Of Saints and Discipleship

All Saints, Oct. 30 2011, Prodigal God Series Part 3,
Mark 10:35-45

What’s a saint? A dictionary definition would be a person who is officially recognized by the church through a process called canonization, as pre-eminent in holiness.

But there is a larger group of saints referred to in Paul’s letters. That group includes faithful Christians, followers of the way of Christ throughout the ages, and that is who we are called to remember today.

Even those officially recognized as saints by the church are flesh and blood human beings. They have special gifts from God, which have enabled them to perform remarkable service to their fellow human beings in God’s name.

But they are also prone to human failings, just like you and I. In 1982 I met Mother Teresa when she visited a small town in northern Alberta. I was one of a few journalists on the scene and we had a chance to ask a few questions and meet this Nobel prize winning nun who is now going through the process to become a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

I was impressed by her down to earth manner, her serenity, her smile.

Recently years after her death a translation of her writings found that for years while she was helping people, she was experiencing inner desolation, a feeling of separation from God. But she persevered.

In today’s Gospel reading two of Jesus disciples, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, ask Jesus to do whatever they ask of him. What they want is to sit at his right hand and at his left in the kingdom, in paradise.

Think back to the parable of the Prodigal Son—that’s what the younger son was asking of his father---to do the unthinkable, that is to sell the land that is his estate ahead of time, so he can give it to the younger son.

Both requests are completely unreasonable and selfish.

Jesus responds, as he often does with a question to James and John. Are you able to drink the cup I drink, and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?

By this he means being willing to be baptized with death on the cross. This passage follows one of Jesus predictions of his death in Mark’s gospel.

The two disciples don’t understand. They say they are able. Jesus responds they will be asked to sacrifice their lives, in his name, but not yet. And places at his left and right hand, are not his to give.

The request of James and John causes disunity among the twelve disciples. They are angry at the two for requesting special privileges.

But Jesus uses this opportunity to teach about the nature of discipleship. What he calls for is servant leadership, not the kind of authoritarian, tyranny they are accustomed to in first century Israel. “Whoever is great among you must first be your servant.”

This ties in to the lives of many of the saints who have been recognized by the church. Mother Teresa served the poor of Calcutta with her sisters. Saint Francis of Assisi rejected the wealth of his family, and began the Franciscan order which has served those in need for centuries.

Jesus himself defied the conventional expectations of the “Son of Man,” the term for Messiah, not only because he came to serve others, but because he came to give his life as a ransom for many.

Let’s go back to the two disciples James and John. Like the two sons in the Prodigal Son, they have lost their way. They don’t really understand what God’s grace means. They don’t understand what loving God means.

James and John want to be at Jesus’ side in glory, but they don’t understand either the cost of that request, or what it would mean for them, or for the other disciples.

In Mark’s gospel in particular, the disciples are often depicted as slow to catch on to Jesus’ teaching, and this is just one of many examples.

It must have been difficult for these ordinary, uneducated men to grasp the teaching of a leader who literally turned the teaching of the world, and even the Hebrew faith upside down.

Yet in the three years the disciples were with Jesus, they were given the strength to go through hardship and persecution after his death, and lay the foundations for the building of the Church.

And after three centuries of the early church as an underground movement, came the radical transformation which saw Roman temples transformed into Christian Churches, such as the Pantheon in Rome.

Those disciples learned servant leadership. The saints through the ages learned servant leadership.

And servant leadership is the key to renewal of the church today. We need to find ways to recapture that spirit of serving others. Our parish starting with the goal of offering a Sunday school mission to the children of north Sarnia.

So we began as a mission, as an outreach. In those early days, the church was a centre of community life. There were plays, a football team which won the city championship, and records showed as many as 600 people attended services many Sundays.

Of course that was a different time. Sarnia was different. Life was different. In our current life as a parish we need to discern our mission, how we can serve God, and serve our community. Let us pray.


GOD the Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the
faithful: Sanctify this parish by thine abiding
presence. Bless those who minister in holy things.
Enlighten the minds of thy people more and more
with the light of the everlasting Gospel. Bring
erring souls to the knowledge of God our Saviour;
and those who are walking in the way of life,
keep stedfast unto the end. Give patience to the
sick and afflicted, and renew them in body
and soul. Guard from forgetfulness of thee those
who are strong and prosperous. Increase in us
thy manifold gifts of grace, and make us all to be
fruitful in good works; O blessed Spirit, whom
with the Father and the Son together we worship
and glorify, one God, world without end. Amen