Mark 10:28-45. "How Do We Expect To Enter Jerusalem?"

 In this sermon based on Mark 10:28-45, Tim reflects on how Jesus' disciples misunderstood his mission and the nature of his kingdom. As they journeyed to Jerusalem, the disciples expected to enter the city with honor and influence, as trusted followers of a victorious leader. They believed their sacrifices for Jesus would earn them special rewards, much like an example stated by Tim: purchasing a first-class ticket expecting certain privileges but being re-assigned to a different class. However, Jesus repeatedly explained that his mission involved suffering, sacrifice, and service, not personal gain or glory. The disciples, like many today, misinterpreted Jesus' promise of receiving "a hundred times" what they had given up, thinking it referred to material rewards rather than the spiritual and communal blessings found in the church.

This sermon warns us against approaching the Christian church with expectations of entitlement or personal benefit. Just as James and John sought positions of honor, many believers today may feel entitled to influence or recognition based on their contributions or involvement in the church. However, the true call of discipleship, as modeled by Jesus, is one of humility, service, and sacrifice. Christ came not to be served but to serve, and the Christian life is meant to follow this example. The church is not a place for seeking personal glory but a community where believers support one another and reflect the selfless love of Christ.

This Sunday sermon, based on Mark 10 verses 28-45 , was preached at Grace of God Lutheran Church on October 20, 2024.  This sermon is preached by Pastor Timothy J. Walsh, a member of WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). Scripture selections come from the New International Version.

Intro Music "On the Way" by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Outro Music "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi
copyright (℗) by: Ludovico Einaudi (in 2006)         

Transcript

Friends, peace to you in Jesus’ name; Jesus, who came not to be served, but to serve. Amen.

I have never flown above economy class. I’m always a little jealous - I’ll confess - a little jealous as I walk past the folks in the front of the plane there, with their extra leg room and their complimentary blankets.

If someday I would purchase one of those premium seats, I would feel quite indignant if, during boarding, I was told, “Sorry, that seat is no longer available. You’re sitting all the way in the back.” Didn’t I pay for that seat? Don’t I have the right to the seat? I expect to have the seat I paid for on my flight.

On their way to Jerusalem with Jesus, his disciples were expecting to enter Jerusalem as the trusted and influential lieutenants of a conquering general. What did they make of his words that “the Son of Man will be delivered over and condemned to death. The Gentiles will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise”? Luke tells us that as Jesus told them these things, Luke eighteen thirty-four, “The disciples did not understand any of this.” They simply couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Jesus had told them, however, just before this conversation, something which they thought they had understood. We heard last week about the rich young ruler who went away sad from Jesus when Jesus pointed out the young man’s idolatry of wealth. But there’s an exchange between Peter and Jesus we didn’t hear last week. Mark ten twenty-eight, “Peter spoke up, ‘We have left everything to follow you!’” Jesus, we’ve sacrificed to enter into your kingdom! We bought a first-class ticket!

Verse twenty-nine, “‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus replied, ‘no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.’”

This is what the disciples are thinking about, while Jesus starts talking about being “delivered over” and “condemned” and “spit on” and “flogged” and “killed.” It’s finally clicked for them! (Or so they think.) The kingdom truly is at hand! 

For three years, they have faithfully followed Jesus. They have shared his message. They’ve spent nights out in the cold and days walking in the heat. They have been away from their families for long stretches. But now, Jesus is promising, it’s all going to have been worth it. Whoever “has left home or family or fields for me and the gospel will receive a hundred times as much in this present age.”

Sadly, they still misunderstand Jesus’ words there. To “receive a hundred times as much in this present age” does not mean to receive more for one’s own possessions, as the disciples thought. One who has “left family” for Jesus and the gospel is one whose family rejects the good news shared with them. How does that person receive a family “a hundred times” greater? In the church. Here we are brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers and children. 

Who is the person who has left behind “fields” for the gospel and for Jesus? It is the person who trusts God’s promise to provide for their daily needs and therefore makes personal economic decisions - what job to take, what hours to work, what to do with the money they earn - with that promise in mind. How do they receive “fields” “a hundred times” greater? In the church, where we support and care for one another. When a household in a congregation suffers, the body of believers comes together to support them. My “fields” - everything which God gives me to provide for my daily needs - these are also given by God to me to care for my brothers and sisters in the church. As the book of Acts describes the early church, “All the believers were together and had everything in common.”

James and John hear this about “a hundred times” what was given up, though, and they don’t understand that Christ is preaching about the community, the fellowship, of believers sharing with one another. They believe that he’s making promises about personal gain which those who follow Christ can expect. 

This is the same error made by modern prosperity preachers. Again, they hear such promises as “fields” “a hundred times” greater and believe this to be a promise made to individuals. This is a promise made to the body of believers at large. When individuals become part of the body of Christ, the Christian church, they gain all these things. They gain a family a hundred times or more greater than any they left behind. The church is where Christ fulfills these promises.

In the Old Testament, the city of Jerusalem was the center of Christianity. There were Christians in the Old Testament. Sometimes we forget that God’s people, before Jesus, came looked ahead to his arrival, just as God’s people, after Jesus has come, now look back on his work on earth. A Christian is anyone who looks to God’s Messiah - Messiah and Christ being the same words in Hebrew and in Greek, both meaning “anointed one” - a Christian is a person who looks to the Messiah, the Christ, for salvation. Those who looked ahead to Messiah were Christians; those who look back to Christ are Christians. 

Jerusalem was the center of Christianity in the Old Testament. It was where God had commanded that his people worship him. Worship took place in other places. In the home, every Sabbath, God had commanded his people to rest and read his Word as families. Later, the institution known as the synagogue arose, where people could gather publicly to hear the Bible taught on the Sabbath day and sing the worship songs found in the Old Testament. 

But in particular, God had commanded that he be worshiped in Jerusalem. The temple - the only temple - was in Jerusalem. There, daily, sacrifices were offered to God. Animal sacrifices of various kinds reminded the people of their sinfulness, which separated them from God, and of the only way for that separation to be overcome: Reconciliation through blood. All these animal sacrifices, in one way or another, pointed ahead to the reconciliation God would work through his Son’s blood. As he had promised Abraham by passing alone between the butchered caracasses two thousand years earlier, God would shed his own blood to reconcile his people to him.

In the New Testament era - this time in which we live as Christians, as people who look to Jesus for salvation - the physical city of Jerusalem is no longer the center of Christianity. There is, technically, no “center” of Christianity any longer. There is no one place where God commands that we worship him. The center of Christianity is instead Jesus Christ himself. He tells his disciples in John chapter fourteen, the night before his death, “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” Christ is found wherever his people are found.

As in the Old Testament, Christ commands that his people gather together to worship him. He is worshiped as we read his Word in our homes, as we pray privately. But there is no explicit command about this sort of private worship, the kind we sometimes call “doing devotions.” God does instruct us to regularly pray, to read his Word, to examine ourselves through these practices. But what God does command is for his people to gather around his Word. “Let us not give up meeting together but encourage one another,” Hebrews ten. “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,” Ephesians five. 

The Christian church - any and every place where, as God instructs, his people gather together to hear and speak and sing his Word with one another - the Christian church is Jerusalem. Hebrews chapter twelve says that by faith, verse twenty-two, “you have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the church of the firstborn ones, whose names are written in heaven.” 

The Christian church - the group made up of all those who believe in Jesus Christ as Savior - is referred to, figuratively, as “Jerusalem.” As the place where God commands that we gather, to hear his Word, to sing praise to him with one another, to bring him our offerings.

How Do We Expect to Enter “Jerusalem”? How do we think God should respond to our coming into the Christian church? How do we think others should respond to our coming into the Christian church? 

Do we come in like John and James; looking for honor, looking for influence, looking for personal gain? Do we believe that God owes us something for our putting money in the plate? For volunteering? For, at the very least, showing up for worship when others don’t?

Maybe we don’t believe that God owes us something. Hopefully not. Hopefully we understand that the money we put in the plate already belonged to God, and he has every right to it. Hopefully we understand that the time we enjoy here on earth is a gift from God, and he has the right to take our time from our days, up to the point of having the right to take our lives. Hopefully we understand those things.

Do we think that other people owe us something for our showing up to worship, for our participation in the church? Do we think that if we write the biggest checks - volunteer the most - do the most “valuable” work - we call the shots here? Do we think we’re entitled to ask for the seats at Jesus’ right and left here in his kingdom, in the church?

The word “church” in the Bible means both these things; the group made up of all people of all time, Old and New Testament, who believe in Jesus as the Savior sent from God, and the word “church” means every individual group of believers who gather around the Word of God. The Bible doesn’t use a different word for these two things. Every local congregation is Jesus’ church. And while we might never ever think to demand a spot at Jesus’ right or left over all believers, the whole Christian church, we often feel entitled to those positions in our own churches. 

This sinful tendency of our hearts comes out when leaders - pastors are particularly prone to this - when leaders try to micromanage every little aspect of their congregations. It comes out when we grouse about decisions made that we don’t agree with. It comes out when we gossip about those who worship with us, when we question whether they really belong here, whether they truly believe, whether the specks we see in their eyes disqualify them from the body.

James and John disqualified themselves in the eyes of the other disciples! The ten were steamed. And rightly so. But their anger disqualifies them also. Every one of us, every last one, disqualifies ourselves from membership in the Christian church by our sin. 

So Christ - the Promised Messiah, sent by God - “was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin” - for our sin, your sin, my sin - “though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days. He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

We come to Jerusalem - to the church -seeking, very often, not to serve but to be served; to be honored; to receive personal benefit. It is for us that Christ came, “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Children of God, the Lord has laid on his Son all your iniquity. Peace is yours. Amen.