When I was in college, my home church had a summer ultimate frisbee league. If you’ve never heard of ultimate frisbee it’s kind of like soccer only you pass a frisbee instead of kicking a soccer ball. You and your teammates pass the frisbee up the field and you score when someone catches the frisbee in the end zone.
It’s a very demanding game that can get really competitive. Even though we were a church league, that didn’t mean that some of those games didn’t get overly competitive.
We had fun names for our teams. The Wompers, The Go-Gos, and The Muppets just to name a few.
Before each game, and there would be several played every Sunday afternoon, each team would come to mid-field for a prayer. One of the team captains would offer the prayer. For one of those games, the team captain of one of the teams offered this prayer:
Dear God, thank you for bringing us all together to play frisbee today. Keep us safe. Help us to have fun. And may the Muppets win this game. Amen.
And that prayer was given just a couple of hours from getting out of church! The person who prayed it was just having a little fun, but did God really care if the Muppets won or lost a frisbee game?
I’ve played on church softball teams that were really competitive as well. Several years ago, the church that I was serving participated in a summer league. I love softball and it was a lot of fun, but some of those games could get a little heated between opposing players. No wonder that we have a prayer of confession and words of assurance included as part of worship every Sunday morning! Some of us needed absolution from our softball sins.
But heated competition among Christians is nothing new. Just think about today’s Gospel reading. James and John, two of Jesus’ disciples were asking Jesus to appoint them to prominent positions in his kingdom.
You see, they still didn’t understand what kind of Kingdom Jesus was trying to build. They thought this would be a kingdom where Jesus would rule over people and form some type of new government. As two of the twelve disciples, they were making their move to secure positions of power.
Jesus, knowing that their understanding of God’s kingdom was far different from his own, asks them a couple of questions to reveal just how off the mark they really are.
Jesus asks them, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and are you able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Still not getting it, James and John reply, “We are able, Jesus!”
Of course, they have no clue that the cup of which Jesus was speaking would be the cup of his suffering on the cross. And the baptism of which he was speaking would be a baptism of him dying on the cross.
When the rest of the disciples heard what James and John were doing, they became angry, not because James and John were seeking worldly power and fame, but because they wished that they would have asked for those same positions of prominence first!
With the disciples angry with one another and competing for the top spots in Jesus’ future political offices, Jesus uses this opportunity to explain to them how his kingdom is very different from the kingdoms of the world.
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Or to put it another way. Jesus was telling his disciples that God’s kingdom is really a “kin-dom.” A kin-dom that is made up of kinships where we remember that we are all part of the same family, the family of God, and where we seek to serve one other, not compete against each other.
This isn’t just an important reminder for people who play on church softball teams, but it’s for each one of us. Softball games are meant for competing, but In God’s kingdom, we are here to serve one another. And when the whole church is filled with people serving, loving, encouraging, and supporting one another, we truly do become part of God’s kin-dom.
According to the Learner’s Dictionary, the definition of the word, “leader” is “a powerful person who controls or influences what other people do; a person who leads a group, organization, country, etc.”
The Business Dictionary defines “leader” as “a person or thing that holds a dominant or superior position within its field, and is able to exercise a high degree of control or influence over others.”
Listen again to Jesus’ definition. Jesus defines leader this way, “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”
Jesus’ idea of kingdom is one of kinships where we remember that we belong to each other as brothers and sisters not as opposing players on a softball field. We are servants of one another just as Jesus came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.
Psychiatrist and author, Scott Peck defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” He writes extensively about the importance of self-discipline in being a loving person.
In one of his books, he shares a personal illustration of how he loved to play chess and so he taught his daughter at an early age to play it so that they could play it together.
The problem was that he loved chess so much that he became overly competitive when playing her. This would often result in the daughter becoming frustrated and leaving their game in tears.
His strength was being a competitive chess player, but in this situation with his daughter, he ended up allowing his strength to become his weakness. Instead of extending himself for the sake of his daughter, he was feeding his own desire to win.
If this can happen to us when we are simply playing a fun little father/daughter chess match, it can also happen between different ministry groups in the church, clergy who inflate their worship attendance numbers, and other types of passive/aggressive behaviors that are done in the name of Jesus. When we remember that God’s kingdom is about kinships and serving one another, it’s amazing what we can do together where we support rather than compete against each other.
Have you ever noticed that geese understand this concept of kinship and the importance of working with and not against each other? When they fly in the V formation, the lead goose takes the brunt of all the drag and resistance of the air so that the other geese have an easier time flying behind. The leader as defined by Jesus is the one who is willing to do the hard work so that the others are helped.
I think of all of the ways that I see a spirit of kingship in our church. Often times, these go unnoticed because that is the nature of being servant leaders. This is what makes our church so special. People serving behind the scenes and doing the little and quiet things that make a big difference for the sake of others.
The audio/visual team setting providing a live-stream of our service every single Sunday so that people who are unable to be here can worship with us. The person who changes out our altar, pulpit, lectern cloths and worship banners so they reflect the new season of the church year. The greeter, the usher, the small group facilitator, the choir member, the refreshment volunteer, the worship reader, the Monday Lunch food preparer and server, the preschool teacher, the nursery worker.
I recently read a church newsletter where the church was thanking one of their saints for recording the worship attendance every single week for the past ten years! That’s a lot of work that I’m sure went unnoticed by the vast majority of people.
In God’s kindom, we are all servants who take the brunt and the drag of the resistance to make it easier for other to fly and soar.
So much of Christianity today is extremely individualistic, rather than communal. It’s focused a lot on “me and Jesus” or “how can I go to heaven when I die.” That’s a “me centered faith,” not a “kin-dom of God centered faith.”
James and John saw an opportunity to grab the top two positions in Jesus’ kingdom. And actually, we should all ask Jesus for those top positions, but maybe with a little twist to this gospel story.
“Jesus, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
“And what is it you want me to do for you?”
And what if our answer would be, “Grant us, not to be seated at your right hand or your left hand in your glory. Instead, grant us to be servants of one another in your kingdom.”
May it be so.
The Kin-dom of God
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