Lectionary Texts: Psalm 104, Hebrews 5:1-10, Mark 10:32-45

On the Jackson Street subway station I once met an unkempt, dirty old man with a guitar. He seemed to know the three basic chords, but didn’t seem to care which chord went with which part of the tune. When I see people like this, my first instinct is to ignore them. But as you know, until the train comes, you are forced to listen. But the song caught my ear. "Nobody knows the trouble I see. Nobody knows but Jesus. Nobody knows the trouble I see, Glory, Hallelujah!" That broke through my resistance – I slid close to him and put a quarter in his hat.

That whole trip I thought about the man and his song. Nobody knows the trouble I see. What a common sentiment, I thought. We’ve all been through trying times. And often we find ourselves isolated and alone in our troubles. And we know how precious it would be to find someone, a friend, colleague or church member who had been through similar difficulties who can identify with our pain. But we rarely do. And even if we do, that person usually wants to talk about his or her troubles rather than let you to share your own. And so you are alone again.

An important part of the work of a pastor is to stand with someone through difficult times. I am often called upon to be with a person whose circumstances are very different from my own. Countless numbers of times I have been at the bedside of someone who was sick in hospital, facing surgery, having just been told of a cancer diagnosis, with a family whose child has just died. But even though I have never been in a hospital as a patient, and don’t yet know what it is like to be alone in a hospital bed, sick and scared, I can empathize. In my office upstairs, I have counseled lots of people through various anxiety disorders and depressions, serious marital conflict, and with persons who have a homosexual orientation. None of these have been in the realm of my personal experience - except perhaps marital conflict (but ours have never been that serious. As you can see, even after 10 years at Cornell, my wife is still sticking around with me!) But I have to stand with them, try to walk in their moccasins. Empathy is a skill I’ve had to learn, and I think we all need to learn.

Empathy is the ability to experience the other person’s pain even though I have not been in the situation the other person is in. But before I can effectively do that, I need to know the areas of pain in my own life. Not only know it but I need to have experienced healing from it. If not, rather than empathize with the other person I will try to deal with my own pain. Pastoral counselors and pastors who take their counseling ministry seriously, undergo psychotherapy themselves to be healed from the emotional hurts of their past. We don’t all have to do that in order to minister to each other. Of course, it’s good to get healed from your past hurts. But some basic skills like listening, deferring judgment, staying with the pain or practicing the presence of Christ lead to empathy -- good things for all of us to learn.

Empathy keeps you humble. It’s the other end from judgment. Sometimes, I’ve had to confront people with their sin – so that they may change and be transformed to be more like Christ. I may not have any personal experience of the sort of sin the other person has committed or participated in, but I need to stand in the other person’s shoes and feel and experience the sin and guilt. And in order to do that I need to recall my own sin and guilt, and my own experience of healing and forgiveness. This is the only way I can point another person towards God’s grace. Our tendency to be judgmental is natural. But we give in to that when we forget about our own sin and guilt. Empathy is the skill of connecting another person’s sin and guilt with my own.

Nobody knows who wrote the song "Nobody knows." Whoever it was, she or he did not know anybody who could connect with their pain. And the subway singer probably did not have anybody to connect with his pain either. But I noticed that he was singing an older version of that song. More recently when I’ve seen that song printed (I’ve rarely heard it sung) its been, Nobody knows the trouble I see, no body knows my sorrow. At some point, singers and song book compilers began to drop Jesus. But this singer and the original song writer knew Jesus. They knew that Jesus had faced troubles in his life. He had hungered and spent sleepless nights. Jesus had felt loss at the death of his friend Lazarus and even cried. Jesus had known temptation and loneliness and deep physical and emotional pain. Above all, Jesus knew to empathize – to stand with and identify with the pain and carry that sin all the way to a cross. That’s why we don’t see any word of judgment coming from Jesus’ mouth against those who are suffering and sinners. The judgment that does come from Jesus’ mouth is reserved for the legalists, the Pharisees and the religious leaders who did not recognize or recall their own sin, but were eager to judge, and did not know empathy.

"Nobody knows the trouble I see. Nobody knows but Jesus" is what Hebrews 5:1-10 is about. The High Priest in the Jerusalem Temple was at the very top of the religious establishment – like the Pope. Once a year, he had a very important job to do. On the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, he had to go into the Holy of Holies. This was the inner chamber of the altar, separated by a thick curtain (the one that tore from top to bottom when Jesus died). Nobody went in there, because this is where they thought God lived. They sent the High Priest there once a year to present a sacrifice as an atonement for their sins of the people. And they had a rope tied to his waist, so that in case he met God in there, and was struck down because of the grievousness of his sin, and died, they could pull him out. This is not unreasonable, you see. Remember this is where Zaccharius, the father of John the Baptizer was struck dumb. This Pope on a Rope, I mean High Priest on a rope thing, was clear acknowledgment that even the great High Priest was a human being and therefore necessarily, a sinner. Hebrews 5 is very clear. "He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness; and because of this he must offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people." He knew first hand the need for atonement because he himself had sinned. So he could have compassion on the sinful children of Israel because he was a sinner too. When he went in to offer the blood of the sacrifice he was offering it for himself as well as the rest of God’s people.

I’ve told you this before, and I will tell you again, I stand before you as a sinner, redeemed by God’s grace. This you know about me, and about yourselves. Because I know very well, the reality and power of sin and our fallenness, I am able to deal gently, or empathically with the ignorant and wayward. And because I have been to the throne of grace and experienced for myself the extravagance of God’s love, I can lead you to there too.

So every time I preach, I preach to myself as well. There is nothing that I say to you from God’s word that does not apply to me. Sometimes when the word of God feels particularly like the two-edged sword that we heard about last Sunday, I too feel its sharpness. At other times, when it communicates God’s unsurpassed love and abundant grace for us, I know how much I need it as well.

So, for instance, last Sunday, when we looked at Amos’ prophetic indictment and Jesus’ invitation to the rich young man, I was struggling to find a way to connect up my lifestyle with the power of the call of Jesus. As you know, I come from a third-world country. In Sri Lanka each US dollar is worth Rs. 80. Most people in my professional capacity would earn about Rs. 10,000 a month – that’s $125 – a month. Every time I frivolously spend ten dollars (and when I look at my spending habits, I know that I spend a lot more dollars frivolously) I am aware that that’s about two and half day’s income for my colleagues in Sri Lanka. The situation is very similar with our friends in Nigeria where the US dollar is worth about 85 Naira. But I have to be realistic. God has called me to live here, and I have to live with some reasonable comforts, provide for my family, including spending through our noses for our children’s education. This contradiction of our participation in this economic system is itself our sin.

But God spoke to me, in January of this year, when I preached about Jubilee. And Dhilanthi and I decided that apart from the money that we must spend on our basic living needs and children’s education, which are a part of our stewardship, we will do everything we can to get out of debt and spend everything else for mission causes in Sri Lanka, Nigeria and elsewhere. But not only out there, we also felt called to do everything we can to eliminate the scourge of poverty from our own neighborhood – and that means engaging and battle against the systemic causes of poverty, right here. We felt that if we did not do those two things we would be affirming the contradiction we are living with and that would be an engagement in sin. But Jubilee sermons and this one last Sunday were times when we focused again on God’s calling on our lives. I hope you are struggling with these questions as well. These are not idle questions. They are really issues of serious discipleship.

Speaking of discipleship, Jesus’ disciples in the passages that we are reading in Mark are getting shock after shock. At the end of the scene in the Mark passage that we read James and John may have sung "Nobody knows the trouble I see." And their second line might have been "Nobody knows my sorrow." After that exchange they might have felt that even Jesus did not empathize with their trouble. And what was their trouble – they were in denial refusing to accept what Jesus was saying. There are times to empathize, and there are times to hold accountable.

Imagine Jesus and his followers emerge on the scene on their way to Jerusalem. Jesus knows where they are going and why they are going there. But on the disciples’ faces we see surprise and fear. This is discipleship, folks. Walking with Jesus we are often surprised, and following him we are always afraid, because we never know where he will lead us.

He stops. He motions the twelve aside and explains one last time, like he had twice before: "See, we are going to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again." Just five chapters later, it will all come to pass. Jesus accepts the inevitability of his destiny – but he is the only one.

The disciples can’t tolerate these nasty predictions that Jesus was in the habit of making. The first time he did this, (Mk. 8:31) Peter stepped forward and started to rebuke him. Peter couldn’t take it – he wanted to be in denial and he wanted Jesus to be in denial. But Jesus turned and looked at his disciples. And he saw that Peter’s refusal to accept his journey to the cross is going to have a devastating effect on the disciple community. This is not just Peter he is dealing with now, but with this band of disciples he had so painstaking built up. So, Jesus looks at Peter and rebuked him back with harshest words he could find: "Get behind me Satan. For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." Jesus is not going to let Peter’s denial of his goal deter him or destroy the disciple community.

Then the second time he predicted his death, the disciples were arguing along the way – of all things, about who is the greatest. It is as if they hadn’t heard a word of what Jesus said. They are still in denial. So he had to tell them in pretty stark terms what greatest in the kingdom of God means. "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and the servant of all." And because even then , they don’t seem to be able to grasp it, he even demonstrates with taking a child in his arms. Then he repeats this later immediately following the story of the rich young man.

When Jesus predicts his own death for the third time, James and John step forward, asking him to grant their wish. Can you believe this? Jesus is talking about his death and they want their wishes granted. Twice already he had said, "The first shall be last." He had already redirected the disciples concerning their desire for greatness, telling them that to save their lives they must lose them. He had already told them that they must become like children in order to enter the kingdom. But the disciples still don't get it.

Jesus says to James and John, "You don’t know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?" In other words Jesus is asking can you live the life that I live? "We are able!" answer James and John, rather arrogantly, don’t you think? I think Jesus went soft on them. I don’t know why. Perhaps he already knew that both of them would suffer for the sake of the kingdom. James died a martyr and John was forced to live in exile. But he denied their request.

The other ten disciples heard about this and got angry and James and John. And Jesus teaches them something about the power structures of the world and how the body of Christ must be different. "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." In the body of Christ, Jesus is saying, we turn the domination system of the world, upside down.

The singer on the subway platform knew that Jesus empathized with his trouble. Perhaps he was one of those outsiders that Jesus always talked about. I hope you know that Jesus empathizes with you. After all, he is the great High Priest, says the author to the letter to the Hebrews, but one who like us been tested and tempted in every way.

Here I am the consummate insider, a religious leader – and here we are, consummate insiders in the church. We are the disciples. We would no doubt consider ourselves the first. We better watch out now – because the insiders, the disciples like James and John consistently missed the boat and we have a great tendency to miss the boat. Then Jesus is not so much an empathizer as an agitator. The first shall be last and the last first – Jesus would be pointing to us that the subway singer might find his way to the right hand of Jesus, before any of us might.

The scene closes with Jesus announcing his mission. "For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." The entire Gospel centers on this revelation. Hear it again. "For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Underline it – memorize it. If that’s what our master was about, how can we be about anything else?

For this Sunday, it is all we have – a preview of the cross and life in community that forms around the cross. But it is enough to give us a glimpse into the world of Jesus – a different world, where a throne will be exchanged for a cross, a crown will be traded for thorns, and two criminals will take their place on either side of Jesus, the very place requested by ambitious disciples. And I expect a subway singer will be there as well. The question is where will we be?