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Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost – October 18, 2009
Seven year old Danielle, who lives in Newark, New Jersey, wants to be a model when she grows up. She figures she will be paid $505 a year. Her second grade classmate, Francisco, opts for a more dangerous and, he fancies, a more lucrative life. He wants to be a spy, which he believes will pay him $500,000 a year.
According to a recent Forbes Magazine survey of several hundred New York City metropolitan area children between the ages of five and twelve, most kids have a pretty good idea of what they want to be when they grow up but no idea at all how much those jobs will actually pay. “Blame it on childish innocence or fantastic imaginations,” says the study’s author, “but most kids are in for repeated heartbreak when they get older – as when they realize how hard ballerina jobs are to come by, and when they find out what dancers get paid.”
At least those who want to be ballerinas aspire to a real profession, albeit a less than lucrative one; the average mean annual wages for a dancer are about $29,000 a year. Seven out of 33 five year olds said that when they grow up they want to be a superhero, making it the single most popular career option for kindergarteners. Among the superheroes cited, Spiderman came out as the favorite choice. Three kids wanted to be a princess and one hoped to be Sponge Bob Square Pants. I’m not sure how much that pays.
Among the real jobs chosen as future careers, few kids had any idea what they actually pay. On average, 11 year olds thought astronauts make $362,000 a year, writers $211,000 and dancers $116,000. We’ve seen what dancers typically earn; the mean annual wages of an astronaut is a tad over $87,000, they are government employees, remember; and the average writer makes a little less than $60,000. Flying through space and writing about it later are hardly ways to get rich.
Indeed, many of the most popular dreamt of occupations, like firefighter or police officer, are not the highest paid; a fact, says Forbes, which will likely bring about a rude awakening as the children get older.
“There are only two tragedies in life,” said Oscar Wilde. “One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” Folklore throughout the world is filled with examples of the unforeseen and often unpleasant consequences of the latter tragedy.
I wonder if those kids in New York, or any kids for that matter, are taught the story of King Midas. You remember it, don’t you? Here’s a shortened version.
Many years ago there lived a King named Midas who was very, very rich. It was said that he had more gold than any other king in the world. Over time, the king grew so fond of gold that he loved it more than anything else in the world, even his daughter Marigold.
One day while he was in his gold room counting his money, a fairy stood before him. Midas told the fairy, “I have this room full of gold but I should like much more; for gold is the best and the most wonderful thing in the world.”
“Are you sure?” asked the fairy.
“I am very sure,” answered the king.
“If I should grant you one, wish,” said the fairy, “would you ask for more gold?”
“If I could have but one wish,” said the king, “I would ask that everything I touch should turn to gold.”
“Your wish shall be granted,” said the fairy, “At sunrise tomorrow morning your slightest touch will turn everything into gold. But I warn you that your gift will not make you happy.”
You know what happens next. The king wakes up and runs around the room touching all his objects, filled with delight when they turn to gold. Everything is perfect until it is time for breakfast.
“Now a strange thing happened,” says the story. “When the king raised a glass of clear cold water to drink, it became solid gold. Not a drop of water could pass his lips. The bread turned to gold under his fingers. The meat was hard, and yellow, and shiny. Not a thing could he get to eat. All was gold.
“His little daughter came running in from the garden. Of all living creatures she was the dearest to him. He touched her with his lips. At once the little girl was changed to a golden statue.”
The king, of course, is filled with remorse and begs the fairy to undo his wish. As this is a kid’s story, this particular wish is granted. Everything goes back to normal and the king learns a valuable lesson: Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.
People who study such things say that the story of King Midas represents what is termed the “foolish wish” motif of folklore and fairy tales, stories which demonstrate the logical but terrifying consequences of having unwise, self-seeking, wishes granted. Each culture seems to have at least one such cautionary fable of misguided or overreaching ambition.
The Grimm brothers – whose rather frightening and gruesome fairy tales are probably not taught much anymore either – tell the story of the Fisherman and his wife in which a humble man discovers a magic fish in his net and, at the insistence of his nagging, shrewish wife (we’ll leave the discussion of sexual stereotyping in fairy tales for another day) asks the fish, who is really an enchanted prince, for a cottage to live in instead of the shack they currently occupy.
After this wish is granted, everything goes along fine for a week or two until the wife decides that the cottage is too small and she wants a palace. The husband asks the fish and the wish is granted. Each time her wishes get more and more grandiose until the wife is finally made pope. “Wife,” said the man before going to bed, “Be satisfied now that you are pope. There is nothing else that you can become.”
“I have to think about that,” said the woman.
The next morning she woke up and announced, “Husband, I cannot stand it when I see the sun and moon rising and I cannot cause them to do so. I will not have a single hour of sleep until I can cause them to rise. I want to become like God.”
Dutifully the husband relates this wish to the fish who answers, “Go home. She is sitting in her filthy shack again. And,” the story ends, “they are sitting there even today.”
Foolish wishes will get you every time.
“Teacher,” say James and John, spiritual if not chronological children, “We want you to do whatever we ask of you,” as if Jesus were some sort of enchanted prince or superhero. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Now, before we come down too hard on James and John’s ambition, note that in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells his disciples, who have just remarked that they have left everything behind for his sake, that “when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
So, in this context, their request makes a bit more sense; still, like the fisherman’s wife, they want more. Their desire is not just to have thrones; they want those thrones in a prime position, close to the center of things: “One on your right and one on your left.”
Now, here’s where things get a bit more problematic for these two ambitious disciples. The only other reference in Mark to anyone on the right and left side of Jesus occurs in the second to last chapter: “And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.”
Asking for places immediately at the side of Jesus is a dangerous, some would say foolish proposition, especially at this point in the story when Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem; when he has, in fact, just finished delivering his third passion prediction, telling his disciples in no uncertain terms that he is destined for the cross.
Trying to warn them of what awaits him and them, Jesus answers, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
Here “to drink the cup” means to suffer or to become a martyr; “be baptized” means the same thing. As Paul writes to the Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
What James and John, and perhaps you and I, at times fail to realize is that there is no sharing in the Messiah’s triumph that does not have as its beginning a sharing in his death as well. Hearts that are never broken have no need of healing.
Equally as important, there is no climbing the corporate ladder in God’s kingdom; in fact, in many ways the closer you get to the throne of glory the lower you would appear in the world’s hierarchy. The late spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once called discipleship the way of “downward mobility ending on the cross.”
The heart of discipleship is service and not privilege, Jesus makes clear when the other ten disciples begin to grumble because James and John got first bids on the best seats in the kingdom. It’s apparent that the other disciples’ held a similar ambition since Jesus mentions the Gentile rulers who “lord it over” their subjects. “But it is not so among you,” he tells them.
And then we catch a glimpse of Jesus’ own ambition, virtually the opposite of those who call themselves his followers: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
“Nobody knew his secret ambition,” sang Michael Smith twenty years ago. “Nobody knew his claim to fame. Nobody knew his secret ambition was to give his life away.”
Odd that nobody knew, considering that Jesus has been speaking of little else for the last three chapters in Mark. Still, as one commentator pointed out, as we are on the other side of Easter, we are not in the position of the disciples in this story; we are in the position of those who can see the disciples getting it wrong.
How, then, can we get it right, we who, as Paul says, live as fools for the sake of Christ? It seems to me we begin by knowing what we want to be when we grow up - Christians who realize the cost and joy of discipleship, not those who seek only its rewards. We wish to heed the words of Paul who told the Corinthians, “Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.” So let’s wish to be adults, baptized into God’s self-giving kingdom, offering to the brokenhearted the cup of Jesus’ love.