Vending Machine

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

October 21, 2018

24 Proper B

          One spring break many years ago, the kids and I took a quick trip to Indianapolis where the Children’s Museum had an enormous Lego exhibit.  We spent the night in a hotel with the requisite swimming pool and pizza delivery service then headed out to the museum the next morning.  The Lego exhibit was incredible with huge Lego structures to examine and plenty of Legos available for kids to experiment with on their own.  A huge water exhibit upstairs gave the kids a chance to get soaking wet while experimenting with what floats and what does not.  All in all, the trip to the museum was quite successful.  But, as was often the case with our kids, the highlight of the trip had nothing to do with the incredible displays and experiences at the museum. The highlight of the trip was the vending machine back at the hotel that magically produced hot French fries on demand.  Slocomb and Caldwell were probably 8 and 11 at the time.  They had never seen such a curiosity before, whereas they had seen plenty of Legos and lots of water.  Their young minds were fascinated by this machine which, for dollar and 90 seconds, produced piping hot French fries.  The kids spent hours trying to figure out how the vending machine managed to make hot French fries, and their ideas ranged from magic to incredibly complicated engineering.  The ability to put money in a machine and get hot fries out bordered on the miraculous for them.

          This morning, James and John approach Jesus and say to him “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you,” and what they want is to sit at the right and left hands of Jesus.  A friend of mine calls this the theology of Jesus the magic vending machine, turning Jesus into a dispenser of divine favors much like the vending machine that fascinated my young sons.  James and John come across self-centered at best, and arrogant at worst.  What makes their request even more mindboggling is that, in the sentences immediately before our gospel reading, Jesus predicts his passion for the third time.  Jesus has just said “See, we are going up 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.’  Not only do James and John come across as selfish and arrogant, they also seem rather insensitive.  Jesus has just told the disciples about his upcoming suffering and death, and James and John are all about places of honor beside Jesus.

          To think that James and John are selfish and insensitive is to perhaps give them more credit than they are due.  I think perhaps they are more the victims of selective hearing, rather than having heard Jesus and ignored him.  Either way, Jesus is patient with his two disciples.  Jesus says to James and John “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”

          “Are you able to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  Earlier in Mark’s gospel, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan.  At Jesus’ baptism, he saw the heavens open and the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove.  Then the voice from heaven said “You are my Son, the beloved.  With you I am well pleased.”  If this is the baptism James and John are thinking about, then no wonder they say “yes” to Jesus’ question.  This baptism, complete with a dove from heaven and affirmation straight from God, fits right in with their desire to sit at Jesus right and left hand in glory.  James and John have hit the baptism jackpot!

          But James and John have not been listening.  The cup that Jesus will drink and the baptism with which he will be baptized are described in those sentences right before the disciples make their audacious request.  No one in their right mind would sign up for being mocked, flogged, spat upon, and killed, and this is certainly not what we have in mind for little Lucy as we baptize her this morning. 

          Had James and John been listening to Jesus, not only would they have heard Jesus describe his upcoming suffering and death, they would also have heard him say “and after three days he will rise again.”  In our baptism service, the prayer over the water includes these words “We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism.”  In it we are buried with Christ in his death.  By it we share in his resurrection.”  Baptism is not the promise that nothing bad will ever happen to us.  Baptism recognizes that life will throw us some curve balls.  Hopefully those curve balls will not involve being mocked, flogged, spat upon, and killed, but the curve balls can knock the wind out of our sails and challenge us beyond anything we ever thought possible.  Baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus is the promise that no matter how fast or hard the curve balls hit, life will always have the final word.  And then Jesus tells us that the proper response to being baptized with the Baptism of Jesus is not a victory dance, or places of honor at the table, or power and glory, but to follow the One who came not to be served, but to serve. 

          In a few minutes, we will baptize little Lucy Kosanovich.  Being baptized with the baptism of Jesus is not about getting Jesus to do for us whatever we want, or about special privileges or powers, or about never having another bad day.  Being baptized with the Baptism of Jesus is God’s promise to Lucy that the final word will always belong to life.  Lucy’s gift to God will be to live as a person who believes God’s promise to be true.  

                                                                             Amen.