Do You Know What You Ask?

Sermon

This encounter between the disciples and Jesus is one that I think is a little bit too familiar. James and John, who get a really bad rap here, come up to Jesus and make one of my favorite requests in the Bible: “Jesus, we’re not going to tell you what it is that we want, and before we tell you, we just want you to do it for us.”

What a bold ask. And what an honest ask. At first read, it definitely comes off as James and John having a distorted idea of who Jesus is, as if he’s some sort of genie. And while they may have a distorted idea at this time, they’re not alone. In fact, the disciples hear James and John and get mad—not because they have a more righteous understanding of Jesus, but because they, too, want what James and John wanted, but they apparently have the tact not to ask him like they have. And more importantly, their request is one that we, too, find ourselves making quite often.

There’s two examples of this that I think make this most obvious: “Dear God, please give the Dodgers strength to close out this series tonight against the Mets and make it to their first world series since 2020 so we can beat the Yankees,” or when we pray some form of, “Dear God, thank you for healing me of my cancer, my disease, my affliction, my disability.”

Of course, these two kinds of requests are wildly different. And I still do fully trust that God is emphatically concerned with both the big things like the health of God’s people and the “smaller” things like your child scoring the winning goal.

But how God demonstrates concern for these things is much different than the ways we ask for them. When I pray for the Dodgers to clinch the series tonight, what am I praying for? What is that I ask? Well, I want my team to win, I want someone else’s team to lose, and most importantly, it means I am praying that my prayer and my relationship to Jesus is much stronger than that person who’s also inevitably praying for the Mets to win. That God is concerned with my wants more than another’s.

It’s important to note that James and John are brothers. And while they have been a part of this tight-knit community of disciples, still, they want to isolate and distinguish themselves from the other disciples. Distinguish themselves with glory, by being the ones to sit besides Jesus, requesting Jesus for them to “win,” for the other disciples to “lose,” and to assert that their relationship to Jesus is much stronger than the other disciples. So of course, the other disciples become upset. They have been sidelined by James and John who think they, as a family, are more important to Jesus.

You do not know what you ask, Jesus tells them.

There’s something interesting happening here, and it can kind of read like Jesus is being a bit patronizing. Telling James and John that he knows what they want more than they do. And that seems wild, because how hard is it for us as adults to earnestly receive someone telling us that they know what’s better for us than we do? We pick and choose who we listen to—our doctors, our leaders—based on the kind of authority or experience they have.

So, this is a bit patronizing. But is that really a bad thing here? Jesus has been a parental figure, teacher, and leader to the disciples, with the kind of authority and experience that only Jesus can have. So yes, I’d say Jesus earns the right to be a bit patronizing.

During a staff meeting as we were discussing this passage, Director Eliz and the Reverend Lindsey both pointed out me to that they deal with these kinds of requests all the time. As parents, I can only imagine their life is full of “We want you to do what we want.”

Like a parent who understands their child—regardless of how young we are—Jesus loves James and John and loves their bold request: “What is it you want me to do for you?”

It’s only when he hears their request that he tells them they don’t know what they ask, but again, like a parent who loves their child, he answers them and gives them what it is they really want.

Why is it that we don’t just eat ice cream and junk food when we’re hungry? Unless you’re me and you really don’t know better, you know that what your body really needs is sustenance and so you find something that’s better and more filling for you than ice cream.

With Jesus, both James and John and the disciples do trust that he does in fact know best about who he is and what it is they want, and so he teaches all of them how to “get what they want”—how to be in Jesus’ glory, how to draw nearer to him, and how to sit on his right and left.

With the influence and privilege the disciples have—relative to those in the crowds—they are to leverage their power for others, for those in the crowds.

“It is not so among you.”

They are not to uphold the same kind of leadership or power where rulers lord it over others, use their power for wealth and enslavement of peoples, or act as oppressive tyrants.

Second, the kin-dom of heaven is in need of restoration. We know this because that’s exactly what Jesus has come to do, to be the reconciling act of a world marred by these inequitable institutions—“his life a ransom.”

And lastly, he tells them they have been specifically called to this work of restoration. If James, John, the disciples, want to sit on his right side and left side, be as close to the status of Jesus as possible, they are to serve, give their lives for one another, and live a life reflecting how Jesus has modeled it directly for them. One of service, one of fellowship with “sinners,” and one of a boundless and equitable community.

I can imagine the disciples might be tired of hearing this. Not only has Jesus been saying this over and over again, they have been living it out with Jesus on his journey, serving and giving their lives for one another, and so all they want is their just desserts!

Trying to be fully intentional about our own prayers and requests to God can be a lot of work. There’s a show called “The Good Place,” and in this world, we learn that one only ends up at the “Good Place” if they have acquired enough “good” points to meet this threshold during their time on earth. Otherwise, it’s straight to the “Bad Place” you go. The basic premise of the show is satirizing a very doctrinal and legalistic Christianity.

Later in the show, spoilers, we meet one person who has apparently figured out the truth of this point system during his life on earth, and since then has lived his life as perfectly as possible such that he can gain enough good points. This looks like crying over stepping on snails, buying only ethically grown produce, and of course, reducing energy consumption by drinking his own urine! We then find out, no matter how many changes he’s made, the system is so broken that anything he does contributes to larger problems. His funeral for the snail wastes more energy and resources, the ethically grown produce he buys turns out to be impossible to be fully ethical, and his point total is ultimately negative.

Intentional life as a Christian is not easy, but it is also not meant to look like the life of Jeremy Bearimy, trying to make as many changes in our own lives so that we can ensure our seat, or our family’s seat, in the good place, or, heaven. It is instead meant to be a part of the holistic restoration of the kin-dom—where we are concerned with one another’s place in the kin-dom, not just our own. And this can be, admittedly, challenging.

It is a lot of work to think about service, and especially for others, when it can already be so hard to take care of our own and our family’s basic needs, find time to rest and take sabbath, and just make it through the week.

It’s also important to think about the historical implications of what this call to serve, and be slaves for one another, has meant for specific people groups in the states. So this cannot be just a call to serve one another the same way it has been weaponized historically or even the way that it has embedded itself into today’s dominant narratives of Christian charity, service, mission.

Instead, service to one another must be life-giving—both for ourselves and for one another. Jesus does not ask us, nor should we ask (or force) one another, to serve in ways that does not give us life and meaning or to serve in a way that lords privilege and power over those you serve that strip away their life and meaning.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that my mother has been making the lunches for a church, about 50 people each week, that no one else can sign up. Of course, when I got older, I asked her, “Mom, does it not bother you that in Korean churches, the wife of the pastor is responsible for so much? The church asks so much of you, and I hate the optic.”

Thankfully, my mother told me, “Great question, but son, don’t worry; I wouldn’t let your dad tell me what to do if I didn’t want to do it.”

My mother spent her Saturdays preparing lunches and practicing the organ because she had found how her gifts and talents could intersect with the needs of a small church.

This is the kind of service I think Jesus calls us into. We have each been gifted with unique passions, specific talents, special perspectives, and it’s when we discover how we can use our lives for the restoration of the kin-dom that service becomes fully life-giving. Because this is the kind of love Jesus has for us and our bold requests—love for us and individuals, and love for the world.

So, when we come to Jesus with our requests, we are invited to transform them by asking, what is it that we really want, truly need? How can these requests contribute to the restoration of the kin-dom?

Does my request have to be for a Dodgers win, or can it be for an enjoyable and thrilling game?

Are our requests for healing about ourselves, or about the hope and comfort we know each person in pain deserves?

Life as a Christian is an invitation into a holistic change in the way we understand our identity. Justifiably and so, so, humanly, we want to think of ourselves as beings of isolation compartmentalized in family and community units. But if we look at how Jesus lived his life, invited his disciples to live their lives, and the ways they did in the book of Acts, we see that we have not been created just as individuals, but as peoples, meant to be in boundless, wall-down, equitable communities.

And so, ultimately, when we come to Jesus, I think there is one question we can ask ourselves that might help us understand our requests before we make them:

What would it look like for your greatest joys to meet the world’s deepest needs?