The Drum Major Instinct

The Drum Major Instinct Sunday, January 12, 2003 Dr. Victor D. Pentz Senior Minister Scripture Lesson: Mark 10:35-52 In pop culture, the rage these days is reality television. It started with Survivor and then American Idol, then The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, The Osbournes, and heaven help us, the Anna Nicole Show. I even read the other day that our beloved Coca-Cola Company is coming out with some reality TV ads. In one of the spots, the actress Penelope Cruz takes a drink of Coke and then burps. The idea, said the article, is to show that Coke is a part of real life. Well, friends, we want to show the world that Christianity is a part of real life. That we have Jesus Christ in us. What difference does he make? The answer, Jesus tells us this morning, is that when Christ lives in us, we will live our lives as servants. Last week, on the first Sunday of 2003, we heard Paul say, This one thing I do...i have given up all things for my one passion: the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. But if we know Christ, what difference will that knowledge make? Again, the answer is: when we know Christ, we live in service to others. Let s look at one of the great servant passages of the New Testament, Mark 10:35-52: Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. Teacher, they said, we want you to do for us whatever we ask. What do you want me to do for you? he asked. They replied, Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory. You don t know what you are asking, Jesus said. Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? We can, they answered. Jesus said to them, You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared. When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise 1

authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus stopped and said, Call him. So they called to the blind man, Cheer up! On your feet! He s calling you.? Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. What do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked him. The blind man said, Rabbi, I want to see. Go, said Jesus, your faith has healed you. Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Lord, what a beautiful story we find here in Mark s gospel, and yet what a challenging example of how you want us to live it sets before us. We pray that you would come among us, Lord, to illumine your Word by your Holy Spirit and to empower us to go out and live out your truth in the world. Amen. I must confess that I have disliked almost every sermon I ve ever heard on the topic of servanthood, including many that have come from my own mouth. It seems that in sermons on servanthood, we pastors just cannot resist resorting to the guilt stick; we end up saying to our flock, You aren t doing enough. And because you aren t doing enough, the world is coming apart. Society is coming unglued, and there you are sitting comfortably on the sidelines. So sign up and get to work. And yet the truth is that most of us are already spread way too thin and struggling to connect with our own families. I ve come to believe that servanthood is not a battle we fight on our calendars as much as one we fight up here in our minds. In the coming year, you and I can keep the same jobs and the same friends, volunteer for the same organizations, and yet have a hugely more positive impact, if only we will take on the mind of Christ as a servant. In the Scripture passage we read today, Jesus is heading for Jerusalem. Palm Sunday is just days away. James and John figure it s now or never. The time has come to nail down their cabinet positions in Jesus kingdom, which they believe is coming soon. So they usher him aside out of earshot of the other disciples, and they say with childlike naiveté, Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask. Have your kids ever tried that approach with you? Daddy, say yes. Say yes to what? Say yes first and then we ll tell you what. Jesus says, What do you want me to do for you? We just want one teensy-weensy favor, Lord. When you come into your kingdom in the next few weeks, you re going to need a vice president and a secretary of state. Let us take those positions. Grant us to sit by your side, one on your right and one on your left, when you come into your kingdom. Well, this was a bold power play by James and John. And when the other disciples got wind of it, Scripture says, they were indignant with James and John mainly because they all had the same idea 2

in mind for themselves. But I want to point out a subtle aspect of this story. The other ten disciples were indignant with James and John. But was Jesus? Not at all! Jesus knew this question of power and position had been uppermost in the minds of his disciples all along. Jesus understands our human ambition and striving for position. Instead of rebuking James and John, as our Lord proved himself capable of doing on many other occasions, Christ supported the cause of James and John. He said, You want to be great? Okay, I ll tell you how to be great. The narrative here gives the sense that this is a lesson of extreme importance: Jesus calls them together and says, Whoever would be great among you must follow this path toward greatness. One of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. s finest sermons was not about civil rights; it was about greatness. In this story about James and John, Dr. King recognized our primal human desire to stick out, to strut our stuff and to be somebody. King called it the Drum Major Instinct. The Drum Major Instinct. Every one of us has it, don t we? Boxing promoter Don King once said, I never cease to amaze myself, and I mean that humbly. Where did our Drum Major Instinct come from? Some say from Satan. But I think it came from God. In fact, God has within himself his own divine Drum Major Instinct. In Genesis chapter one, on the first morning of Creation, God stood back from a world still wet from his hand and said, That s good. Oh, that s good. Five times he said that. And the sixth time, after making us human beings, God said, Behold, it is very good! And I ll confess something to you. Every once in while, not often, but every once in a while, I ll be driving home after Sunday services, having given my all in the pulpit, and I ll tilt the rearview mirror of my Acura so that I can see myself. I ll look into my own eyes and I ll say, You did good. Victor, you did good. And I don t apologize for that! God gave us our Drum Major Instinct. So you don t ever have to apologize for that drive within you to succeed and excel, because God gave you that gift. So Jesus was speaking to his gathered disciples, If you want to be great. Can t you imagine the scene suddenly becoming like one of those old E. F. Hutton commercials? A hush falls as the disciples listen intently. Here it is. The secret of success. Jesus says, Whoever would be great among you... be a servant. And maybe a few of them shook their heads or stuck their fingers in their ears to clear them out. What did he say? Drive a Suburban? A Subaru? Invest in which stock? Live in which neighborhood? Attend which college? No. The hot tip was this: Be a servant. James and John probably thought, How boring. How does this make use of all the special gifts I have to offer the world? When I look around sanctuary this morning, I see people who were groomed for success, raised to be number one, or at least to get as near the top as you can possibly get. Many of us have a value scale on which success is up here, and servanthood is down here. Maybe our thinking goes like this: Well, life has sort of worked out so that I would be one of these people up here. Oh, servanthood is important because it helps us celebrate those nice people who work down in the trenches. But really, I m too valuable to do mundane tasks. Why, that would be like using a Rolls Royce to deliver the mail. I m really quite special; surely God doesn t intend for me to waste my special qualities in a life of lowly servanthood. Oh what a misunderstanding of what Jesus is saying! The agenda of the meeting our Scripture describes was leadership. James and John wanted to rule the world. Jesus said, I want to help you You will win the hearts and minds of everyone you meet if you come to them as a servant. 3

In verse 42, Jesus continues, You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. We all know people who let a little authority go right to their heads. They love to make other people feel small and insignificant, like Lucy in the Peanuts cartoons. She lords it over Charlie Brown. I read one theologian who thinks Charles Schultz was trying to send us a message by naming the character Lucy short for Lucifer. That interpretation may be a little harsh, don t you think? The Gentiles lord it over each other, Jesus says, but not so with you. And he gives them golden advice: if you want to lead in my kingdom, first of all you must exercise power with kindness. A couple of months ago, I was getting ready to enter a meeting here at the church when my cell phone rang. It was my daughter Jessica calling from the West Coast, where she was just about to go into her first med school interview. Throughout high school and college her dream has been to be accepted into medical school. Now she was five minutes away from her first interview, and she was scared. So she called her dad. In her mind, her entire future would be determined by what happened in the next hour. I said, Honey, let s pray. I started by thanking God for her birth, for the happiness she brought her parents when she was born. I continued, And God, how you ve led her and guided her and blessed her every step of the way, preparing her for this moment, to meet with the dean of this med school. (By now we were both teary.) After our prayer, I said, Honey, call me when it s over. I hung up and spent the next hour with my hands clenched, silently entreating God to support my daughter. An hour and a half later, I got a call. You know how you can tell just by the tone of someone s voice that everything s okay? My daughter said, Daddy, that medical school dean was so nice. The first thing he did was pull out a bag of M&M s and put a white napkin on the table between us. Then he said, If you don t eat half of these, I m going to eat all of them, and that s not good for me. So start with the yellow one. And any time I got nervous during the interview, he said Have another M&M. When it was time to leave for the campus tour, the dean asked my daughter, Do you like squirrels? She wondered, Is this a trick question? She answered, Yes. He said, Good. Then he gave her a walnut and said, When you see one of my squirrels out there, tell them it s from me. I don t know if my daughter will be accepted into that med school, but she has already learned from that dean one of life s most important lessons for a doctor, or any person: use power with kindness. In addition to that, to be a servant, we must walk our talk. Today s Scripture is one of the most important in the New Testament and I will show you why. Jesus is heading for Jerusalem. He is at the peak of his popularity. As he sweeps through town after town, the crowds trailing him get bigger and bigger. The air is electric with the sense of history in the making. It is in this setting that James and John ask their question. And Jesus says, No it s not about worldly power, it s about humble service to those in need. For the son of man came not to be served, but to serve. The very next verse, verse 46, says, Then they came to Jericho. In Jericho, they encounter the biggest crowds yet. And then as they are leaving Jericho, a blind man, Bartimaeus, shouts, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Oh no, not now, not another one of those blind guys yelling for Jesus. I know there must have been some part of Jesus that thought, Oh Father, I ve got a world to save, prophecy to fulfill, a cross to bear I cannot handle one more annoying needy person. Someone has said that in that moment, all of 4

Christianity hung in the balance. Was Jesus a phony, or was he for real? Was he just one more religious leader who loved the spotlight? Or was he truly the servant of the poor? We come now to what may be the two most important words in Mark s gospel: Jesus stopped. Right smack on the center divider of the Jericho freeway, Jesus stopped. The crowd stopped. History stopped! Our salvation went into a holding pattern, while Jesus touched and healed Bartimaeus. Pilate couldn t make Jesus stop, Caesar couldn t; even the knowledge of impending death on a bloody cross didn t slow Jesus down. But the cry of a blind beggar froze Jesus in his tracks. That willingness to be a servant is why even today he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And why if any of us want to be great, we must become the servant of all. Lord, you re asking us to live joyously in a way that is very unnatural to us: as servants. You know how we love to dominate and be in control, to lord it over others. But Lord we are thankful that this perfect life of service was once lived and modeled for us by Jesus and that today, Jesus lives within us, to guide us in our struggle to become servants. In these moments as we sit in your house, we surrender to you, Lord, and we ask you to make us servants of one another in this congregation, servants of our spouses, servants of our families, servants in our workplaces and schools, in our community, our city of Atlanta and in the world. We pray that you would give each one of us a ministry of the mundane, a ministry in which we learn humility by being interrupted, a ministry of kindness and gentleness and grace. Lord, take advantage of that wonderful Drum Major Instinct you ve placed in each of us and help us to seek greatness through service to Bartimaeus and those like him. Because of your example, we know that service is love made tangible. Amen. Do you know where this word servant comes from? It originated in ancient warfare. In the savagery of those times, conquering armies would slaughter their vanquished foes, only preserving the lives of a select few, whom they would bring back to their homes to work for them. The word for this act of saving a few was servare, which means to preserve. So originally a servant was someone who by all rights ought to be dead, but whose life was spared for one purpose: to serve. Friends, you and I are dead in Christ and alive to serve. It is our only purpose in living. So as you go forth from here, use power with kindness, take time for those in need, like Bartimaeus, live out your purpose. And in so doing, rise to greatness in the Kingdom of God. 5

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