Sermon: What do you want me to do for you?

Texts: Mark 10 :46-52

Date: October 29, 2006

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

            For 25 cents I acquired a book of rather snarky poetry by an English poet I had never heard of, Wendy Cope.  She has three especially snarky religious poems that are totally worth the quarter I spent.  Here’s one:

When I went our shopping,

I said a little prayer:

“Jesus, help me park the car

for you are everywhere.”

Jesus, in his goodness and his grace,

Jesus found me a parking space

In a very convenient place.

Sound the horn and praise Him!

His eternal car-park

Is hidden from our eyes.

Trust in Him and you will have

A space beyond the skies.

Jesus, in His goodness and grace,

Wants to find you a parking space.

Ask Him now to reserve a place.

Sound the horn and praise Him![1]

Cope’s little satire in four verses puts Jesus’ question in the gospel of Mark this week in an interesting light, doesn’t it?  The question—What do you want me to do for you?  I doubt that many of us would answer, “To find me a parking space in a very convenient place.”  Even if we have prayed to the parking gods once or twice in the month of December at a crowded shopping mall.  If the question Jesus asks is serious—and I believe it is—parking places aren’t quite a worthy answer.

            If you’ve been to worship two weeks in a row, you might have noticed that this week’s focus question also appeared in Mark’s gospel last week (although it was not the question we focused on last week).  James and John had come up to Jesus wanting him to write a spiritual blank check—“We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”  Then Jesus asks the question, “What do you want me to do for you?”  And they come out with a request that is as goofy as praying for a parking place in what Cope calls “the eternal car park hidden from our eyes.”  They ask Jesus to reserve parking places number one and two, wanting to be seated as his right hand and at his left when he is seated in glory.  Their unworthy request becomes an occasion for a lesson in discipleship. 

            Pop quiz: Did Jesus criticize James and John for asking such a thing? 

            No, he did not.  He did remind them that a total commitment to discipleship involved some risk, and promised them they could share his cup and be baptized with the baptism with which he was baptized.  But to their request he just said in what seems to me a very mild way, “to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant.”  He didn’t call them fools or ask how they could possibly ask such an ignorant thing. 

            I think we should all heave a sigh of relief over this.  What this says to me is that we do not need to edit our prayer requests.  We don’t have the luxury of speaking with an embodied Jesus face to face; our communication with Jesus/Christ/God/Spirit will be through prayer.  Although neither last week’s lectionary nor this week’s is about prayer per se, I think they teach us something about prayer.   Just ask what you want to ask.  There really is no harm in asking. 

We see this underlined in the story of blind Bartimaeus, whose initial address to Jesus is raucous and shrill.  There he is, alongside the road Jesus was walking.  When he hears that Jesus was coming he really makes a scene: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”   People try to shut him up, in part because by calling him “Son of David” Bartimaeus is recognizing Jesus as a king, and in those days Caesar didn’t stand for any whiff of competition.  It was dangerous for Jesus and for his followers to have somebody making him look like a rebel; the walls had ears.  They probably also try to shut him up because a noisy display of emotion or need is just plain embarrassing for everyone who has to see it.  Isn’t that right?  Isn’t it embarrassing when you see someone cry in public? 

            But there is no penalty for Bartimaeus for making a scene.  There is no penalty for addressing Jesus the wrong way, for using the wrong title, for shrieking out his distress.  The opposite of a penalty: Jesus came to a full stop and asked him this tender question: What do you want me to do for you?

            Dylan’s Lectionary Blog[2] this week points out that the Judeo-Christian tradition of prayer really makes space for a whole range of expression.  If you’ve spent any time reading Psalms, you will see not just full-out joy expressed in prayer, but anger and frustration and anxiety and grief and terror and rage.  Dylan writes, “I think that too many of us have taken in a rather silly idea that God is a very, very delicate being who can only stand us when we're feeling Holy and Meek in a cheerful if rather passive way.”   Prayers don’t have to be demure and polite and appropriate.  We can go to God crying out, “Have mercy on me!”  We can ask for whatever we think we need, in any way we feel like asking, including the shrillest of shrieks.   No harm in asking. 

            This probably goes without saying, but we do need to remember that our asking does not mean we are going to get what we want.  God is not some kind of divine ATM full of favors you can extract with the correct password.  You remember James and John’s approach to Jesus—“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”  Notice that Jesus did not say, “Sure, boys, you’re good friends of mine, whatever you ask is yours.”  Prayer is not the same thing as manipulation.

            I’ve heard the question raised several times in the last few weeks whether anyone is listening when we are praying.  That is a legitimate question, especially since we have all experienced the failure of prayer to get us what we want at some point in time.  It is a matter of faith to believe that someone is listening.  It is a matter of faith to trust that the question Jesus’ poses—What do you want me to do for you?—is an eternal question that is posed even to us, even now.  If you do not have faith that a loving being is asking you that question and yearning for your answer, I can’t create that faith in you.  I can only testify to my belief that there is Someone asking and listening to what we have to say in our prayers.

            The question “What do you want?” is one of the most basic questions of humanity.  A psychologist told about his experience of being in a room with about 400 people, all strangers to him and to one another.  He asked everyone to pair off in groups of two.  They were to ask each other only one question: “What do you want?”

            At first the room was silent.  What to you mean…What do I want?  Then…they began to understand.  The room swelled with the volume of the answers.  What do I want?  I want to be respected.  I want to be loved—no the one night stand kind of love but a trusting kind of love.  I want to have meaning and purpose in my life.  What do I want?  I want to have someone care for me enough for that person to listen to me.  I want someone to look into my eyes and know when I’m hurting.  I want my spouse to come home and be a good parent to our children.  I want to know that my life counted for something.  I want to know that someone wants to know what I want.

            You can imagine, can’t you, the kind of yearning that came out in that conversation?  I betcha nobody said, “I want more money,” or “I want a bigger house,” or “I want the employee-of-the-month parking space right next to the door.”  That’s not to say none of us have ever wanted those kinds of things.  It’s just that once in a while we wake up and realize that we have gotten distracted by lesser wants that suddenly look pretty pale and wispy when we reflect on what we really want.

            It’s thrilling in both the sense of excitement and alarm to imagine that when we pray, Christ comes to a full stop, looks directly at us, and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”  Why would I say that could be perceived as alarming?  Because if God can make us whole, well, we’re going to have to be whole people.  We might even need to cast aside some of our lesser wants in the interest of wellness and discipleship.  Here’s a fairly trivial example.  John Hostletter, once speaking to a group of people, asked, “How many of you feel that perhaps you would be better off without television in your homes?”  Every hand in that room went up, bar none.   “Now,” he went on, “How many of you are going to go home and get rid of your televisions?”  Not one hand went up.  We don’t always want what even we think would be best for us. 

            Somewhere I read the story of a young woman who always walked with a limp because of post-polio syndrome.  Her co-workers raised money for a surgery that fixed her orthopedic problem.  Was she happy?  No.  She had spent years blaming that limp for her lack of friends, her lack of dates, her lack of success and contentment.  When it was healed, she no longer had that psychological crutch.      

            I like what pastor Kim Milton Henning wrote about Bartimaeus.  When Jesus said to Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” he answered, “My teacher, let me see again.”  Bartimaeus believed there was life beyond his blindness.  He did not secretly cherish his infirmity.[3]  When he was set free from his infirmity, he was free to get off his backside on the wayside and follow Jesus on the Way.  He did it gladly.  Whereas I think sometimes that I—and maybe you, too—might secretly cherish our infirmities, those qualities of our life that keep us from wholeheartedly following Jesus. 

            “What do you want me to do for you?”  It’s a question aimed at our wellness.  One of my commentaries unpacks the word that is translated, “made well” that appears in our text when Jesus says to Bartimaeus, “Go; your faith has made you well.”  It says that the Greek word was a technical term in early Christian circles for salvation and resurrection life, so it may be that early Christians took this particular healing as an anticipation of the resurrection life of Jesus and of those who believe in him.  As I understand this, being “made well” has to do as much with living as though one is already resurrected as it does with the wondrous disappearance of a physical infirmity.  The healing (of Bartimaeus) is a sign of a deeper and richer healing.

            To me, that says that I can pray to be made well and trust that it will happen regardless of my physical state of being.  There is a dimension of being made well that has nothing to do with being cured of a disease—although being cured also happens, sometimes, for reasons that remain mysterious to us; and sometimes doesn’t happen, for reasons that remain mysterious to us. 

            I believe the question Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” merits our earnest consideration.  I’m going to invite you now to meditate on it for a few minutes.  We’re going to have a few moments of quiet and then I’ll close with Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Prayer for Serenity.”

Get comfortable in your seat and attend to your breathing.  Picture yourself in a quiet and beautiful place.  Jesus comes up and sits across from you; looks directly into your eyes; and asks: “What do you want me to do for you?”  How do you answer?  Silence

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time;

accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;

taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;

trusting that You will make all things right

if I surrender to your will;

so that I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

[1] Cope, Wendy  Serious Concerns  London: Faber and Faber, 1992, p. 62

[2] Breuer, Sarah Dylan   SarahLaughed.net

[3] Hening, Kim Milton  Word and Witness October 23, 1994, Vol. 94:6, p. 232