Disneyland opened when I was 8. I was in the third grade, and because the public elementary school was on half days due to, I think, some sort of significant repair or emergency something, my brother and I were enrolled at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic School. And, although it was an adjustment, the best thing was that there were Catholic holidays where all the Catholics went to mass and the very few of us who were non-Catholic didn’t!! And so, I remember, December 8th. It was the Feast of Mary and the Immaculate Conception. My classmates all went to mass; my mother, brother, sister and I went to Disneyland. We entered another world. It wasn’t crowded. It was pristine; it was calm; it was beautiful; it was magical; it felt, well, holy. It was a land of awe and wonder and breath and smiles, and it felt as if time itself had slowed for us all to savor each moment. It seemed to me like a special pass from God.
Near the end of that year, the Catholic enrollment for St. Paul’s had picked up, and so the non-Catholics….the protestants… were not renewed, which was okay. I went back to the public school for 4th grade. What do I remember? That day at Disneyland.
Much has changed, at Disneyland, and everywhere else, especially where crowds are a way of life ---- waiting in endless lines, finding a place to park, getting to the discount first, and figuring out how to navigate through too many, too much, too often. Uncertainty lurks in those crowds – will they run out, will I have to pay extra. Will the doors close, will I waste the whole day, will my children have a melt down before we get there, will I be at the wrong window, will someone cut in front of me or push me or take the last seat or block the aisle with their suitcase. And, so it goes. These are the annoyances of our world, the irritants that actually shape our lives.; And yet we know these are first world problems, not survival problems, not the pushing and shoving that comes when food or water arrives in Gaza, of families fighting to get on the bus or boat away from a war zone.
We all understand the basic human instinct for survival, for food, shelter, and the protection of our children. We see the images of desperate people trying to make it through one more day, anyway they can.
But somehow, in our culture, we have co-opted that basic instinct for survival by cultivating it and using it to appease our inconveniences, our annoyances, to navigate and maneuver through the masses, to find for ourselves, and pay for, the fast pass, the special door, the privileged card, the favored list, the gold card, the sticker for the designated parking lot, the ease and comfort of unique, of special, of privilege. Peddling privilege is a huge money-maker, and most of us fall for it in one way or another.
I have just returned from an 8 day trip to New England, and believe me, if I had been able to utilize special lines for security, or a fast pass for the car (which took hours), or bigger seats, better access to the bathroom, I would have done it in a heartbeat, and I looked longingly at those who sped ahead----so I understand why we enter in to the game of how to get ahead, to leap frog the system, to make better arrangements for ourselves!!
What I think Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel is not a critique of the desire to secure a place or the desire to get ourselves to the head of the line. It is not the desire or even the asking that is misplaced.
It is facing what creeps into our hearts that matters. It is the entitlement, the pride, the self -satisfaction with one’s own efforts – in short, it is the lack of awareness of privilege we have managed to obtain, and the lack of gratitude for the ease it brings.
It is not a condemnation of privilege; it is a condemnation of our insensitivity, our lack of gratitude for what we have and how we, unlike many others, are able to function in the world. Our culture and our human nature rewards us for manipulating the system, in part by making us feel clever, smart, even responsible as we participate in our advantages.
In this world, there will always be advantages.
As Christians, It is a matter of attitude and perspective and generosity of heart.
How different would it be if we gave thanks to God every single time we recognize our privilege, even in the smallest ways, and prayed for those without, for thhose still standing in line.
We miss the many, many ways we are blessed and we misunderstand the larger purpose.
And so I feel for James and John, the sons of Zebedee, called the Sons of Thunder. Their instinct to secure a place for themselves is not very far removed from what we might do too. But their attitude and their timing stinks – Jesus has for the third time, just told them,
He “will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes. They will condemn him to death, and will deliver him to the Gentiles. They will mock him, spit on him, scourge him, and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.” (Mark 10:33-34). Well, That’s vivid!!
Without any response to that, the Zebedee boys begin their plan to get special seats. Much the way a child says, ‘Promise me you won’t be mad at me’, before they tell what happened, James and John say, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Clearly, they have been planning this. They have taken Jesus aside.
Jesus might have said, “Did you hear what I just said? About what is going to happen?
But he doesn’t. He meets them where they are and asks, “What is it you want me to do for you?”
It is telling that this sequence in Mark, from chapter 8 through chapter 10, is where Jesus tells his disciples -- 3 times – what awaits him in Jerusalem, and the sequence begins and ends with Jesus healing a blind man. Next week you will meet Barnabas. Jesus asks him the same question he asks James and John: What do you want me to do for you? Barnabas answers immediately; he desperately wants to see, to understand, to follow.
If only the disciples wanted to see, as both blind men do, to see and understand more deeply – but they don’t, and --- as a group, they have devolved into a competitive quarrel over privilege -----and their tempers flare.
Jesus stops everything and calls his team together and says, ok, circle up.
He sits them down and says, again, what he has said so often. The recognized as leaders of this world, privileged and powerful, often wield their power cruelly and lord it over their subjects. You will not. “Whoever wants to become great among you, shall be your servant. Whoever wants to become first among you must be slave of all.”
Servant leadership is the model of leadership Jesus teaches again and again.
At our baptism, we were all called to be priests, to serve the needs of the world. The root of the word ‘priest’ is “bridge”. ; As priests we are to serve as a bridge between this world and the next, as a light to shine the way into a holy land –maybe something like that first Disneyland was to me -- that operates differently from this one, where one leads with humility and a heart of gratitude, where leadership itself is the privilege, a privilege to put on an apron and get to work.
There are no shortcuts in our path to follow Jesus. Jesus knows the road is rocky and hard, and he is clear about that. There are no special privileges offered – no A tickets, no sure way. No earned degrees or symbolic vestments, like these, get rewarded with better seats.
The challenge for us is not to drop out of the TSA Precheck line or stop seeking some comfort or a memorable experience. The challenge for us is to recognize and give thanks for the gift of that shorter line, that better treatment, to never take for granted even the smallest blessings in our lives and most importantly to pass those blessings on. James and John took for granted their relationship with Jesus as a ticket to a secure and privileged position. They didn’t understand that in the Kingdom of God there is no advantage to being in the front row.
Thank you, Jesus, for your word today to help us understand that true leadership is true service, and that honest awareness of our own privilege can awaken in our hearts an even greater desire to serve God’s people.
AMEN