"Where Shall We Sit?"

October 19, 1997
Text: Mark 10:35-45
Rev. James R. Gorman [Home] - [Sermon List]

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The modern Church often confuses being nice with being good. In fact, we often refer to nice people as "Christian" people. Or sometimes, "Nice Christian Folks."

It was the great Rabbi Abraham Heschel who once observed that God is not an Uncle. God is not nice. And bringing his fist down on the table he raised his voice, "God is an earthquake!"

The Gospel story, if the truth be told is not a nice story. And the main character in the Christian Story, Jesus, was not a Nice Guy. He was good to be sure, but not always nice.

Now don't get me wrong. The world needs nice people. People who smooth over difficulties in the workplace, in the PTA, in the United Nations. Nice people oil the gears, they keep things going, they keep people relating to one another. An organization or group without nice people in it will drive other people away. But an organization or group with only nice people in it gets very little done. It's a fun group to be a part of but few tough decisions get made. Everybody is so busy being nice to everyone else that no hard decisions get made and therefore the status remains comfortably quo.

A little bit of nice goes a long way.

Reminds me of a meeting some 10 years ago when we were working at putting together the Interfaith Program for the Elderly. That program has grown over the years to one of enormous stability and has done so much good in helping folks stay in their homes for as long as they can. Faith Church's support over the years has been instrumental in keeping it going and on its feet. Our Christmas Eve offering goes to support this project.

But at that meeting 10 years ago, before we hired our first director, before we even had an organization on paper, we were splitting verbs and dangling our participles over the constitution and by-laws. Nice people like to deal with procedural issues like constitutions. And these issues are crucial to any organizations life, but our conversations and arguments over words did go on for a long time. Meanwhile, one of the priests, Father Carl, from Corpus Christi Church at 84th and Villard finally lost his patience and said, "Look, we have not got enough money together from our participating churches to get this show off the ground and if we don't show some improvement in the financing, all the hair-splitting over the constitution is not going to make a bit of difference." Or words to that effect.

Father Carl was not being very nice. But he made us face the tough issues that Nice Civilized people like to avoid. MONEY.

For the most part, our most successful churches are good at being nice, but they must also at some point be more than nice. They must be good. The Church must also do what is good and true and tough. It must also confront suffering and the causes of suffering, and perhaps in the process, make some judgments and say and do some things that are not nice.

I think of the Nestle's boycott of some years ago. When Nestle was selling infant formula under false claims, the Church and other groups began a boycott of Nestle products. It was not a very nice thing to do, but it was a good thing. Now those products are more carefully marketed so that mothers in the third world are not hoodwinked into thinking that milk substitutes are just as good as mother's own milk. The church, in that instance, did a good thing, even if it wasn't a very nice thing.

It was not nice, but it was good.

Within the church, we sometimes think that members and pastors ought to be nice to one another. But I think we could spend some more time being good to one another, which at times may mean not being polite.

That is the gist of the confrontation between Jesus and two of his disciples in Mark 10. James and John come up to Jesus and they ask if they can sit one at his right and one at his left in the realm of God. And Jesus is, as he often can be, rather abrupt. He asks them whether they can drink the cup that he is about to drink. It's a tough question in which Jesus is not being very nice. They of course, not knowing the implications of that, say yes without hesitation. "Of course, we'll drink that cup." The implication of that is that James at least will be killed by Herod as recorded in the Book of Acts (12:2). And Jesus says, "Yes, you will drink of that cup."

Taking up our cross and following Jesus is not a nice way to get where we want to go. Most of us, me included, would want to avoid the bitter cup of suffering at all costs. I'd rather take a taxi and have someone else carry my burden. We think that service to the world means being nice and that then and therefore, people will like us. Jesus, however, seems to want to make clear that sitting at his right and left hand means more than being nice:

it means being good. And it means being willing to accept into our hands . . .

and onto our lips, . . .

the bitter cup of suffering.

The answer to the question "where shall we sit?" is not a nice answer. The answer is another question, as is often the case with Jesus: "Can you drink this cup?" And it's Jesus' way of telling us up front that we are not being called to be nice to a nice world, but to be good to a broken world.

The haunting question for the church is this one and it is not a nice one: "Can you drink this cup?" And the implication is that the cup does not contain Chateau Lafitte Rothschild, 1957. It contains some of the gall that was placed on the sponge and handed to Jesus on a stick of hyssop. Something like Chateau Menominee River Embankment.

For when the Church strives to be good rather than nice, the result is rarely great praise. We may be forced, Jesus informs us in no uncertain terms, to drink from his cup.

Let me get back to my earlier statement about Jesus not being nice. I know that is hard to swallow, for most of us were raised on the notion of Jesus meek and mild. And certainly for his followers, he was the counselor, the one who provided balm for the wounds, the one who loved us when we least deserved it. And that is nice.

But for those who challenged him and his authority, he was not nice. I think of Jesus on trial before Pilate. Poor Pilate, you see, caught in the middle of a religious dispute that he would just as soon have go away. He would give anything to let Jesus off the hook. He asks Jesus leading questions, "Are you the king of the Jews?" (John 18:33 and following verses).

Now if Jesus were nice, he could have responded by saying something like, "You misunderstand, your excellency, my kingdom is not of this world, I make no political claims, so you really haven't anything to worry about."

That's all that Pilate really wanted to hear. He seemed to be saying in his desperation, "Let me off the hook here Jesus and save yourself." But Jesus replied with silence. Thus sentencing himself to drink of the bitter cup of death by torture and sentencing Pilate to a lifetime of bad dreams.

Jesus was not nice. But he was good. He said nothing, and the bitter cup that he had prayed about the evening before was handed to him.

"Can you drink of that cup?"

Sometimes I can; sometimes I can't.

I take great comfort from the fact that Peter couldn't. In fact, none of the men in Jesus' life distinguished themselves with great acts of heroism in those last hours. There weren't any GI Joes, no Rambos around Jesus on that last day. The Gospels tell us that there were only women at the foot of the cross at the time of Jesus death. The men were gone.

And I don't blame them. Because I think I have deserted Jesus often enough. I go to church because I need to be reminded that all is not sweetness and light in the world that God so loved, and discipleship requires a drink or two of some pretty nasty stuff.

I don't think that that is all there is to the Christian life. We are also called to embrace one another and care for one another. We are all called to a ministry of love and compassion. But there are times when compassion leads us into valleys of terror and we are moved to say the unsayable, and Jesus says we must then be ready to drink the undrinkable.

The Church would be in better shape if we would ask each member upon joining, "Can you drink this bitter cup?"

My answer would be, "Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't." And rest in the assurance that God forgives the morally lazy. Me and Peter and James and John.

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