Mark 10:35-45
October 22, 2000
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
When I was a kid, I used to love to play “Following the Leader.” The leader would walk in all kinds of crazy and circuitous ways to make the followers go through the same experience. When I was the leader I would walk on the lines on the sidewalk or go around the stop sign or up and down a neighbor’s stoop. Playing “HORSE” on the basketball court is something like this too. When the player hits a basket in a certain way, usually in a very difficult move, all the others try to follow hitting that basket in just the same way. The fun in playing these games is not necessarily being the leader, it’s being the follower. It’s a surprise when the leader takes you to an unexpected place. It’s challenging to see if you can hit the basket in a difficult move.
I like playing these kinds of games because for most of us we can all play them. The main point in playing is to follow what the leader is doing. You don’t need to come up with the idea or having to achieve some kind of ability. All you do is try to follow.
James and John
The passage for today follows the third time Jesus foretells his death and resurrection. James and John along with Peter were part of Jesus’ inner circle or at least, they like to see themselves that way. Even after the third time telling the disciples of his mission and for them to follow him, this time James and John were the ones that show that they didn’t understand Jesus. Instead of asking Jesus what he means by promising to die with him, they asked about being given the second and third highest positions in the messianic kingdom, only below Jesus himself.
James and John wanted to believe that Jesus would be inaugurated in this worldly rule. And since they got close to Jesus first, they wanted to be vice president and speaker of the house. James and John wanted rank and position. They wanted permanent positions in Jesus’ cabinet sitting on his right side and on his left side. And as you can imagine, the other disciples were annoyed and angry over how pushy the sons of Zebedee were of wanting to seize and hold power. You see, following Jesus as the leader for James and John is less following and more getting the status and position they feel they deserved. They wanted their own offices near Jesus’.
Following Expectations
Today, we want to talk about following Jesus.
I can’t recall any moment when Jesus said to his disciples, “Believe the following five things about me.” No, what Jesus said was, “Follow me.”
It is more important to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, than to call yourself a “Christian.” Let me explain. Christianity is not just a set of beliefs, principles, or propositions. It is a matter of discipleship, following. Having faith in Jesus is not beliefs about Jesus. It is a willingness to follow Jesus. The faith is in the following. James and John were not thinking about following. They thought they knew enough about Jesus that they wanted permanent positions in Jesus’ cabinet.
Many times churches make people feel that they have fallen short in their commitment to discipleship. When you came to church this morning you thought you were a Christian. But then when you hear my sermon on something like the 9 things you have overlooked in your faith, then you feel you have come up short. We hear sermons like this. Sometimes churches seem to be all about the ways you fall short in your discipleship rather than all the ways in which you are a disciple.
The church has made discipleship into something of a mystery. Jesus did not demand that we swallow a dozen philosophical statements in order to be with him. He asked us to follow him.
Faith in Jesus is not first of all a matter of having felt something, or having had an experience. It is a simple willingness to stumble along behind Jesus, a willingness to be behind him. The faith is in the following.
Are You a Christian?
In Christian circles, we often ask the question of people, “Are you a Christian?” Sometimes, we become taken back because we feel that it’s a litmus test before you have the rights and privileges of being a part of this special club. When someone asks you that, don’t be befuddled, it’s an easy answer. Yes, you are!
The answer is not a matter of having your head straight about the meaning of atonement or sanctification. The Scripture doesn’t first demand that you have some kind of moving feeling experience that sweeps you off your feet. The answer to the question, “Are you a Christian?” is “Yes.” “Yes, I’m trying my best to follow Jesus. I’m his apprentice, his disciple.” The faith is in the following.
If someone were to ask me, “Are you a carpenter?” there would be no need for hesitation. Yes, I am. Some of you have noticed that I stripped and refinished three old church chairs for my office upstairs. Yes, I’m a carpenter.
I may not be the world’s best carpenter, or the most experienced carpenter in the world. I may have been a carpenter for only two weeks, or for as many as 20 years, but the evidence that I am or not a carpenter is simple and self-evident. I am disciplining myself to the skills, insights, and practices of carpentry. I know something about hammers, nails, and sandpaper. Yes, I am a carpenter.
Now if you were to ask, “Are you a really good carpenter?” then there might be some hesitation from me. Now Clarence Chan is a good carpenter. I am growing as a carpenter, but I am not perfect. My hesitation is not that I am not a real carpenter. Rather, my hesitation shows that I am a true disciple of carpentry. I am still growing, still on the way, still being perfected in the tools of the trade of carpentry. A beginning carpenter like me is still a carpenter.
In all the gospels, we see Jesus criticizing and chastising his disciples. He is often exasperated that they don’t get the point. They fail to follow or they misunderstand.
But Jesus’ criticism of them does not mean that they are not real disciples. It means that they are still on the journey following Christ. They are on the way. Faith does not mean they have arrived; it means that they are on the way. The faith is in the following.
If you want to become a carpenter, you must be an apprentice to a carpenter. You must be minding all of his moves. Follow all of his practices. You must be attentive to the principles of the trade. You must be willing to be criticized by the master carpenter until you become what the master is and does what the master does. That’s surely what Jesus means when he says simply, “Follow me.”
Another question besides, “Are you a Christian?” that people ask is “When did you become a Christian?”
Usually when this happens, people take turns sharing some rather dramatic accounts of how they have been converted into the Christian faith. Some can recall soul-stirring moments when their lives were dramatically disrupted by the infusion of grace of God, and decided to follow.
But for me and perhaps for many of you here this morning, the experience that we may have is. “I can’t remember when I wasn’t a Christian. I was a Christian when I was a child, from the first of life.”
My point is that the way we got on the journey with Jesus is not the crucial matter. The crucial matter is that we are on the way following Jesus. To follow Jesus means to be, as a disciple, imitating the moves of the master in all we do.
Drink the Cup
When James and John ask Jesus, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory,” Jesus said to them,
“Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism
that I am baptized with?”
While James and John were asking for stationary places of rank and file, Jesus was asking them if they would follow him. The cup is the untimely and painful death and suffering that Jesus will experienced. The baptism is the disaster of drowning in Jesus’ upcoming passion.
They quickly answered back, “We are able,” but they didn’t really understand. James and John will desert Jesus and flee for their lives in the garden of Gethsemane. They were seeking for permanent places in Jesus’ cabinet. They didn’t understand that Jesus wanted them to simply follow.
In his second response, Jesus assures James and John that they will indeed undergo suffering. And even in their willingness to suffer as Jesus, James and John received no guarantees that they will get the special honors they were seeking. Jesus humbly subordinates himself to God and says that not the Messiah but God alone will determine who will be given the places of greatest honor in the messianic kingdom.
Wherever you are in your faith, whatever you are doing in your life of faith, you are a disciple of Jesus.
Many times, people from other churches would ask me, “How many full time pastors do you have?” The answer is not three. The correct answer is that we have approximately 500 disciples working full time trying to imitate the moves of the master.
Following Jesus is not a matter of learning to do a few religious things on top of the things we do, but rather a matter of doing all that we do, not for ourselves, but for Jesus.
When I was baptized I really thought that I was going to have all kinds of revelations about God’s truth. I thought that I would begin to understand the Bible more. I reasoned that my faith would come to grip with finding evidence that God really exists. But the more I thought I have understood Jesus, the more I realized that my faith is more emotional than rational. More than that, it was a matter of taking up a Christian life, adopting the habits and practices of discipleship, like going to church, reading the Bible, praying, serving those in need, and giving what I had. As a follower of Jesus, I never got all the answers right to my questions. I just followed what Jesus did and what other followers did. I became a believer just from following.
Trying to Follow Today
Remember the question that James and John asked?
“Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
James and John wanted their permanent positions in Jesus’ cabinet not right this very moment, but in the future, “in your glory.” They didn’t want Jesus to forget them after Jesus’ resurrection glory. And if they were going to suffer and die with Jesus, they wanted to make sure that they still had a place in heaven.
Trying to follow Jesus means imitating all of the moves and practices of Jesus in our daily life today. That’s the reason why Jesus told parables of real life situations on matters like anger, forgiveness, injustice, disappointment—the stuff of real life. He surely meant for us to follow him now, in this life, not some other.
There were two friends: a barber and an accountant. After a day of cutting people’s hair for money, the barber goes out to a hospital for the mentally challenged and cuts hair for free. His friend, an accountant who after a long day of serving people’s financial interests for money goes out at night to cruise the bars and enjoy himself as much as possible.
Both men, the barber and the accountant, are attached to some larger vision of what life is all about, why we were put here. One is attached to Jesus. The other is attached to American consumerism and selfishness. So the most interesting question to ask them is not the abstract, “What do you believe in?” but more concrete, “Whom are you following?” Faith is in the following.
The Southern Baptist Convention has been making a lot of news recently for its fundamental beliefs. Last week, former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter are cutting their life-long ties with the Southern Baptist Convention because of their “rigid” positions. They felt compelled to depart from their denomination after the SBC adopted statements that prohibits women from being pastors, says wives should be submissive to their husbands and eliminates the criterion that the Bible is to be interpreted through Jesus Christ. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter disagree with SBC’s definition of who is a Christian. The Carters are following Jesus.
If the world were to judge Jesus, it would be on the basis of the sort of lives he produces. The only proof we have on the validity of the Gospel, is whether on not it is capable of producing lives that are a credit to the master to whom we are to follow.
Jesus is calling us to simply follow him. When you and I are trying to live out our lives imitating what Christ would have wanted us to do, what other disciples have done, what are the disciplines of faith that we can imitate—praising God in worship, caring for the sick, teaching the children, praying for discernment, giving of our treasures, then we are following Jesus.
Sometimes we hear people say, “Since I accepted Jesus…” it sounds like they have received something that is fixed, stable, a one time decision, and then it’s over. Or they say, “When I was saved…” as if it is some past event, over and done with, as if in that moment your relationship was sealed forever in stone.
Might it be more accurate to say something like, “When I started walking with Jesus or playing HORSE with Jesus,” or “When I began following Christ?”
To be a Christian means simply to be someone who is trying to follow Jesus. Faith is in the following. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we understand everything about the Christian faith, or that we have achieved perfection following him. It means that we are disciples, those who are trying to follow behind Jesus in our daily lives.
Let us pray.
O Precious Lord, lead us to an understanding of discipleship that disarms us from the mystery of the Christian faith and help us to brush away the obstacles that we put up for each other before we can truly believe. All we need to do is to follow you in your ways of walking, serving, teaching, and giving so that the whole world may know God’s love. In the name of Jesus, our Lord, who invites us to follow him, we pray. Amen.