Transcript
Well, thank you, George, for inviting me to preach here at the University Presbyterian Church. What a joy. Almost two years I was the preaching pastor in residence at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and that era is now over, and I'm back in Seattle. This is, of course, where we live, and doing my sort of being a pastor-at-large with Earl Palmer Ministry. But this is very special. My two favorite choirs are the
Cathedral Choir and the Gospel Choir, and I get a chance to hear the Gospel Choir. And then to watch a game on Thursday night with Chris Polk and Jake Locker. And to see the invincible sweep of Southern California with the basketball team, too. This is very, very good. I have a wonderful text for you today. It's from Matthew's Gospel. In the 20th chapter, it's a humorous chapter in many ways, because it begins with a parable that
is a very humorous parable. Our Lord tells this parable of a man who owned a vineyard, and he went to hire workers. It's the parable of the all-day workers, and it's really funny. He starts out by hiring some fellows and agrees with a salary, and they work from 6 in the morning till 6 in the evening. That's a work day. And then, but as the day goes on, he keeps hiring, and it becomes actually humorous.
He hires at noon. He sees some fellows idle. And by the way, the word for idle in Greek is away from work or away from work. And so he sees, and it's also the word used for lazy in the Greek language. And so he sees some people who are away from work at noon, and then so he hires them. He says, I'll pay you what's right. And then at 3, he hires some more guys. And now
the improbable part is that the 11th hour at 5 o 'clock, he would hire some more guys. He says, you're still here idle. Go to work, and I'll pay you what's right. And then the funny part of the parable starts. It's not so funny for one group, but it's very funny for everybody else. He takes the last guys hired and works down to the first, and he pays them all the same wage. They all got the
same wage. And now this is very generous. However, there were complaints, and the complaints came from the all-day workers. But even that is tender. And in the parable, our Lord goes up to the all-day workers, and with one of them, he says to them, Comrade, he doesn't say, you ungrateful guy. I mean, I gave you a job. You had to work all day. And the guys have been out there wondering all day whether they're
even going to have work. They're the ones that really, in a sense, suffered, and yet you got to work all day. He doesn't say, you ungrateful people who are complaining now. Instead, he says, Comrade, Comrade. He takes them in. Comrade, don't begrudge my generosity. And then he does give them a good word. He says, don't have your eye bent. Don't look at it the wrong way. Don't begrudge my generosity. It's a wonderful, it's humorous, it's a
gentle but strong parable. But then at the end of the parable, he makes a statement. And this is the one that baffles everybody. He says, so the last will be first and the first will be last. Now, that is a problematic sentence. What does it mean? And especially if you're concerned about becoming first or you're concerned about you're ambitious and you want to succeed and you want to be great, the great shall be last and the
least shall be great. I mean, it was very confusing. And the proof of how confusing it is is a second event that occurs in the 20th chapter that is humorous. And that is the ambitious mother of two of the disciples. James and John are the youngest disciples. In our picture, in our Leonardo da Vinci portrait of the Last Supper, you'll notice there are two young men up there who haven't shaved yet. And they're young. James and
John, sons of Zebedee. They were called, our Lord nicknamed them, sons of thunder. They're young guys. And the mother of these two boys, she's not just anybody, by the way. As far as we can tell, her name is Salome. She is the sister of the mother of our Lord. So she does have some special clout. And she comes up to Jesus and this is a great lesson against ambitious mothers. And that is itself humorous. But here's
what happens. This is the 20th verse. Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee, I think all day long she's been wondering about the last shall be first, the first shall be last. What does that mean? I better get in right away and make sure my sons are up near first before this gets carried away. So the mother of the sons of Zebedee comes to Jesus with her sons and kneeling before Jesus, she asks a favor
of him. Now, this is his aunt asking a favor. And in ancient societies, relatives have special rights. And he said to her, what do you want? And she said, declare, it means pronounce, that these two sons of mine will sit at your right hand and your left hand when you come into your kingdom. Remember that they're all beginning to feel that a kingdom is coming because the popularity of our Lord is growing at this point. In
just a few days will be Palm Sunday when he'll march into the city. And they don't know anything about the cross yet. They don't anything about that repudiation is going to happen of Christ. But right now they're smelling victory. And she senses that a kingdom is coming and she wants to be sure that her sons are great in the kingdom. This is a this is a request about greatness. She wants to be sure that they're near
number one, not the last. And so she makes this request and she does it strongly. She says, pronounce that my sons will sit at your right and your left. And you know what's remarkable about this passage to me is that Jesus does not scold her and nor does he scold these two young boys. So she does he does ask them a question. And he is very kind. But watch what happens. He says, Jesus answered, you do
not know what you're asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I'm about to drink? And they said to him, we are able. And then he said to them and he doesn't say, well, no, you aren't able and you will not be able to do it because he knows what's coming to him. But instead, he does answer this way. He honors them. He says, you will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right
hand and at my left, that is not mine to grant. But it is for those who is prepared for by my father. So he declines the request, but he does it without scolding, without he honors them. He says, you will you will drink from my cup. He doesn't in any sense. So that almost like in the parable where he said comrade to those who complained that they didn't get as much money or they should have got
more money than the others. He does he doesn't scold them. He says, comrade, I've been generous. Now, don't get your eye bent. I've been generous. Join in that generosity. Now, he says, you will drink of my cup, but to sit at my right and left will leave that in God's hands, my father's hands. Now, the next verse shows that if Jesus is generous toward the mother of the two boys, John and James, the rest of the
disciples are not so generous. Notice the next line. When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. You know, in a few days, they'll have the Lord's Supper. And I remember Ray Moore once saying he wondered why John is sitting next to Jesus in the Lord's Supper. And he made the humorous comment that maybe that's because nobody else would sit with John after the disciples were quite upset with John and James. But Jesus
was willing to sit with him at the Lord's Supper. That's why John is next. And maybe that's you've got something there, Ray. I know this guy. So they're angry. And once again, our Lord decides to make use of this moment to teach all of them a great lesson. And that's going to be the thing we want to mainly focus on now. Jesus called them all to him and said to them. And now he's going to give
them a lesson. Again, the lesson is interesting. It's humorous in its own way because he's going to take on all the power words that they know very well in the Roman world. In fact, he's going to say the rulers of the Gentiles. He's going to refer to the Roman world that they're a part of where they know a lot about leadership and a lot about those who are in first rank and second rank and third rank.
The whole Roman world operates that way. Rank is so important in the Roman world. He knows it. They know it. And so he decides to take that on and he does it in a wonderfully wise way, which is not only wise for them, but it becomes wonderfully wise and good for us as well. This teaching becomes amazing teaching for us. Listen to what he says. So when they heard the disciples were angry at the brothers, but
Jesus called them all together and he says, you know, the rulers of the Gentiles. Now, the word for ruler here is archon in Greek and our Lord knew Greek very well. I agree with Anne Rice. When the Holy Family made their flee into Egypt, they went to Alexandria, the great city in Egypt that the was a huge Jewish settlement. It's where Philo was. And our Lord was there probably up to age seven. And he learned Greek
very well. And he probably did most of his teaching in Greek, except in the north, where he would use his northern dialect. But in the south and now they're in Jerusalem area, Judea, he would probably use Greek. So he uses these. He knows these words from their their first century vocabulary. He says your rulers, your archon. This means the ones who are in front or the ones who are earliest, the ones who are the source, the
ones who are first in rank. And so this word archon is used that way, in fact, is used that way with regard to Christ. In Hebrews, Chapter 12, we're told to run the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, who is the archon and the teleos, the archon and the finisher of our race. The archon, our old King James translated it, the author and the finisher of the race. That's a good translation of archon.
The author, the one who is, who knows the most, the one who is earliest in authority. So it becomes the, you might say, primary authority word. You know that the archons, those who are the leaders, those were the authors of the Gentile world. And now he uses two more words. They lord it over you. And now he takes the word kurios, which is the Greek word for Lord. It's used very commonly to refer to our Lord,
the word for Lord or Master. He takes the word kurios, but he puts in front of it a very angry prefix. We don't like this prefix in Greek. It's the prefix kata. Kata means down. For instance, when you take the word krino for judge and put kata in front of it, it becomes, because krino means literally just a way. But when you put kata in front of it, it becomes the Greek word for condemn. Katakrino.
When Paul says there's no condemnation now, he uses that word, Katakrino. To judge down, that's condemnation. Now he takes the word Kurios. He says, you know that the leaders in the Roman world lord downward on you. Power downward. That is leadership in the first century world. It's leadership in a lot of worlds. Leadership down. Katakrino. Katakurios. Now, but he isn't finished. And he says, and those who have executive power, and now he uses
the second Greek word, exousia. We get the English word executive from that word. Exousia, authority or governance. Those who have exousia have exousia, kata. Kata, exousia. They govern down upon you. And it's interesting the new RSV decided to translate that they are tyrants. Because that's what governance down is. They tyrannize you. That's Kata, exousia. And then he uses the third word that is the good word, megaloi, great. And they're the great ones. The great ones, kata,
exousia. They tyrannize you. They judge, or rather they govern down on you. So it's very powerful the way he does it. But he's taking their language, taking the language of the Roman world. And in a way, he's sort of diffusing it a little bit by actually handling it out there. They're frightened of those words. They're frightened of the word kuria, down. They're frightened of the word exousia, down. They're frightened of the archons who can do this
and have all that authority over their lives. And that's how they understand greatness. And you know when you think of it, this is humorous in a way. Because that's what the mother is asking for their son. The mother, and she's a good woman, by the way. Salome will be listed in the book of Mark and the book of John as with Mary at the cross of our Lord. She is loyal to Christ. She is a good
person, but she's ambitious for her sons. And what does she want for her sons? She wants greatness for her sons like the world around them knows. Can he sit at the right and the left hand? Those are the places of authority. Can they have that authority so they can be over, downward? And our Lord knows that. And instead of berating them for that or being angry with them for wanting to be great, and this is what
this whole text is about, is how do you become great? He decides to take it on, head on. He says the archons, those who are the leaders in the Roman world, their leadership is expressed kata kuria, kata exousia, down. But it will not be that way with you. And now he picks up the word megaloi, great. We even use mega that way in modern English. Mega means great. It means large. But he says it will not
be that way among you. Those who, whoever wishes to be great. So he does not dishonor his aunt who wanted her boys to be great. He doesn't mock the disciples who are angry about that because they want to be great too. He says whoever would be great, mega, should be your servant. And now he uses two servant words. Deacon, diacade, which means ministry, should be your minister, should minister to you. And then he even uses the
lowest of all the servant words in the first century vocabulary, doulos, slave. Be a servant, slave. To go down underneath. To go under and have that kind of greatness. The greatness from underneath. The greatness down upward. They're thinking of greatness, greatness downward. Jesus has now got another kind of greatness that he's going to teach them about. It's the greatness of the servant that lifts up. It's a new word. It's a new way of understanding greatness. It's
the greatness of presence in a place where you help to build up. It's ministry upward. Servanthood upward. And he's teaching a different kind of greatness. Let me think about it this way. Have you ever thought of this? Sometimes we think of some great hero in our lives that we meet maybe in an occasion. And have you ever said this? I said it myself. Oh, that person, you know, he's a great person. And oh, how that person
fills a room when they're in a room. They fill the room. And we think of greatness that way. And I'm not against that because I use that a lot. Oh, this person really fills a room when they're in the room. But our Lord's got another kind of greatness that he's going to teach here. What if we said this about a great person? Oh, that great person, that man, that woman who's great. How they enlarged a room.
It's different, isn't it? To fill the room, to enlarge the room. And that's the greatness that he is going to advocate now. Oh, how they enlarge the room. It's a servanthood that moves upward to make the room larger, to welcome others in. Notice that goes right back to the parable. He says to the comrades, he says, comrades, don't begrudge my generosity. I invited these others in. I paid them the same wages as you. That's because I'm
so generous. I'm so wealthy. I can do it. But I invited them in. Don't begrudge that. Don't have an eye that's bent there. See how good that is. That's the generosity of the parable. And now that generosity comes through in the incident with the mother of James and John and the rest of the disciples. How can we do this? How can we be those who are servants that lift up? Instead of going the old route to
greatness and try to have the greatness that great that is greatness downward toward others so that we can command others to make them do what we want them to do. But what if it was a kind of servanthood that enables and sets free people so that we lift them? How can we do it? The clue comes from our Lord himself. Jesus gives the answer. Notice the next line. As for me, he said, I am the son
of man, and I came not to be served, but to serve. And now he uses that wonderful servant word and to give my life. He puts in the third person, but he's talking about himself to give his life to give my life a ransom for many. That's one of the redemption words in the New Testament. And you know, it's an interesting word because it's an economic word and it ties into the parable. I have the wealth
to buy you out of slavery, to buy you out of fear, because that's what ransom means. I am buying you out. I'm able to hire workers all day long, and I can pay the salary. I'm able to set you free because I'm paid to set you free. Our Lord does that on the cross. This is before the cross. They don't know about the cross when he says this, but that's why he puts in the third person.
The son of man has come not to serve, but to serve and to lay his life down, a ransom for many. That's how it's all going to be possible. You're going to be able to invite others in. You're going to be able to enlarge the room because I have the resources to enable that to happen. And there is a rich and a wonderful humor here as well as a rich and a wonderful goodness. It's the goodness
of Jesus Christ that comes through in this great moment. I am good enough to do this. So now, you don't have to worry about being a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord and wonder if you're going to be able to go in and you're going to be able to have enough food if you're a servant. You're going to eat maybe at the end of the line. It's not bad to eat at the end of the
line if there's enough food. In fact, it's quite good because that's when more seconds are given when they know there's enough food for everybody. George Washington, I did a study on George Washington. I was struck. He's the one that set the tradition, which is still the tradition in the United States Army that the officers eat last. The corpsmen first, the GI first, the soldier first, the troops first, the officers second. Because there's plenty of food. And
if there's plenty of food, you don't mind being last unless he doesn't have enough food, but he has enough food. I am the one who will ransom you all. I have enough to set you all free. I have enough to feed you. And that's the rich humor and the rich goodness that's in this text. When C.S. Lewis was 18, 19 years old, he went to war. And he was in World War I in the Battle
of Somme, one of the worst battles. Also Tolkien was in that same battle ahead of him. And Lewis was wounded in battle, so was Tolkien. And Lewis spent some six weeks in a hospital in France during the war. And in Surprise by Joy, he tells about what happened to him. He was an atheist at that time, you know. Lewis had this atheist period of his life that went from age 17 to age 29, 30. But when
he was an atheist there, he was in the hospital. And he writes this in Surprise by Joy. It was there that I first read a volume of Chesterton's essays when he was in the hospital. I had never heard of him, and I had no idea what he stood for, nor can I quite understand why he made such an immediate conquest of me. It might have been expected that my pessimism, my atheism, my hatred of sentiment would
have made him, to me, the least congenial of all authors. But it almost as if Providence had a second cause of obscure kind. It overruled our previous tastes when it decides to bring two minds together. Liking an author may be as involuntary and improbable as falling in love. He said, I didn't need to accept Chesterton in order to enjoy him. His humor was of the kind that I like best. Not jokes embedded in a page and
not flippancy. But the humor that is not in any way separable from the argument is rather, as Aristotle would say, the bloom on the dialectic itself. And here comes a great image from Lewis. The sword glitters not because the swordsman set out to make it glitter, but because he is fighting for his life and therefore he moves the sword very quickly. And that's why it glitters. And that's the humor that he saw in Chesterton. And that's
the humor we see in our Lord here. The wonderful humor is Jesus is teaching here to the disciples. And it's a very tense moment because they're very upset with each other. And yet he's teaching and the sword is moving very fast. And that's why this marvelous text in the 20th chapter of Matthew glitters. And then he goes on to say, Moreover, strange as it may seem. This is the second part I want you to hear from
Lewis. Strange as it seems, I liked Chesterton for his goodness. It was the goodness that he saw there in the book Orthodox that he was reading. I can attribute this taste to myself freely, even at that age, because it was a liking for goodness, which had nothing to do with any attempt to be good myself. Lewis said, I didn't want to be good, but I always respected goodness when I saw it. And I don't know about
you, but when I read the 20th chapter of Matthew, I sense the goodness of Jesus Christ, the goodness of an owner who hires people all day long, the goodness of a teacher who takes these two young sons of thunder and their ambitious mother, and all the rest of the disciples are so upset and teaches them about goodness and teach them about a servanthood that can come underneath people and lift them up. Well, I'll read one last
line from Lewis. He said, In reading Chesterton as in reading George McDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself in for. A young man who wishes to remain a sane atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere. God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous. And that goodness comes through in the parable. That goodness comes through in this marvelous text when these men and their and their mother met the
goodness of Jesus Christ. And it's not bad being last if there's plenty of food. And there is. Heavenly Father, thank you for this text. May it be a part of our lives. May we experience this goodness, this humor that is able to look at what we think of as power and to show us a deeper and a better power, the power that comes from your love, a love that ransoms us, sets us free, and then enables
us to set others free as well. May this be true for us in this new year. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. For more UPC audio or to find out about service times, visit us at upc.org. All online audio is available on CD and cassette. To order copies of sermons and classes, please visit upc.org/audio, email [email protected], or call 206-524-7301 extension 117 301.