From the height

Proper 12b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.

Everyone knows that if you want to get a good look at the landscape, you want to get as high up as you can. I’m sure we’ve all seen those scenic view spots on the highway, where you can pull off the road, park the car, and get a magnificent view of the valley or the mountains across. What you see can often be spectacularly beautiful.

But beauty comes in many forms, and some of them can get you into trouble. This is what happens, or begins to happen, with David the King in the passage from Second Samuel we heard today. He is content in his kingdom, living in his spectacular new palace, about which we heard last week. His battles are over — he now has an army of loyal soldiers ready to fight for him; they’re out in the field fighting even at that moment — and the crown sits easily on his head. He is content in his unchallenged position as king, and he has everything his heart could desire.

Well, almost everything. For with this week’s reading, we begin one of the most wicked stories in all of Scripture, a story that will lead to tragedy not only for King David, but for all who become involved in his crime — even the innocent who take no part in it. I’m sure you all know the saying, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Well, David has absolute power — power that was poured out upon him by God working through the prophet Samuel, when he was chosen to be the king; and for most of his life David has used that power well, and justly, walking in righteousness with his God. But now he is at ease — he’s no longer walking, he’s sitting on the throne, he’s even lying down on his couch, secure and high and mighty in his beautiful palace, like a Hollywood star in his Beverly Hills faux-Mediterranean MacMansion. David’s new palace literally gives him the high-standing roof from which he can survey his kingdom from the heights of the City he has renamed in his own honor: the City of David.

And from that height he can also look down over the walls of the more humble citizens’ homes, even into the cloistered garden of one of his leading generals. And there he spies out the naked beauty of General Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, as she goes about the religious duty laid down in the law of Moses, bathing in the purifying waters of the ritual bath after the end of her monthly period.

And David sins. He sins in his heart and he sins in his actions — sending for that woman as any heartless criminal boss might do, bringing her to his bed, and having his way with her, and then sending her home. He sins again when he finds she has become pregnant. He plots to call Uriah home from the front, to send him to his house to sleep with his wife — hoping to fool him into thinking that the child conceived is his.

But David doesn’t reckon with Uriah being a more honorable man than David is himself. Like a good general, loyal to his troops, he refuses to take the leave offered him, to have some R&R while the rest of the army is still camping out in discomfort in the field. David tries to make him drunk — but even drunk honest Uriah will not be disorderly, and he still refuses the comforts of his home.

Then, in those chilling last lines of that reading, David adds to all of his other sins by plotting to put an end to Uriah by sending this faithful soldier on a mission, a dangerous mission, and then cutting off all support, so that he will die. And to add insult to injury, he gives the letter with those instructions to Uriah himself to deliver. Doesn’t that make your hair stand on end? What a terrible, terrible thing. David plots the kind of murder that you could see in “The Godfather” — something a Dictator might accomplish. (You could picture Saddam Hussein writing a note like that, and giving it to someone, to make sure someone is put out of the way.) David will not get any blood on his own hands, but will have his sinful desires accomplished by accomplices.

We will hear the beginning of the end of this story next week. So for now I want to focus on how sad it is that even good people can forget their duty and their God when they have risen to the heights of power. The Scripture is full of such warnings: “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall” — that’s a proverb from the time of David’s own son Solomon; and David himself had lamented, after Saul’s death, “How the mighty have fallen!” — so David has absolutely no excuse in thinking that his high position entitles him to low crimes. David has coveted his neighbor’s wife, then committed adultery and finally murder — well that’s three strikes from the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses on another height —the height of Sinai. Three strikes and you’re out, David! as we will hear next week. For this cannot be hid from God. What David has done, beginning on that rooftop, in the sight of the sun, is surely seen by God — and the punishment will come.

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Is there any good news in this? I say that there is, for there is no necessity that a climb to the heights must be accompanied by descent into the depths of sin. Though that is often the fate of those who climb up so as to be able to look down on others, with contempt or with desire — there is another way to rise up without losing humility and care and concern for others. The point of view — the height — is not the problem — as with so much else in life, the problem lies in what you do with your new knowledge gained through your new perspective from your new position.

David could have caught sight of Bathsheba in her ritual bath, and then shielded his eyes and turned away, and given thanks in his heart for this good and dutiful woman carrying out her ritual duty in accordance with the Law of Moses. He could have thought, “That must be my neighbor Uriah’s wife — how fortunate he is to have such a beautiful and dutiful and religious wife; blessings be upon them both.” He could have returned to his couch and resumed his nap. He made a choice to do wrong, a choice he could have refused at any of those steps of the way of sin upon which he deliberately set his foot and kept on walking, deeper and deeper and deeper into the filth of his own wickedness.

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But no one needs to take that path, that downward spiral from the heights, into the depths of depravity. From the heights instead we can look with admiration upon beauty without the need to possess it or to control it— to enjoy the gifts God gives without having to claim them for our own. We can make use of the heights not to grasp, but to share.

We see this better way, as we do in so much else so often in today’s Gospel from John. Jesus is high and lifted up as well — not in a palace, but on a mountain. From that vantage he can see the crowds of thousands who have followed him,

who have joined the throng to come out to hear about this preacher, and see the wonders of healing that he has performed. Jesus could, up there on the mountain, stand there like a first-century Donald Trump; he could say, “Look at how all these people love me!” He could — but he doesn’t. He could fall into the temptation with which the devil has tempted him when he fasted on the mountain, and order all the people to bow down to worship him. But he doesn’t.

Instead, he takes another of the devil’s temptations and turns it on its head. He asks the disciples about the well-being of the crowd, testing his disciples, for he knows full well what he is about to do. He will feed his sheep. He transforms the devil’s offer to make stones into bread, and instead he takes bread and fish and multiplies it thousands of times over, to make enough bread to feed that teeming multitude of thousands and thousands of hungry people.

And, more to the point, at the end of the miracle meal, when the people rise up and want to take him by force to make him king — what does he do? — he withdraws deeper into the mountain landscape by himself. He has no need for their accolades and praise. He has no need to have them make him a king: He is Jesus Christ, our Lord and God. He is not offering himself like a politician trying to gain favor from an electorate, feeding them so they will make him king. Instead, he is feeding them because they are hungry — they are hungry, and they have followed him. He loves them; he cares for them — but he does not need them to make him a king.

We can do the same. We can take advantage, when we are lifted up, of the position we hold to do good, the good God has empowered us to do. None of us is a monarch, but each of us is a child of God — and that means we are heirs to an eternal kingdom, and have many gifts to share with those who lack, with those who hunger, those who thirst. We need but accept the grace of God, who has put us where we are, to do what we can, with what we have.

Let us pray.

Fished from the ocean of compassion,
baked in the oven of his heart,
broken, given; in like fashion
may we do our part:

catching the fish you have provided,
baking the bread from grain you give,
sharing with all the gifts, divided
that we all might live.+

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Love and Envy

Love is the power that builds up even what envy tries to tear down.

Proper 7b 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul… But all Israel and Judah loved David.

Today’s reading from the First Book of Samuel is a classic example of the difference between love and envy. Two weeks ago we heard of the prophet Samuel’s warning that having a king is a bad idea; last week we heard of how Saul turned bad, and the spirit of the Lord departed from him, and Samuel set off to find a new king for Israel, the boy David. And today we hear the aftermath of young David’s first military victory — his one on one, mano a mano fight with the Philistine champion Goliath.

Saul can’t help but admire this young man, and David becomes a member of the king’s band of most trusted warriors, and their leader. Saul sends David out to battle again and again, and the young man always returns victorious — so victorious in comparison with Saul that the people come to favor David over Saul — and their cheers and their songs about David’s victories begin to ring discordantly in Saul’s ears. Even the music of the harp that David provides to soothe Saul’s vexed spirit becomes an annoyance — even David’s presence arouses Saul to thoughts and acts of mayhem, tossing a spear at David as he plays.

Here we have the very picture of green-eyed envy at its worst, at its most bitter and soul-destroying. Pride, as sins go, is often classed as the worst, but isn’t envy just a form of wounded pride? Saul has God’s favor for a time, and is proud of it. But as it drains away from him and rests on David, isn’t Saul’s resentment and anger just another form of pride? He is angry that someone else is able to do that of which he is no longer capable — and to do it better and more successfully than ever he did. And he just can’t stand it!

So much for envy! what about love? We see great love in Saul’s family too — in his son Jonathan, who, as soon as he sets eyes on David, feels his heart melt as if — as Scripture puts it — his own soul is bound to the soul of David, and he loves him as his own soul. That is powerful language, so powerful that some are embarrassed by it. It reads this way in the Hebrew Scripture, but when the Greeks got around to translating the Hebrew Scripture into their language, they seem to have been so put off by this passage that they left it out of their version of the Bible entirely.

And the urge to omit this story doesn’t stop with the Greeks. Those who prepared the Scripture reading cycle for the whole church chose to offer this passage, what we heard this morning, only as an option — so there will be many congregations who will never encounter it on a Sunday. Yet there it stands, the beginning of what some have called the greatest love story in the whole Bible.

And envy comes into this, too — for Saul knows full well that his son has taken a liking to David — to put it mildly. In succeeding chapters of First Samuel Saul will curse Jonathan on account of David, and even try to kill his own son. For it seems that Saul and Jonathan, father and son, have become rivals (at least in Saul’s mind) for David’s love and loyalty. Talk about a tragic turn to Fathers’ Day!

Of course, it starts even before David kills Goliath — though we didn’t hear that part of the account today, it tells a bit about what bothers Saul. When David first volunteers to take down Goliath, Saul tries to dress him up in his own armor, and gives him his sword. But they don’t fit — as you recall, Saul is a big fella, a mighty warrior. But David is still a boy, probably no more than fifteen or sixteen. So he rejects Saul’s armor — which doesn’t fit him — and that unwieldy sword, as I’m sure you recall. So what does he do? He uses his trusty sling and a smooth stone from the riverbed to bring down the proud giant Goliath. Then, after David’s victory, as we heard today, Jonathan, Saul’s son — also a young man about David’s age and size — is so taken with David that he strips off his robe his armor, and gives them to David, along with his sword, his bow, and his belt. Imagine how Saul felt at that moment: this David has rejected me, and chosen my son instead — and my son chooses him, and rejects me! And green-eyed envy is stirred up and Saul begins to give in to the Dark Side, even against his own son. And you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, if I say I can’t help but see an overtone of another father-son conflict involving turning from good to evil: the relationship of Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker and his father Darth Vader!

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Such is the dark side of the force of envy: it cannot bear to see others have what one lacks oneself. But while envy is a powerful force — that Dark Side of the Force — it cannot do what love can do. For even in the midst of this envious struggle, love is there, conquering all, as the Roman poet said.

Think for a moment, about how much of the world is driven by these two engines, love and envy. Think how much they resemble so many of the other pairs of joys and pains, of what builds up and what tries to tear down; and how the building-up always seems to triumph in the end. The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians about some of these conflicting forces, and how love always manages to triumph in the end. Envy may raise obstacles, but love will knock them down, or pass right through them: for all the dark forces of affliction, hardship, calamity, beating, imprisonment, riot, labor, sleepless nights and hunger — all of these are overcome by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness, love, truth, and the power of God. All of this is better armor than a mere sword, bow and belt. These are the triumphant weapons of righteousness for a two-fisted fighter inspired with the love of God. All it takes is opening the doors of the heart — turning away from the dark side of envy and embracing true affection and love.

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For with God, and through the love of God, even the seemingly impossible is possible. With God, as the Apostle testifies, the one treated as an imposter is the one who tells the truth; the one undocumented and unknown is the chief witness; the one threatened with death and even dying is revealed to be alive and well; the one who seems to be in sorrow is lifted up with joy; the one who seems to have nothing is able to provide everything. And, as the Gospel reminds us, the one asleep in the stern of the boat is able to quell the storm and quiet even the winds and the sea.

And all of this is from the power of love, not envy — from the force that builds up and restores. Love opens doors and breaches the barricades that envy builds around a bitter heart. We will hear more of Saul and Jonathan and David in next weeks’ Scriptures — the story ends sadly for all three of them, and David laments the loss — and yet he continues to become a great king; not perfect, by any means — and we’ll hear about that as well — but one devoted to God even when he fails in how he treats others, even when he himself gives in to the envious desire to have what another possesses; even when he stoops to a criminal act worthy of punishment.

But for now, we have the image of young David — this teenager fresh from victory over Goliath, clothed in the garments of another young soldier — one who loves him as he loves his own soul — envied by Saul yet adored by the people. We have the image of the Apostle, shaming the haughtiness and closed hearts of the Corinthians by his own humility and the open-handed offer of forgiveness and love. And we have the image of our Lord himself, one who will also suffer attacks by the envious, but who will triumph in the end, as surely he triumphs over sea and wind, calming the storm and strife — not with a shout — but with a gentle word of peace.

And I will add one more sign of love’s victory over envy that we saw enacted this week, when another young man stood in blank confusion before the families of those he had so heartlessly slaughtered, and those daughters and sons, and sisters and brothers, and mothers and fathers, did not heap curses on his head, as he may have expected and deserved, but poured out a tsunami of forgiveness — a force and a power I can only hope may rend his heart in shame and bring him to repentance.

For the power of envy may stir up, but the power of love will conquer all. Even that dark force of envy itself and all the other evils that beset us, will, in the end, be calmed and quieted, and all our fears relieved; when we too place our trust in the love of God. Even if we do not see him, even if we fear he is asleep in the stern, he is the one who keeps us safe in the storm and the strife through the night; and it is to him, as is most justly due, that we ascribe all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and for ever more.

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Better Than A Babel-Fish

We are not building a proud tower to assault heaven or to make a name for ourselves. Rather we rely on the presence of our advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom God has poured into our hearts in a spirit of adoption so that we may call out as children call out to their father or their mother, to call out in the name of the Lord our God, who is our Father in heaven.

Pentecost C • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

Some years ago the late Douglas Adams wrote a satirical novel called, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It went through many different incarnations as a radio show, as a British TV series, and even as a live-action Walt Disney movie starring Martin Freeman as the main character, Arthur Dent. He would later go on to another kind of adventure, as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The Hitchhikers Guide is in the guise of science fiction, but it is actually a satire, in which the author gets to poke fun at all sorts of institutions, sacred and secular.

Right from the start, the author satirizes political bureaucracy: the planet Earth is about to be destroyed by a galactic construction authority in order to create a hyperspace bypass, at the same time that Arthur Dent’s house is about to be bulldozed by a highway construction authority to put in a traffic bypass — and in both cases the officious officials announce, when protest is made, that planning permission, with public notice, has been on file in the galactic headquarters and town planning office respectively, so no one has any reason to complain.

Well the novel would be very short indeed if Arthur Dent did not escape the destruction of his house and the planet Earth. He manages this with the help of an alien who has been living on Earth for some time, and who has chosen, while on Earth, to go by the name Ford Prefect. (The joke is likely lost on Americans for whom it might have been better to name him Ford Fairlane!) Ford, in any case, helps Arthur to hitch a ride on the spaceship belonging to the planet-destroying construction company. And the first thing he tells Arthur he must do, if they are continue their travels, is insert a small fish in his ear. When Arthur protests, Ford explains that it is a strange species called the Babel-Fish, an alien species that lives on your brain waves and which, when inserted into your ear, takes up residence in your head and allows you to understand any language you hear, and the everyone in the universe wears them — because that’s how they can communicate with each other. And so Arthur is off on a series of highly improbable adventures, but able to communicate freely with any and all of the strange creatures he meets.

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In this morning’s reading from Genesis we heard the tale of the original Babel, which is not about gaining the ability to understand languages, but losing the ability. Like a number of the other accounts in the book of Genesis, this passage serves to answer a question about why things are the way they are, much like Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. I don’t know if any of you remember them, but when I was growing up that was a favorite children’s book; the one story that sticks in my mind is, “How the Leopard Got Its Spots.” Genesis offers us, in a more serious mode, ancient answers to timeless questions such as, “Why do people get sick and die?” “Why do people get married?” “Who invented music?” and “Why don’t snakes have legs?” In this case, the question is, “How did all of the many languages on the earth come to be?”

And the answer to this last question is that this is God’s response to the presumption of mortals who set out to make a name for themselves and build a tower with its top in the heavens. To show just how presumptuous they are, they name their city Babel — which in Hebrew means “the gate of God,” but which after the confusion of their languages comes down to us with its other meaning ever since recognizable as “babble.”

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Why, you might well ask yourself, should we be concerned either with Babel or Babel-Fish, on this day of Pentecost, the last day of the Easter season, the day that celebrates the birthday of the church, and on which we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit in flames as of fire lighting upon the heads of the apostles? And of course it is because of what the Holy Spirit enables those apostles to do: suddenly to begin to proclaim the saving word of God in many languages — so that people who have come to Jerusalem from all over the known world can hear them proclaiming salvation through Christ in their own languages.

Pentecost undoes Babel — you might well say that it rewinds the tape (but who rewinds tape any more! So let’s say, it clicks the “back” button or the “undo” button). God looked at what the people were up to in those ancient days — in their pride and their desire, not to honor God’s name, but to make a name for themselves. God rightly and simply frustrated their plans by disrupting their ability to communicate with each other. Fast-forward some several thousand years to Jerusalem, where the apostles are gathered not as a prideful or self-asserting bunch, but in humble obedience to that final command that their Lord and Master Jesus has given them: to go to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. There they gather, and there the Spirit comes, giving them the ability not only to speak with eloquence, but in languages that none of them has ever learned, so that all of those outside in the city, from where-ever they come in the know world, can hear that powerful message of salvation — in their own languages, spoken right to their hearts.

And as I said a few weeks ago, God doesn’t just undo — God does something new. God doesn’t just press the undo button, he doesn’t just press the back button, he opens a new document, and starts a whole new story of salvation: ours.

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Thus the scattering of humanity because of pride is reversed and undone by this obedience — and the possibility to unite humanity in humility is made manifest, and the new story begins. The people of Babel had gotten too big for their britches, thinking that it was up to them to make a name for themselves, and even giving the work of their own hands the blasphemous name, “the gate of God,” because they wrongly thought their tower reached to the heavens (though in reality it was probably not much taller than the municipal parking garage across the street! When you live in a world where most buildings are one or two storeys tall, something six storeys tall may seem miraculous to you — but it wasn’t; wasn’t a gate of God — just human pride.) Such is not the Spirit of God, but the spirit of human ambition, human pride.

But the Spirit of God works differently, and comes to those who know that they are children of God. In fact, by coming to them, it makes them children of God, children by adoption. Because God has adopted us, because Jesus our brother has interceded for us, the Spirit empowers us to call God our Abba, our Father, as he taught us to pray. This is how the new story begins — our story — with that one word, Abba, Father.

Only that one word, Abba, Father, is necessary. We need not build a tower to the skies. We need not speak in many languages, either by miracle or by careful study; we need not speak in tongues as some wrongly think is needful for any who are touched by the Spirit of God. We need not make a name for ourselves, because God has given us a name as his children. We need not understand all other languages, or have the ability to interpret them. One word only is necessary, Abba, Father.

With this word we proclaim both our humility and our relationship to God and with God. We are not building a proud tower to assault heaven or to make a name for ourselves. Rather we rely on the presence of our advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom God has poured into our hearts in a spirit of adoption so that we may call out as children call out to their father or their mother, to call out in the name of the Lord our God, who is our Father in heaven. It is God’s name, not ours, that is important.

This is the start of the new story, the church’s story, that tells us how we became children of God. This one word, Abba, Father, overthrows the towers of pride, and establishes our trust in our relationship with God our Father in heaven. May we who have received this spirit of adoption, persevere in it all our days, to the glory of God our Father, and Christ our Brother, through the Holy Spirit, our advocate and guide.

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Front Row Seats

SJF • Proper 24b 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”+Last Sunday and next Sunday we heard and will hear Gospel passages in which people ask Jesus various things. Last week it was the rich young man asking what he had to do to gain eternal life. Next week it will be blind Bartimaeus asking for mercy. This week we hear Mark’s account about two of the earliest disciples, the fisherman brothers James and John, the sons of Zebedee, asking for front row seats — the seats of honor next to Jesus in his glory.

This Gospel has particular relevance for us because James is our patron saint, for whom Saint James Church is named. As you may know, the only stained-glass window of Saint James in the church is now walled up behind the altar — and we can only guess it is because when the altar was moved against the end of the church and raised on three steps, it cut the figure of Saint James off at the waist and people thought it looked a little odd.

Our patron saint is not completely without representation in the church, however. In the row of icons at the altar (which I reproduced in today’s bulletin) he is there at the far left, and his brother John is at the far right. So, in a way, at Saint James church at least, James and his brother John do have the honor of being to the left and right of Jesus.

But it is important to note that in most churches with icons, those places are taken by Peter and Paul, and in all churches with such an arrangement of icons, the most honorable seats in this portrayal of the heavenly banquet belong to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist. In other words, the church has long understood Jesus’s response to James and John as indicating that those seats of honor were reserved for someone else — for the one whom every age would call Blessèd, and the one who was “the Forerunner” and first proclaimer of the Lamb of God.

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Now, I don’t know about you, but I can well understand the other disciples getting annoyed with James and John when they rushed to the head of the class. We’ve probably all known people who put themselves forward, in the process of putting everyone else down. People might call them the “teacher’s pet” or a “crawler.” There is something offputting about this kind of ambition — an instinctive sense that it is inappropriate to push forward and try to take the front row seats, the best seats, the seats of honor.

Indeed, Jesus elsewhere advises against this sort of behavior: telling people to take the lowest seats at the banquet so that they might be honored in being asked to come up higher, rather than taking a high seat and being embarrassed to be asked to move down lower. Apparently James and John did not think this applied to them — they were, after all, part of the inner circle, along with Peter, who had been invited to go with Jesus to the mountaintop, and later those three would accompany him to the garden of Gethsemane. Maybe the trip to the mountaintop went to their heads!

Whatever the reason, whether pride or self-satisfaction or because of earlier signs of favor, James and John clearly overstep in their request for prime seating, and Jesus gently corrects them, and the other disciples as well, when they get bent out of shape in this unsavory contest of “who does Jesus like best.” Jesus doesn’t settle the issue and say anything about who will be seated where — and as with the seats at the banquet advises taking the position of a servant — of one who serves.

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As with all Gospel passages, however, there is more to this account. Notice what Jesus does predict concerning James and John. They will drink the cup that he will drink, and undergo the baptism with which he is baptized. And this is where our row of icons comes in again: for although the images of the saints and angels are ranged at the altar where we celebrate the earthly foreshadowing of the heavenly banquet, they are also ranged at the foot of the cross.

This is the cup that Christ would drink, the baptism with which he would be baptized: a cup he would earnestly entreat his father in Gethsemane to pass him by — while James, John and Peter were sleeping. But in union with his father’s will he accepted it, accepted death on the cross for our salvation, in union with us his brothers and sisters.

The prophet Isaiah had spoken centuries before of this suffering servant of God — the one upon whom the iniquity of all of us wandering sheep long since gone astray, would be laid. “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.” Or as an old prayer has it, “By his cross and passion we come to the glory of his resurrection.”

Christ knew that this was what lay before him — the bitter cup and the baptism of death. James and John would indeed share in this with him — James would be the first of the apostles to die for his faith. And his brother John, though he lived to old age, would know the bitterness of exile on the island of Patmos.

And all of us who bear the name of Christian, if Christians we are, share with our Lord in his sufferings as we share in solidarity with all human suffering: doing our best to alleviate it as servants of the one in whose image every human being is made. This is the way that Jesus commends to his apostles, and through them to us: not to lord it over others as their masters, but to serve them as Christ served us and gave himself a ransom for many.

The Christian life is not about climbing the greasy pole to success, of clambering to attain a front row seat, to elbow others out of your way to get the places of honor. Rather it is about the ministry of service that stoops to wash the feet of the poor, that gives itself and spends itself for the benefit of others and their well-being.

But the Christian life is also not about envying those who do succeed or gain seats of honor and privilege, especially when that honor comes unexpected and as a surprise even to the one so honored. I think of some of the recent reactions to President Obama’s Nobel laureate. I very much doubt this is something he expected and he appears to have received it with grace; and I can’t help but hear in the voices of some of those who have said he doesn’t deserve it, the envious echoes of those other disciples.

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Neither pride nor envy are attractive human traits. Jesus would have us avoid them both. And the surest way to do that is to do as he said: to serve as he did, even if it means a bitter cup and a painful baptism. Few if any of us will be asked to go as far as the apostles and martyrs; but we can do our bit in patience and humility, in service to the least of our brothers and sisters.

And so, away with pride and envy. Our Lord and God has seats prepared for us, and though we know not where exactly they will be, we know that they will be with him, and that should be enough to satisfy us. What need is there for ambition when we have such promises from the living Word of God himself: that living, active word, sharper than a two edge sword that judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart; before whom nothing is hidden and to whom we must render an account; but one who is also able to sympathize with our weakness, as he has borne our griefs. With this Word of God for us, what can stand against us? As Martin Luther wrote,

That word above all earthly Powers,
no thanks to them abideth;
the spirit and the gifts are ours
through him who with us sideth:
let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
the body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still,
his kingdom is for ever.+