Firsts and Lasts
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
October 12, 2003
Mark 10:17-31
I. INTRODUCTION
Okay. So you’re in the sixth grade and the gym teacher tells you to line up. The teacher calls on two students to be captains and tells them to start picking teams. A feeling of dread sinks in. You want to be picked earlier rather than later. You hope to go early. And above all else, you don’t want to be the last kid standing there who winds up on someone’s team by default. It’s humiliating to be picked last.
II. BEING FIRST
Being picked last is so humiliating because being first is often so important. So important that if you cannot be number one, oftentimes, there is no point to being anything else. The Denver Broncos lost the Super Bowl four times and were treated with nothing but scorn until they finally won. Never mind the fact that for those four years they had won the AFC championship. That was nothing unless you won it all.
We are in a culture of top ten lists. Of the Forbes 500. Of Awards Shows. Of teen pop-idol competitions. All of which are designed to tell us who is at the top of the list. We pay a lot of attention to who is first in this society.
But first in what?
Who is the richest man in America today? We all know that Bill Gates is the richest. It used to be Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart. We know who these people are. But who is the smartest? Who is the wisest? Who is the kindest person in America? Who is the most self-giving? The most compassionate? We don’t keep track of those statistics.
We know who is number one at the box office. We know who is the highest paid athlete. We know The number one cola, the number one auto company. And we are told all of these things by media outlets that claim to be the nation’s number one news source, or that “more Americans get their news” from their news programming, than any other source.
We know what’s important and we know who is important.
III. TEXT
We are not alone.
In tonight’s Gospel lesson we read of a man who comes up to Jesus and asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds by reviewing the Law. The man replies that he has always kept the law. Jesus continues:
“You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” We read further: When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
It was not a problem for him to follow the moral and ethical teachings of scripture. What was a problem was for him to imagine that the other things with which he had occupied his life were not as important as he thought. That he would be expected to give them all up was incomprehensible. He was rich. He was probably an important individual.
We should take note of something important here: Christianity does not require antagonism toward the rich, nor does it require self-imposed poverty. John Wesley was a successful author and made more in royalties than he knew what to do with. He gave most of it away. But he advised the Methodist societies to “earn all you can, save all you can, give away all you can.” He was not averse to wealth.
Neither was Jesus. Indeed, it is clear from the fact that Jesus got his own private tomb that he had some wealthy and influential friends. What Jesus was asking the rich man to do was to cease making his wealth and power first in his mind. It was the man’s priorities that were a problem—not his material success.
We and the rich man in the story often have one thing in common: we may be pretty good at keeping the commandments, or following our lives of piety, but we still give deference to the things of the world. We still keep track of firsts and lasts according to the world’s reckoning.
IV. INVERSION
We continue to give prominence to those who are “first.”
A. Mythical Firsts
Even when we’re wrong about it. We celebrate Columbus day because Columbus discovered America. Even putting aside the fact that the Indians who already lived here were probably aware of America’s existence, Columbus wasn’t even the first European to make it this far. The Vikings had been sailing off Newfoundland hundreds of years before.
Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile. He didn’t even invent the assembly line. He just put the two things together.
Charles Lindbergh wasn’t the first to fly across the Atlantic.
The list goes on and on.
B. Real Firsts
We are so accustomed to thinking of Jesus as the First, as the one in charge that we forget that for us to proclaim that is actually to proclaim an inversion. To proclaim that God has turned the world upside-down. Jesus of Nazareth: a carpenter from the border country, leader of a small band of faithful disciples, wrongly convicted, wrongly executed. Dies in shame on the cross. It is this man, this one who was last, who becomes “firstborn of the dead.”
No one expected that. He was from the wrong part of the country. He was not one of the established religious leaders. He was not wealthy. He died a dishonorable death at the hands of Gentiles.
C. What this says
This kind of inversion is a theme echoed in the Magnificat, the prayer of Mary, from Luke (1:51-55):
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.
When Jesus tells us that many who are first will be last and the last will be first, he is showing us the power of the Gospel message. The Resurrection is vindication for those who are not deemed “first” in this world.
What does this say to us?
It says that the poor will not be downtrodden forever. It says that the oppressed will not want for justice for ever. The brokenhearted will not languish forever.
It tells us that the trials of this world are not forever. That God has already acted to invert the “firsts and lasts” of this world.
We aren’t fools. We know that this inversion has only begun. It has not changed the world. The rich and powerful are still rich and powerful. The poor and hungry are sadly still poor and hungry.
But, it does two things: it tells us what things ought to be like. The poor ought to be contented. The hungry ought to be fed. The brokenhearted ought to be comforted. The captive released. The sick healed. Having a sense of God’s purposes can help us to understand what work we can be doing to prepare for the kingdom. It tells us how we ought to be acting: feeding the hungry, visiting the lonely, looking after the poor and the outcast, the widow and the stranger. Having a sense of what God is doing in the world, reminds us of our role in the present world as we work toward the inverted reality that is the Kingdom.
V. HOPE
The second thing that it tells us is that we can have hope.
There’s an old cliché that at the end of a losing season, the fans of a particular team would say, “Wait till next year.” It’s often without basis. But it comes out of an abiding sense of hope that in the end, things will turn out your way. In that way, it makes me think of the refrain in the Passover seder said at the conclusion of the meal: “Next year in Jerusalem.” A phrase that evokes a sense of hope that a long exile will finally come to an end. Every year it is said with sincerity. Even though there is often little evidence to suggest that a spiritual exile is coming to a close.
It is that same hope which compels the Christian to say “thy kingdom come” every day in prayer. It is the same hope that compels the Christian to profess the mystery of faith in the Communion: “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”
It is a hope grounded in the fundamentals of our faith. A hope grounded in the faith that despite all the things the world tells you, despite all the challenges and setbacks, despite all the pain and failure, despite all those things, you rest assured in the knowledge that when Christ went to the cross for us, it was as though God is looking each of us in the eye as we stand expectantly on the sidelines, and saying to us, “I pick you first.”
