Sermon: Are You Able?

Texts: Mark 10:35-45

Date: October 22, 2006

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, EagleHarbor Congregational Church

            First there’s kind of a dumb question, and then there’s a hard question.  Although I don’t get the sense that the disciples understood either the dumbness of the dumb question or the hardness of the hard question. 

            The dumb question: Brothers James and John approach Jesus and ask, “Can you see to it, Lord, that when you come into your glory one of us will get to sit at your right hand and one at your left?”

            The hard question precedes Jesus’ answer: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 

            The reason I think they don’t quite get the dumbness of the dumb question is that they went ahead and asked it.  The reason I think they don’t get the hardness of the hard question is that they answered so quickly and blithely in the affirmative.  “Yes, we are able.”  Just like that.

            Don’t you think they would at least want to ask, “What’s in the cup?”  Isn’t that what you do if you go to someone’s house and they ask if you want a drink—ask, “What are we drinking?”  It’s a logical question to raise before you say yes. 

            Maybe it’s the same self-preservation instinct that drove them to ask for the heavenly seats of honor that prevent them from thinking too long about what’s in the metaphorical cup that Jesus offers.  Because more often than not, when a cup is mentioned in the Bible, it’s a cup of suffering, a cup of wrath, condemnation or contempt.  The cup of which Jesus speaks is not necessarily a fizzy, frothy drink of fun.  We see that clearly in the wrenching scene of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gesthemene as he asks God, “If it is your will, let this cup pass from me.” 

            Who in his or her right mind would choose that cup?  Who would say without hesitation, “We are able to drink the cup that you drink”?  Maybe what was in James and John’s own cup, metaphorically speaking, didn’t look so good either.  Maybe they saw in a flash of insight that what was set on their table before they met Jesus wasn’t what they would choose now that they had had a taste of new life. 

            What might their cup have held before they set out to follow Jesus?  I don’t know the history of James and John, so this is pure speculation.  Suppose they had a life defined by looking out for themselves, by trying to get ahead in a dog-eat-dog world; defined by living in a narrow neighborhood of people who thought just like they did and was suspicious of everything and everyone different.  Suppose they were dogged by a sense of the futility of it all and the meaninglessness of their lives.  Suppose the only thing they ever looked forward to was getting roaring drunk so they could forget about their lives for a while.  If what their metaphorical cup held was the rotgut moonshine that would dull their misery temporarily, any other cup might look appealing by contrast.

            While I was ruminating on cups, a flight of fancy took me back to one of my favorite movies, “The Princess Bride.”  In one scene, Vizzini, a man who considers himself a great genius, has entered into a contest of wits with a mysterious man in black who is trying to rescue the princess Vizzini has kidnapped.  The man in black has said he has poisoned one of two glasses of wine, and Vizzini is to use his superior intellect to choose one of the cups, after which they will both drink and one of them will die of the iocane poison.  Vizzini talks out loud as he tries to make his choice:

My flight of fancy, with a side trip into Vizzini’s dilemma, got me to thinking about the choice between the way of discipleship—the cup Jesus offers—and the way of marching to the beat of one’s own drummer.  Perhaps the dilemma we face when we are making a choice about following Jesus is not unlike Vizzini’s.  Jesus way involves going cross-wise with Caesar’s empire, and they gleefully wield the power to execute their foes.  Clearly I cannot choose the cup in front of him.  My way involves spending my life’s energy trying to satisfy the bottomless pit of my desires.  Clearly, I cannot choose the cup in front of me.  Jesus’ way means loving and forgiving even my enemies.  Clearly, I cannot choose the cup in front of him.  My way leads to a life of xenophobia and constant fear that a stranger will take my life from me.  Clearly, I cannot choose the cup in front of me.  Jesus’ way means I acknowledge that my life is not my own but is to be poured out in love for others.  Clearly, I cannot choose the cup in front of him.  My way leaves me suffocating in selfishness, with no sense of being a useful part of something bigger than myself.  Clearly, I cannot choose the cup in front of me.  And so forth.

            Clearly, though, people have made the choice to drink the cup that Christ drank and be baptized with his baptism, even after counting the cost.  One theologian who has understood truly sharing in the risky life of Jesus better than just about anyone in the last century was a German theologian by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Have you heard of Bonhoeffer?  One of this best known books supplied a line for the UCC Statement of Faith: The Cost and Joy of Discipleship.  Bonhoeffer said, “When Jesus calls a man, he calls him to come and die.”  This was not a theoretical statement for Bonhoeffer; he returned to Germany from a safe haven in England during the Hitler years to join the resistance movement.  He was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, and was arrested, spent several years in prison and was eventually hung by the Nazi regime shortly before the war ended. 

            I got to thinking about Bonhoeffer because he wrote a hymn, “By Gracious Powers” that is in our hymnal that I have read many times but I don’t think I have ever chosen for us to sing.  I have always resisted it  because of the verse that mentions a cup.   Let me read you the lyric:

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered

And confidently waiting, come what may,

We know that God is with us night and morning,

And never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,

Still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;

O give our frightened souls the sure salvation

For which, O Lord, you taught us to prepare.

And when this cup you give is filled to brimming

With bitter sorrow, hard to understand,

We take it thankfully and without trembling,

Out of so good and so beloved a hand.

(An alternate translation from the German)

If thou shouldst offer us the cup of sorrow,
the bitter brimming chalice we'll withstand
and thankfully accept it, never flinching,
from out thy righteous and beloved hand.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?  But I’ve never chosen it because I haven’t wanted to leave people the impression that any suffering that comes our way is specially chosen for us by God for reasons we don’t understand.  I react strongly against the notion that nothing ever happens that God did not will.  In my theological understanding, the free will of humans and bad old fashioned chaos accounts for a lot of human suffering—it’s not all God’s will to somehow improve our character.  But you can’t stop in mid-hymn to have a theological discussion, so we haven’t sung it.

              There is truth in advertising in the hymn—we are at once protected by gracious powers, but not excused from all pain and suffering; in fact, some pain and suffering may come our way because of the choice to follow Jesus.  If the Christian life has been entirely pain-free, we would be right to raise questions about whether we are authentically drinking the cup Christ drank or sharing in his baptism. 

            The sort of pain we might be called to accept in following Jesus?  Costly forgiveness; risky love; generosity that stretches us further than we been stretched before; sharing our precious time in service; trading worldly achievement for the goal of becoming the servant of all.  Taking a cue from Bonhoeffer’s life, if we experience the burden of what his hymn calls “evil days,” however that might be understood, we don’t just wring our hands but join the resistance.  These all fall into a category we could call “growing pains.”  Painful, possibly, as we stretch beyond our old selfish limits; but pain with a purpose.

            There is in both Bonhoeffer’s life and words a profound sense of trust that I admire very much.  He seemed to believe to the bottom of his soul that he was sheltered by gracious powers even while risking his life.  While we may not take the kind of risks Bonhoeffer did, we may also grow to a profound sense of trust.  We accept the growing pains that come with following Jesus, trusting that where there is pain there will be healing; where there is grief there will be consolation; where there is temporary loss there will be ultimate gain; where there is death, there will be new life.

            The question is still a serious challenge.  “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  His asking echoes down through the years to us present day disciples.  How can we possibly join James and John—the disciples the old hymn calls “sturdy dreamers”—in saying “We are able?”  I think Susan Allen gave us a big hint last week as she was being baptized.  She made a marvelous mistake when answering the baptismal questions.              You have to understand that I had a copy of the questions and answers in front of me and she did not.  She had just finished answering pretty much the same set of questions as the mom of Natalie, who was also being baptized, and so the answer, “I will, with the help of God” was fresh in her mind.  So that’s how she answered all the baptismal questions: “I will, with the help of God.”  The reason I say it was a mistake was that according to the book, you’re supposed answer the first two (Do you renounce the powers of evil and desire the freedom of new life in Christ; Do you profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior) with a simple “I do.”  But those are hard questions, don’t you think?  And calling on the help of God to do all of them is absolutely the right thing.

            When we’re faced with one of the many choices that boils down to whether we are able to drink the cup that Jesus drank, it is good to know that we can always answer, “We are able, with the help of God.”  That help comes in part just by seeing that Jesus did not ask the disciples to do or suffer anything he was unwilling to do or suffer.  He invites disciples to drink the cup that he drinks.  He has gone before us in all the suffering and joy, the difficulty and the triumph of walking in God’s way.  Jesus is, the book of Hebrews memorably phrases it, “the pioneer and perfecter of  our faith.” 

            And, of course, the cup of Christ is not all pain, any more than the narrow and selfish life of looking our for #1 is all fun and games.  The other cup that is mentioned in Scripture is the cup of joy—the one that Psalm 23 describes as running over, overflowing, filling up and spilling over.   When we share in Christ’s baptism we share not only in his death but also in his resurrection.  We share in the deep satisfaction of knowing our life meant something.  Listen to the last stanza of Bonhoeffer’s hymn:

Yet when again in this same world you give us

The joy we had, the brightness of your sun,

We shall remember all the days we lived through,