James, John, Jesus and my Great Aunt Esther

Mark 10:35-45

When I was a child, my imagination had painted a picture of heaven --- one which may well have been informed by the interaction between James and John and Jesus shared today.

Now it is so that before the age of eight, I had little reason to think much of heaven.  And then my Great Aunt Esther died.

Now Esther was my grandmother's sister. Grandma Anderson had died just a few months before I was born, so Aunt Esther was the closest thing I ever knew to a grandmother.

This is what I knew of Esther:

• She was not educated by the world's standards. Like many in her generation, she had only completed eight years of formal schooling.
• Her husband, Glenn, was a laborer --- all of his life he worked hard.
• They lived in a small gray house by the railroad tracks. As a child, I loved to lie on the couch in their living room and listen to the trains rumble by. (This, of course, is only 'magic' to a child!)
• I can close my eyes to this day, almost fifty years later, and see the hutch in the dining room which held a thousand treasures for small hands. Indeed, I can still feel the nubs on that brown couch against my face.
• Esther was a person of deep faith. She lived out that faith in many ways, I'm certain, but I especially remember when we went to visit, my sisters and I would clamor to go to her Sunday School class at St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Waukesha. It didn't matter if we were older than the other children in her classroom, it was where we wanted to be. In fact, Esther taught that class for more than forty years.

And I remember this: an emergency trip to Wisconsin when my cousin, Michael, was killed in Viet Nam. My mother was urgently trying to get there to be with her sister. I insisted on going along.

The grief that marked that journey was lost on the six year old I was then. I just knew I didn't want to stay at home with my sisters and the inevitable 'baby-sitter' who would watch over us while my dad had to be at work. And I knew there would be people who loved me well on the other end of that drive. In fact, perhaps it would be forgotten altogether if not for this. In that time before seat belts and child car seats, my mother had to come to a sudden stop and my face had an abrupt meeting with the dashboard, blackening an eye and loosening some teeth. After having me checked out by her old doctor (no doubt, a detour that was not appreciated that day), my mother dropped me off at Esther's who sat with me on the couch and held ice wrapped in a towel against my face. These many years later I remember her tenderness.

Aunt Esther was a servant --- not only to me, but to many. When she died, I had my first taste of grief. And when picturing what had become of her, I was confident she was sitting at the right hand of Jesus.

Now it is so that I shake my head a little bit today at my childhood conclusions. For I don't really believe any more that heaven is the kind of place where God has kept track and your assigned 'seat' depends on the score you had accumulated over a lifetime on earth. And even if this were so, probably every one of us has an Aunt Esther who we are certain deserves that special place of honor at Jesus' right hand.

It is also so that even as James and John spoke, they were probably not thinking of some kind of afterlife. No, we can be pretty certain that they were imagining a time in the then not too far distant future here on earth where they might just be rewarded with seats of honor for being among the first to follow after Jesus. 

And yet, even having said all this, as I hear Jesus' response to James and John today, it is possible that as an eight year old, perhaps I was on to something --- even if my picture of 'heaven' reflected the imagination of a small child. Indeed, from what I knew of her, Aunt Esther was exactly what Jesus calls us to be. She followed Jesus with the simple gifts and ordinary life she had been given. And in doing so, she simply served. Indeed, as you can tell, I was the recipient of her devotion. From my own experience I knew that she made small children feel safe and loved.

Not that it was probably as easy as she made it appear.

• For of course, I have no way of knowing this for sure, but don't you think she would have liked to have at least finished high school? 
• Don't you imagine there were days when she wished she didn't have to work so hard to get her husband's work clothes clean? Or that he had a job which paid just a little more? 
• Don't you suppose she wished for a house that didn't shake with every passing train?
• Don't you think she thought from time to time that she deserved more? Perhaps she even wondered if it wasn't about time someone started serving her.  

Maybe Esther thought all these things at one time or another --- even as James and John appear to be doing today. Maybe she carried those disappointments deep in her heart. All I know is they never showed. She must have learned to let them go. For all we remember of her is that she loved us well. Indeed, over time, it seems to me, Esther became exactly the sort of follower Jesus calls us to today.

Perhaps it is so that like James and John, you and I are only at the beginning of understanding the demands of this call to follow Jesus. And no, maybe none of us will ever get it completely right. At the same time, we are so blessed to have in Jesus the perfect model of what this journey looks like at its most faithful. And yes, we are also fortunate to be able to look back on our lives to see others like my Great Aunt Esther, who embraced what it was to serve.

And so I wonder now:

• Who is your "Aunt Esther?" Who taught you what it is to serve?
• What other examples can you offer of those who have drunk the cup that Jesus drank or were baptized with his baptism? How does their witness inform your life? 
• How do the words of Jesus now shape your understanding of what it is to follow him? What will it mean to you to be baptized with his baptism or to drink the cup that Jesus drank?   How shall you be a servant?

Jesus' Call to Servant-hood

Mark 10:35-45

"So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’" (Mark 10:42-45)

I heard this story a while back.  I was sitting in a hospital waiting room with a woman while her 89-year-old husband was in surgery.  And she was telling stories about him.  This one still brings tears to my eyes to remember it.

Apparently there was a young friend of the family who was going through a difficult time --- so much so that he made an attempt on his own life. When he came home from the hospital she said her husband knew his young friend would be alone much of the time.  So every day for the next six months this retired farmer picked up lunch and took it over to share with him.  I'm told they spent more time in silence than in conversation.  But the young man who was so cared for in such a basic way would now do anything for this one who showed him kindness day after day.  Indeed, I expect he knows he owes his life to him.

I heard another like it yesterday as I visited with a man whose 94 year old mother has been in a nursing home with Alzheimer's Disease some time. It appears she will soon die and so her son called to begin a conversation about the shape of her funeral. Since I have been serving as pastor here for only a short time, he was seeking to tell me something of what her life looked like before this devastating illness took so much from her.

Apparently his mother was on the original auxiliary of our local county nursing home --- the same one which has offered her such excellent care in these last years.  As a volunteer she interacted regularly with the residents.  He told me then of one his mother spoke of who, shortly after her admission to the nursing home, her husband had divorced her.  She had no other family.   She would spend the next twenty years flat on her back... with few other than his mother to visit her day after day, week after week.

These are small things, I suppose, and maybe that is why these sorts of stories of servant-hood often go unrecognized and untold.  Indeed, they are precisely the opposite of what we know leads to status and success --- at least by the world's standards.  In fact, it is also so that for many of us this way of acting doesn't come with intention, without effort. Perhaps that is why they are precisely what Jesus speaks of today.

I almost hate to admit it, but I understand James and John in our Gospel lesson far too well --- and certainly, in some ways, I relate to them more deeply than I do the two examples I offered above.

Oh, I do make nursing home visits and hospital calls. I always have and I expect I always will.  For I know how much they matter to those whose worlds have shrunk to the size of a single room, whose schedules now revolve around the next treatment, the next pain med, the next time the doctor will stop in to offer a diagnosis or prognosis. Still, it doesn't come easy to me.

So in a spirit of full confession here, I tell you the truth.  It was only a couple of weeks ago that I can remember coaching myself to slow down as I stepped into the room of a woman who has Parkinson's Disease.  Her speaking has become more and more halted and every time I see her it seems it takes her longer to say what's on her mind. I, on the other hand, am all too often in a hurry, always thinking ahead to the next task, the next person, the next...  As I remember it, I sat in her wheelchair as she lay in her bed and I consciously forced myself to just sit still, vowing I would not rush her or make her feel more uncomfortable than she already was. She spoke to me of her transition to the nursing home.  She spoke of the toll this disease has taken on her.  She spoke to me of her gratitude for the care of her daughters.  It wasn't easy for me to hold myself still in those moments as she struggled to express herself.   In the end, though, I found I wasn't sorry that I made the effort.

It was on a similar afternoon that I had one more stop to make.  This time, the woman in question has long suffered from dementia.  I do not know if she remembers I've been there even moments after I've left her room.  I'm not always certain she knows who I am when I am there.  Sometimes, if the afternoon is full and I am especially tired I am tempted to skip that visit altogether.  I mean, who would know the better?

I thought better of it though that day and so I stopped in anyway.  When I stepped into her room, Ruth was sitting in her chair facing the small CD player that sits on her bedside table.  And she was listening to opera.  As a beautiful soprano voice soared through the room she sat there with a smile on her face that told me she was at home. I'm told it was not long ago that her lovely voice soared, too.  No, she may not have known who I was, but she recognized the gifts of God, all the same.  When I left her a while later I found I was not sorry I had paused with her before heading home.

It doesn't come naturally, answering the call to servant-hood which Jesus places before us now.  Wherever we go, the world will push us to be about something different from this.  Indeed, I would rather be known as an excellent preacher, an insightful writer, an inspiring teacher than as one who serves those who hardly know I'm there.  I mean, one never gets 'known' for that.  There is little reward in that at all.  And while I'm doing that?  Well, other important things --- the things people really notice --- well they don't get done --- or at least not done as well.

Remember, I'm simply telling the truth today.  I'm not proud of where I am in all of this, but I do recognize that I am, perhaps, moving in the right direction.  For I find myself thinking of a retired farmer who stopped every day to spend an hour with a fragile young friend and of a woman who saw another abandoned and alone in her illness and who refused to also leave her untended.  I think of these servants and realize that they know something I am somehow still only beginning to learn about what matters most of all.  And I suppose that's something.

Oh, I do understand James and John far too well, to be sure. That may never really change. And so it is that my prayer every single day for me, for all of us, is that the day will come when we will discover that the invitation to servant-hood Jesus offers now is the only one that matters.

And between now and then?  Well, in those moments when I do pause to hear and respond to that call? By God's grace from time to time, I will step into a room to find one of God's own listening to opera and smiling. And along with her I will also know then that I am in the presence of the very gifts of God.  And I expect because I am so very human, that will serve to prod me on to servant-hood on yet another day when I am tempted not to because so often it goes unrecognized in this world's eyes.

• Can you relate to James and John? Why or why not?  What are the measures of 'success' or 'status' which call you to choose something other than servant-hood?
• What does 'servant-hood' look like in your world?  What examples of servant-hood can you think of which demonstrate what Jesus speaks of today?
• What experiences have encouraged you to embrace Jesus' call to servant-hood?  Where are you on this journey?