acquisitions,
but that kind of glory is sure to fade.

One of the stops we made in Israel was at Tel Maresha.
There we spent an afternoon digging up broken bits of pottery
that had been covered in underground caves for 2000 years.
Most of the pieces we found were non-descript but every now and then
someone would find an interestingly shaped handle or a special glazing.
It was great fun.
The temptation, of course, was to slip one of those fragments into my pocket
when no one was looking
but we were told very clearly that everything we uncovered must be examined
by the archeological team and, if important, catalogued and preserved.
As it turned out, we didn’t have to worry about souvenirs.
On the way back to the bus we passed a large pile of discarded potsherds
other groups had dug up before us.
Our guide told us we could take as many as we wished to carry.

I don’t think anyone could come away from the experience
of digging through someone else’s rubble
without wondering what it is that has lasting significance in life,
what truly brings glory.
Just like those potsherds we dug up
somebody someday in the distant future may be hoeing through a mound of dirt
and find the head of a putter or a Rolex watch.
They may find a state of the art laptop computer
or the hood ornament from a Mercedes Benz.
They’ll put it in a bucket for sorting and maybe catalogue it for a museum of antiquities
or toss it out on the scrap heap to be picked through by tourists.

Jesus’ path to glory is a different path than we’re accustomed to.
It has it’s rewards but they’re not the kind of rewards our culture values very much.
And as for the right side and the left side of Jesus,
James and John REALLY had no idea what they were asking for.
The next time Mark refers to the right side and left side of Jesus is in the15th chapter.
He writes, "It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.
The inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."
And with him they crucified two bandits,
one on his right and one on this left."