In our Gospel Christ is holding up ‘servant-leadership’ as a new model of power relations within his new community. A community we continue here and now, today, and each day in St Cuthberts.
The passage draws on both the promise made to the twelve that they would judge the twelve tribes of Israel and the reversal characteristic of the Kingdom, where the last is first, and the first last.
Significantly though, it is the twelve apostles, those closest to, those who lived and dined with Jesus, those who shared life and the intimacy of the teacher-student relationship, it is those men who did understand this teaching at all.
And so, how may we move closer to embodying and living the spiritual truth of servant leadership when the twelve, who lived and prayed with Jesus, did not?
Well, we believe that what we have just heard is Holy. Something other. Something that can and does change our lives. Something that deserves our attention.
Attending to the text then, we notice that the self-focused desires of the sons of Zebedee, and the remaining ten, necessarily involve exclusion.
The ten are excluded in the request to Jesus to have the sons sit at his right and left hand. But also, the right and the left hand were second and third places of power – they were not equal in Jewish society – and so the brother at the right would exclude the one at the left. In fact, any ratification of worldly power structures within the Kingdom would mean the Kingdom would be not of the heavens but of the world.
And the remaining ten disciples, by their anger or indignation at the request show they are caught up in the same worldly power play. The entire circle of twelve, by placing their own desires first, are of course attempting to exclude God who is the sole agent in the choice and roles of the disciples.
As Jesus makes clear, servant leadership involves inclusion: he himself will give his life as a ransom for many. The first among the disciples will be a slave to the entire group.
So, a way forward may to be attend to the text through the lens of inclusion and exclusion.
The excluded in our sacred texts, our tradition and contemporary church are only excluded through worldly concerns, not divine providence. By retrieving their excluded voices, we are countering the worldly push against servant leadership and making the church, and creation itself, more whole. By retrieving excluded voices, we form ourselves into servant leadership, if only because we become more aware of who it is we have to serve.
We know from context that Jesus, the 12 and other disciples were going up to Jerusalem. Despite common artistic depictions, and perhaps our internalized imaginations, a significant proportion of these disciples would have been women.
Here then, as a process of retrieval of the excluded, we are called to actively participate with God through the text and to imagine the presence of women disciples. And by doing so, by being active in this endeavour, we internalize the truth that Christ incarnated for all people, even if they are not recorded in the text, and we also embody our vocation to be servants for all people.
Matthew is editing Mark, chapter ten. A major change by Matthew is the inclusion of the mother of James and John. Her name though is excluded, and she is only included by reference to the head of the patriarchal unit as “mother of the sons of Zebedee”. She has no identity in her own right, even though she is one of the many faithful disciples, all women, to witness the Crucifixion in Matthew.
In Matthew it is she who presents the worldly ambitions of James and John. In Mark, it is the sons themselves. This change is often, though not universally, seen as Matthew, writing 20 or more years after Mark wanting to preserve the reputation of the disciples.
Because by the year 85 CE, when Matthew wrote, the disciples were starting to be seen as models of saintly life. By having their mother request this of Jesus, they are removed a little more from worldly taint. Though of course, they enter into the request pretty quickly afterwards.
An extraordinary exclusion occurs in verse 22 when Jesus, having heard the mother’s request ignores her completely and speaks directly to her sons. My partner, Morgan, experiences something like this when we visit hardware stores together and she speaks to male assistants, only to have them reply to me.
This points to an ongoing area of exclusion within the world and mirrored in the Church – the exclusion of women from participation in the priesthood and the episcopate. This still occurs in some Anglican dioceses and some parishes in this diocese. As servant leaders, for all people, within the One Body of the Church, how do we respond to this?
And of course, such contemporary exclusion, whether of women or people of difference, does not have to be so overt. It can be subtle. It can be unconscious. It can be hidden.
I was once blessed to be part of regular Morning Prayer with a group of women, many of whom had attended their parish for decades. On one memorable occasion, when we celebrated the life of the incredible Florence Nightingale, women’s advocate, social reformer and lay theologian, these amazing, beautiful, strong parish women began to speak.
What emerged, what erupted, was an alternative history of the parish. A history that detailed their exclusion as women and withholding of communion by a former rector when they spoke to him of their desire to divorce their violent and abusive husbands.
Right now, whether we are aware of it or not, we contribute to the history of this wonderful parish. And as servant leaders for all people, we have the opportunity to help reveal and include excluded voices and people within the parish as part of that history.
And just as all accounts of the Gospel, despite human editing choices and exclusions, reveal God, so too all narratives, all histories when attended to, when held like scripture, may reveal God to us.
Because the Good News is that our God is a Living God involved in the world, and She changes everything She touches. Even Anglican parishes. Her Holy Spirit is active, constantly calling the excluded home.
The Good News is that the women at Morning Prayer, moved by the Spirit on a cold July morning, spoke vulnerable truth and found their stories, shared for the first time, mirrored the lives of others. Their exclusion transformed into inclusion and they became closer to each other and closer to God.