Foretaste of the Sermon to Come
Sunday’s scriptures are Isaiah 53:4-12, Romans 6:1-4 and Mark 10:35-45
Our gospel starts out with 2 disciples jockeying for position in Jesus’ kingdom – they are thinking about how he will be a military leader like King David and will defeat the Romans and free the Hebrew people from bondage like Moses. And when he does, James and John want to sit by him in the most honored positions at his table. And the other 10 disciples are jealous. Now these disciples have been with him from the start, and he will arrive in Jerusalem and be crucified in just a matter of days. He has told them several times that he will be killed, but they still don’t get who he really is and the gruesomeness that lies ahead.
Jesus asks James and John if they can drink his cup and be baptized with his baptism – and we know from the rest of the story that the cup and baptism he’s talking about here are his torture and death. He’s basically saying, come, follow me and you will die!
But James and John want to be team players and so they say sure! They can drink it! And Jesus tells them they will join him in his cup and baptism of death and indeed they will be martyred after Jesus’ resurrection.
Jesus goes on to admonish them that their desire to sit by him at the big kid’s table is the wrong way to approach life in the Kingdom of God. Jesus is a servant leader, patterned after the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. Jesus emptied himself of all of his status as Almighty God in order to serve humankind as a servant. He paid our debt on the cross, ransoming us from sin and death by dying himself. So James and John should really be talking about how they will serve each other and their community in the new kingdom rather than elbowing each other for status.
But let’s get back to the cup and baptism Jesus mentioned earlier. Martin Luther loved the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion. He loved them because they are means of grace where God the Holy Spirit comes to us through word and water, through ordinary bread and juice or wine. But he also loved them because in Romans 6, St. Paul writes “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” We know that our old self was crucified with him so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
So when Jesus tells James and John that they will drink his cup and be baptized into his death, we can be assured that we too will drink his cup and be baptized into his death. In our baptism, we died to sin along with Jesus Christ when he became our sin and died for us on the cross. And, in rising out of the waters of baptism we were resurrected, just like Christ, into new life. Does this mean that we are no longer sinners? Not at all! Of course we are still sinners, but we are sainted sinners and we have a way to die to sin over and over and be reborn into new life over and over. When we confess our sins, we hear the words of forgiveness and remember our baptism and we are made new! We are forgiven because God’s word, the same creative and powerful word he spoke creation into being, speaks our forgiveness into being! And we find forgiveness in the bread and juice or wine of Holy Communion, where Jesus promised to show up.
That, friends, is the good news of Christ. He died for our sins and was raised so that we can join him in eternal life, clothed in new clothes of his righteousness. And that eternal life is not just what awaits us when we close our eyes for the last time, it is the life we live now, forgiven and free, unburdened from guilt and shame, free to love each other. Whether you were baptized as an infant or were older and can remember your baptism, return to its promise every time you confess your sins and be assured that you are forgiven. Guilt, regret, shame — are old clothes. Dump them in a heap and walk around town in your new suit of Christ’s righteousness, loving your neighbor as you go. It is finished! Thanks be to God!
