Who will win the World Cup? Who will win the World Series? Who will win the Super Bowl? An unskilled laborer and a university professor can find common ground in their passion for the home team. People that would never associate with one another may even embrace in the sudden joy of winning. Men and women that have never played the game may find their moods swinging up and down with the fortunes of their team. Even American criminals stay home to watch the Super Bowl.

In Texas Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys (American) football team, there is a Ring of Honor – a blue band with names of the greatest men to play or lead the sports club. Doubtless players and coaches occasionally look up at that band and imagine their names will someday be listed there if only they help the team to win enough games.

Each year billions of dollars are spent on sports apparel, sports tickets, sports equipment, sports advertising, and sports television. As with the waning days of the Roman Empire, entertainment is the great distraction. What can be more consuming than to live vicariously through athletes that win? Of course, the downside is that many a person has spent many a drunken night depressed and wailing about missed opportunities and bad coaching.

Is it then that hard to understand James and John as they ask Jesus for positions of honor and glory when he wins? How could Jesus be up to anything other than winning? Why would he draw the attention of so many people if he didn’t intend to use his popularity to win? Is winning not everything?

It is not difficult to imagine James and John responding to some highly successful moment in Jesus’ ministry with chants of “We’re Number One! We’re Number One!” If James and John were in charge of marketing Jesus, what symbol would they use? Verse 37 suggests an ornate golden throne in their day but in ours a massive carved desk perched at the top of a skyscraper or perhaps in an Oval Office.

Like crowds of sports fans James and John want to share in Jesus’ success – to draw some self-esteem from winning. Was Darwin right about the survival of the fittest? Are we simply playing out the same old animal instincts? Do we need always to define ourselves by who wins and who loses? Do we need the world to be that black and white?

James and John cannot even imagine the world that Jesus lives in. They do not yet speak his language. They ask to be beside him in his glory – assuming that his glory is the equivalent of worldly success. Surely Jesus will take them to the Hall of Fame.

When he asks if they are ready to drink his cup and to share in his baptism, they answer quickly, “But of course! Absolutely! Sure!” They are not unlike a new confirmand or a newly ordained person saying, “Yes, with the help of God.” They think they know what it’s all about. They’ve read the books. They’ve heard the lectures. It cannot be that hard. Can it? Following Jesus must lead to glory. Is that not so?

Their response is not unlike the worshipers saying by rote, “I believe in God the Father.” It is not unlike the parents promising to raise the child to be Christian. It is not unlike the communicant lining up to receive the bread and wine. Like James and John, do we not understand what it is to live in Jesus’ world and to speak his language? Do we not understand the goal? Is it not about ascending to a heavenly Olympus?

Mark’s next scene is a classic. Just when we begin to feel so superior that we can see how transparent James and John are in their stupidity, Mark shows us the anger of the rest of the disciples. They aren’t correcting James and John for being idiots. They are mad, because James and John asked for glory first. What if there is not enough glory left over for the rest of the disciples? What if they end up sitting on the bench while James and John get into the Ring of Honor with Jesus?

It would be easy to talk about the Christian obsession with position and power ever since Constantine converted. But it is less easy to talk about clergy wanting to be bishops, presidents, superintendents, or even pastors of prominent congregations. It is less easy to talk about the people of God longing to accumulate wealth (yes, glory) for all that it brings. It is less easy to talk about how hard it often is to distinguish the Christians, the disciples of Jesus from anyone else.

How hard it is to learn the language of the kingdom of God! Servant, slave, ransom – the vocabulary is unimaginable! It looks like a lonely cross, like a hangman’s noose in Flossenbürg, like Loehe’s obscure parish, or like a successful young professional giving her time and money to care for the weak – the sick – the poor.

How seductive the kingdom of God is! James, John, and the others think they are going to Pilate’s fortress or Herod’s palace, but they end up despised, martyred losers in the language of earth (Babel).

How seductive the kingdom of God is! New pastors think that serving the Church faithfully will lead to being loved and honored, but if we are faithful we end up ridiculed (or worse) by the surrounding culture and mocked by parishioners and colleagues alike.

How seductive the kingdom of God is! In order to please the grandparents or to do the traditional thing, we bring the children to be baptized, catechized, and confirmed. But if we are faithful hearers and learners, we soon find ourselves being drawn further and further into a world where the language seems so familiar and yet everything is upside down. In the kingdom of God, both baptism and the cup draw us downward to service, to give our lives away for Jesus’ sake – for the sake of the Gospel.

Because Christians live in the world, as Paul reminds us in Romans 12, we are subject to seductions that are much sweeter and hence more deadly to the child of God. One doesn’t learn the language of the kingdom in a few years. It takes a lifetime. One cannot will to live in the kingdom of God at the moment of baptism, confirmation, ordination, or new awakening. The Risen Lord with nail-scared hands and feet invites us again and again to give our lives away in the service of the kingdom. Sometimes we do.

A newcomer to the faith may confuse losing with underachieving. A pastor may confuse knowing the vocabulary with speaking the language. A baptized person may claim citizenship in a kingdom he has no knowledge of and may claim a king she does not know. Such are among the difficulties of living in the world while being claimed through no merit of one’s own for the kingdom of God. How will any of us know the dangers if no one will talk about their failures or their losses?

Among the strange paradoxes of the kingdom of God is that winning and losing look entirely different through Jesus’ eyes. Today he is still inviting us to follow him into a very different world where the language and customs are beyond our imagining.

Pr. Samuel D. Zumwalt
St. Martin’s Lutheran Church
Austin, Texas USA
szumwalt@saintmartins.org