Pride and Priviledge

Intro

If there’s one thing Australians hate, it’s when someone thinks they’re entitled to special privileges.

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Laura and I were watching the ABC’s recent political history Nemesis the other day, and I was reminded of that time a certain politician used taxpayer funds to fly a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong for a party fundraiser. It was an outrage!

Or what about the time the judge was caught speeding in Mosman? The president of the human rights commission seemed to think he was above the traffic laws. He was only fined $77 but tried to get out of it by lying under oath. He went to gaol.

Or that massive engagement party of during the COVID lockdown that ended up with huge fines?

But it’s not just high fliers that get national attention that annoy us so much.

- You know the colleague who does nothing and then somehow manages to be everywhere once it’s time to get credit for the project.

- Or perhaps the sibling or the cousin who has the nerve to ask the aging parents for the family treasure – whether it’s the heirloom jewellery, or the holiday house, or the farm, or the family firm of whatever. It’s all the worse when you were the one helping them with their medical appointments and their groceries and this relative of yours thinks they should get special privileges.

Privilege is an especially dirty word these days. Sometime in the last 10 years or so, language around addressing disadvantage and discrimination shifted into talk about privilege. Whereas we used to say that kids who grow up without a stable home , or secure housing or access to education might be disadvantaged. Now people are saying that if you do have those things, you’re privileged. But of course plenty of people who have that stuff description don’t feel privileged at all! In fact they feel attacked, and so the suspicion grows that others are calling them privileged simply to get privileges for themselves! It is tearing the country apart. You only have to look back six months to the referendum where we had one group arguing First Nations people were disadvantaged, and another arguing that they might be privileged to see that the question of privilege divides us.

And don’t get me started on the generational divide – the millennials that say the tax system privileges boomers, the boomers claiming millennials want everything given to them on a platter, and the poor gen x’ers feeling forgotten and overlooked, but everyone accusing everyone else of getting privileges.

The funny thing about privilege, is that although some of us acknowledge that we might have underserved privileges, no one thinks or admits that they’re seeking special privilege. Everyone thinks they’re seeking simply what they deserve, it’s those other people who are claiming special privileges. And yet here we are. Families, communities, our whole society being torn apart by privilege.

But the good news is that Jesus addresses our privilege problem head on. But he doesn’t do what you might expect.

This sermon is going to get a little more technical than normal for me. So as usual, I’m giving you the takeaway upfront. If you remember nothing else, remember this:

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- We humans have a privilege problem

- Jesus wins the privilege game for us by losing it

- Jesus frees us from the privilege game

So let’s look at our privilege problem by diving into the passage in Mark 10

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It starts with Jesus telling his disciples a third time that he’s going to die. This time he gives more detail than ever. ‘Ok guys. We’re going to Jerusalem, the son of man (that’s Jesus) is going to be handed over to the religious leaders and they’re going to give him a death sentence, they’re going to hand him over to the romans, they’re going to mock him, spit on him, whip him, kill him. And three days later he’s going to rise.’

You might think at this point he’d be asking, ‘can I make it any more obvious’?

Well apparently he could, because what happens next shows the disciples still don’t understand who they’re following.

They think that following Jesus is their ticket to special privileges.

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So just after Jesus says all this stuff about himself, James and John come up to him.

Rabbi. If we ask you do something for us will you, like, do it?

Some wisdom from Jesus here – if someone asks you to do something, never agree without finding out what it is first.

So Jesus asks them, what is it you want me to do?

And they say. ‘Can we be on your right and left when you receive your glory?’

That is, can we be number 2 and 3 in your kingdom? Can we be honoured alongside you? It’s pretty bold!

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Anyway, Jesus says to James and John. You don’t know what you’re asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptised with the baptism that I am going to have?

And they say, oh yeah, we totally can. We’re up for it.

They don’t know what they’re saying of course, because Jesus is talking about his death.

And then Jesus says, actually you will drink the cup and be baptised with the baptism – eventually James and John will die, they’re going to be killed for following Jesus – but the place on my right and left aren’t mine to choose but have been prepared for someone else.

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Now the other ten disciples overhear and understandably, they’re pretty angry at James and John by this point.

And a confession from me. When I read this passage, I’m siding with the other disciples by now and I want Jesus to set them straight. I want Jesus to tell James and John off for being so arrogant and presumptuous. And I want Jesus to point out to the disciples how stupid James and John are that they thought they could drink the cup. And I want him to congratulate the other disciples for being good and humble.

And actually Jesus, while you’re at it, could you tell that colleague of mine that got their name first on that paper we did and then took all the credit that that was wrong too? Oh yeah, and I’m still annoyed at that time my parents took my brother and sister overseas but not me? Can you tell them off too? And all those other times other people got privileges that I didn’t get.

But Jesus doesn’t do that.

He sees that they were angry, because they’re just as invested in the privilege game as James and John. They’re just not quite so brazen.

You and I, suspect, are a lot like the other ten disciples. This privilege problem wasn’t just James and John’s issue – we’ve all got a problem with privilege. We’re angry when others get it, we’re angry when other seek it, because we don’t think we should miss out.

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And so Jesus is speaking to us today, with what are among his most radical and famous words.

“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. 43 But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Jesus says that he wins the privilege game for us by losing it.

Let’s zoom in into those key words, ‘the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.’

These days when we hear ransom, we think of a payment for kidnapping. But the word translated ransom here has to do with the payment that was given to free a slave. So how is Jesus’ death a payment that frees people?

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The clue is actually earlier in the passage. Jesus says he’s going to drink a cup.

Now there’s a few things the cup could mean. Sometimes it just means sharing in a fate. If you look to the old testament, being made to drink a cup is often a metaphor that has to do with God’s wrath for the destruction and hurt that humans cause.

Now, putting it mildly, God’s wrath in the old testament can have a bad reputation as if God were the tyrant, lording it over people and acting with violence. But actually, it’s the opposite. It’s people who act that way and it’s God who pleads with them to change, and eventually and only reluctantly, hands them over to the consequences of their behaviour.

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If you pay attention to the specific ways the cup metaphor is used, you’ll see it has to do with God withdrawing his protection handing Israel over to the surrounding gentile nations. God asks them to repent again and again, but it reaches the point where God says – if you want to act like the gentile nations around you that do not know me or my law, if you want to act like the gentiles who ‘lord it over people’ and are ‘tyrants’ to use Jesus words – then I will hand you over to them. Want to worship power and privilege? Well this is what it looks like, this is what you asked for. You see it there in the Jeremiah passage, ‘drinking the cup’ of God’s wrath was a metaphor that literally meant being handed over to the gentile power of the day, the evil empire: Babylon.

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And this idea continues in the New Testament – that God’s wrath can mean to be ‘handed over’ to the consequences of your actions and the evil powers associated with them. You’ll see it there in Romans 1. Now, the word for ‘giving them up’ here is also the word Jesus uses that’s translated ‘handed over’.

The idea of God’s wrath in the Bible has to do with handing people over to the consequences and power of their destructive actions, which ultimately lead to death.

But you’ll see there in Romans 4, Jesus, who did nothing wrong, was ‘handed over’ to death for our trespasses.

You should have our Mark 10 passage ringing in your ears.

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Jesus said that he would be ‘handed over’ to the religious leaders and again ‘handed over’ to the gentiles – that is, the tyrannical evil empire of his day, the Romans. So we’re starting to see, Jesus somehow went through what it was to experience God’s wrath. It’s nothing to do with God the Father getting angry at Jesus – God the father was only ever entirely pleased with Jesus. But it is something to do with Jesus being handed over to experience the consequences of destructive human privilege-seeking behaviour.

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Anglican priest Flemming Rutledge puts it this way:

[God] has not stood back and pulled levers. He has stepped into the situation himself, personally. That is in large part what the trope ransom means in the biblical literature. The principle idea is that of cost to God.

For many of us, this is pretty familiar. We might have learned it in Sunday School. And there’s a risk that it’s become so spiritualised for us that we forget the real historical betrayal and suffering Jesus experienced. Because, of course, Jesus was handed over to the gentiles and gave his life as a ransom in a more literal way.

Judas saw which way the political wind was blowing. He didn’t want to get crucified as some kind of martyr. So he handed Jesus over as a ransom.

The religious leaders wanted to hold onto their privileged position. They knew Jesus might provoke an uprising and the kind of bloody response the romans would bring. So they handed Jesus over to the gentiles as a ransom for many.

Pilate wanted to save his governorship. He knew Judea was a powder-keg, so he handed Jesus over to the crowd to be crucified.

Jesus was a ransom for many who, in various ways, believed that to hold on to their privilege, Jesus had to die.

But instead of avoiding these evil actions and securing his own privilege Jesus faced them head on and took the full force of the consequences of their pride and entitlement. He drank the cup to the bottom.

But the new testament teaches more than that, it says Jesus was handed over as a ransom not just for them, but for us. For you and me.

We have been just as bound up in worrying about our privileges as anyone else. But rather than handing us over to the powers that we worshipped and the consequences of our self obsession, Jesus was handed over for us.

You see, if anyone lost the privilege game, it was Jesus.

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You would remember King Charles’s coronation last year. It was supposedly a paired back affair. But there was still the 2kg gold crown the throne on the Stone of Scone, the homage from the Archbishop and prince.

Well what about Jesus’ coronation?

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Well Jesus was lifted up, but not to a throne - to a cross. His crown was thorns. They paid homage, but it was the soldiers mocking him. And he was proclaimed ‘King of the Jews’, on the inscription as he died. And who was at his right and left? Not James and John, but criminals. It’s like an anti-coronation.

But in losing the privilege game, he won everything for us. The moment when Jesus appeared most defeated by the powers of evil is actually the moment he triumphed over them.

When he was handed over to the corrupt powers Jesus exposed them and conquered them.

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As Rutledge writes:

Jesus says the Son of Man gives his life as a ransom for many… Jesus’s ghastly death was in some ineffable way commensurate with the enormity of Sin and Death. By submitting to these Powers, he overcame them. In him, a power strong enough to deliver the entire human race has appeared… This is surely at the very heart of the gospel.

And friends, this is how Jesus’ death was the ransom, not just for corrupt people of the first century who wanted their privileges, but it was our ransom too.

So this has all been pretty heavy, where does it leave us?

Friends, we follow the crucified Lord -, one who was handed over, who lost everything for us – this means we are free from the privilege games.

We play by different rules now.

We’re free from needing to secure privileges for ourselves. But we’re also free from worrying about whether others might be getting privilege that we want.

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As a parent I’ve learned that no one is as good at sizing up unfair privilege as little kids. In our household, we’ve ended up using a stopwatch to time to the second how long each kid gets to watch their favourite TV show, lest one child get any more and the accusation come, ‘it’s not fair’! The lolly bags come home from a party and the lollies are measured out. Heaven forbid one child gets another jellybean than the other did at the previous party!

Now we’re adults and we like to think we’re more mature than that. But at heart, we can be the same. It’s just it’s not about jellybeans or cartoons anymore.

You know I struggled to come up with applications for this sermon. I was afraid that I might offend someone, because this hits home, at least it does for me. None of us think we’re seeking privilege for ourselves, but we’re very quick to spot it in others – and this is what makes it so insidious. I didn’t want to point out the speck in others’ eyes only to find a log in my own.

So I was thinking through situations where you and I might feel like the other ten disciples did as they overheard James and John ask for special privileges. Situations where you feel that indignant anger, and maybe a touch of jealousy. Maybe situations like I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, where you see a sibling or a colleague seeking special favours, or maybe a whole generation or group of people acting like they deserve something more than you. You feel that emotion rise. Who do they think they are?

Those of us who have plenty of energy but no time, look on those who have free time and think they’ve got it easy. They’re so privileged. Those of us who have time and money, but not energy or health, look on those of us who are fit and healthy and think they’re the ones who have it easy! It’s easy to think those other people have the unfair advantage.

But these privilege games are a dead end. Nobody wins. We just end up bitter, divided, angry and suspicious.

Sometimes we might forget it, but the truth is that those of us who follow Jesus are free from these privilege games. Why? Not only because Jesus has shown us that it’s a dead end, but also that he took the cost of that kind of behaviour himself.

Friends we have a privilege problem, but Jesus has won the privilege game for us by losing it.

Freedom from the privilege games means that those of us who follow Jesus live by another set of rules, not where the first will be first and the last are last – that’s how the world works – but where to be first, you make yourself last. This is what he has done for us, and this is true freedom lies.

So let me finish with Jesus’ words on privilege.

whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

Amen