(Mark 10:35-45)

James and John ask for the best seats in the Kingdom of Heaven

I would like to draw a distinction between this (holds up a football scarf) and this (holds up a Bible). I went to Loftus Road on Tuesday and watched QPR lose 1:2 at home to Derby County. I, and 12,000 walked home afterwards – a mixture of excited, disappointed and indifferent. The game was great fun but it did not actually change my life one iota.

The trouble is that we can easily slip into treating our religion in this exact same way – it makes us ‘feel better about our week’; we have ‘done what we need to do’ but in reality it does not make any difference to how we are living our lives. The late Canon David Watson said twenty-four years ago, “Christians in the West, have largely neglected what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  The vast majority of Western Christians are church-members, pew-fillers, hymn-singers, sermon-tasters, Bible-readers, even born-again believers or Spirit-filled Charismatics – and we have got some those here this morning - but aren’t true disciples of Jesus Christ.

This is a hard word,’ say his followers when he tells them that he is the bread come down from heaven (6.60)…‘What is this word?’ asks the puzzled crowd in Jerusalem (7.36). ‘My word finds no place in you,’ says Jesus, ‘because you can’t hear it’ (8.37, 43. In the days leading towards the crucifixion Jesus is repeatedly misunderstood and increasingly marginalised. The sons of Zebedee argue about who should have the best seats in Kingdom of heaven; Judas betrays Jesus and Peter denies him. Solitude and silence lies at the heart of the redemption story; it is to this enigma that people are invited to respond.

It is nothing distinctive about us at St Stephens wanting to duck the implications of Christianity. Docetism was an early church attempt to do this. Docetism (from the Greek [dokeo¯], "to seem") was the belief that Jesus' physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion; that is, Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die, but in reality he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die. This statement is rooted in the idea that a divine spark is imprisoned within the material body, the human body is temporary and the spirit is eternal – why should knowledge of God come through the pain of crucifixion? Religion becomes a process of discovering who I really am. It concentrates on self-awareness and personal development – the real me. It is Christianity without the pain

The scandal of the church, said Dr John Sentamu in his inauguration as Archbishop of York, is that the Christ-event is no longer life changing, it has become life enhancing.  We’ve lost the power and joy that makes real disciples, and we’ve become consumers of religion and not disciples of Jesus Christ.  James and John ask to sit on the right and left hand side of Jesus in the3 Kingdom of heaven – ‘I bet they did’ – Isn’t that what we are doing every time that we make an accommodation with God. Plenty of people tell me how much they enjoy my preaching and I am grateful. However I would rather speak clumsily and say things that will change your life than to speak beautifully and simply say things that make you feel better about yourselves. Please don’t tell me that you like my preaching – tell me how it has changed your life and equipped you to be a disciple of Jesus.

We have got the message at our fingertips but don’t realise it. A frog once begged a genie to turn it into a princess.  The genie clicked his fingers and a gorgeous princess emerged.  Later, having gone for a meal at the genie’s restaurant, the princess found nothing on the menu that she liked. 

She asked the genie whether she could order her favourite dish.  “Yes, of course,” the genie said.  The princess turned excitedly to the waiter and said, “A large plate of flies!”