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James and john, the sons of zeb body came forward to him and said to him, Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you, and he said to them, what

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is it you want me to do for you? And they said to him, Grannis, to sit one on your right hand and one at your left in your glory. But jesus said to them,

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you do not know what you were asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with ? They replied, We're able. Then jesus said

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to them, the cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized you will be baptized, but to sit at my right hand or my left is not mine to

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grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. When the 10 heard this, they began to be angry with James and John, so Jesus called them and said to them, you

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know that among the gentiles, those whom they recognize as their rulers lorded over them and their great ones or tyrants over them. But it is not so among you. But whoever wishes to become great among

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you must be your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom

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for many. The word of the Lord. I'm thinking today about service on this first day of the spring semester here at Austin Seminary. My thoughts just naturally turn to the sort of service the desire for

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service that brings you to seminary, sort of service for which we endeavour to lay a theological foundation, What sort of minister or church servant will I be ? You come here wondering to yourself, what sort

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of church will I serve? There are positive examples of noble service all around you that will help you think? With that question From the history books, Abraham Lincoln comes to mind in this week of his

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200th birthday. And there are some negative examples too , With 2008 still in my mouth like a bad taste. The two words that I flash upon immediately these days when I think about bad examples of service

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. Our Rod Blagojevich, vapid, profane self promotional narcissistic off the charts, hardly much more than a talking hairdo and a bad one at that Rod Blagojevich astonished all of us with a breathtakingly bad example of

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what it means to serve others. When a senator from his state became president elect and then the president . It was his duty to name his successor and he decided to pay some bills. Public service after

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all is costly. The nation, as alessandra Stanley noted back in december in the new york times is engrossed now in an orgy of scandal, a 24 hour cable news burlesque of greed, graft, cronyism

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and corruption with a pointed villains so lurid and over the top that they could be characters in bleak house . Even their names. Madoff and Bill Goya Vich have a dickensian ring to them like skin pole or

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particle blah blah Gourevitch bragged a couple of months ago , I've got this thing and it's bleeping golden and I'm just not giving it up for bleeping nothing, I'm just not going to do it. Rod Blagojevich

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even inspired the creation of an album by a Chicago psych pop band called Bird Names and the album is entitled for The Love of Rod. The last song on the album is a semi spiritual meditation that proposes

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of Blagojevich Governorship in Heaven. The lead singer for Bird Names, explains the song Rod will End, but in a way he won't end. How happy you thought is, that Blagojevich Governorship in Heaven everywhere

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you look, there are examples of how to serve some of them are good, some of them not so good. Teacher said James and john in today's version marks version of today's story, we want you

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to do for us, whatever we ask of you , Jesus said, what is it you want me to do for you? Their answers are taken straight out of table imagery, think banquet seating, think

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head table was grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory by the way, in Matthew's version of this story, it's their mother who makes this request and

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some scholars suggest that Matthew wrote her into the story in order to protect these two apostles reputations. Let mother asked the question. Whoever asked the question, Jesus said, you don't know what you're asking,

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Are you able to drink the cup that I drink ? Think sacrifice, thank Eucharist. The cup stands for all of the suffering of the passion and for the death of jesus. The cup is at the

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root of all those linton hymns that will start singing soon. What wondrous love is this, Jesus walked this lonesome valley. He had to walk it by himself. 40 days and 40 nights. You were

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fasting in the wild, in the cross of christ our glory towering over the wrecks of time. The cup is about all of that. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? And are

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you able to be baptized as I must be baptized ? This is the power paradigm that the Gospel offers the world and it simply turns the power as we know it on its head back in late november,

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K and I and our younger daughter Claire went to paris for a week. We were there because Shelby , our older daughter was there for the fall semester . We wanted to be with her for thanksgiving And

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for a week, our 20 year old daughter squired us all over Paris. We were duped duly impressed with how fluent her friends had become and with her knowledge of the most interesting museums and exhibits and restaurants

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and points of interest to take us to and with her amazing familiarity with the subway system, we went everywhere, we went to Versailles for a day, we went to montmartre, to Notre dame Cathedral,

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to the two ice cream shops that everybody in the world apparently brags about. To the Eiffel Tower, to the Louvre. We went everywhere. But speaking maybe for myself, the most moving experience I had

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that week was being in church together with my family . First time since early august we found the american cathedral in paris and we went there on that thursday to thanksgiving day services. The preacher was fantastic.

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The new guy at the american church in paris, a presbyterian from colorado. Apparently, these two congregations of american expatriates for the most part, the Episcopal Cathedral and the ecumenical protestant church are located near each

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other and they share thanksgiving together. I was moved by the liturgy. I was moved by the words of the hymns, even the patriotic songs, which I don't normally enjoy singing in church. I was

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moved by them. I was moved by the pleasure of having one daughter sitting on my right and the other on my left. There are moments in that service when I could not speak and I could not

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sing because of the frog in my throat. But here's what moved me. Most of all. During the announcements, the Dean of the Cathedral invited this man to come forward and read the thanksgiving Day proclamation

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that had been issued by President Bush. The man rose from the first few and he walked up to the lectern. He was a member of the cathedral congregation and was obviously a regular. He seemed a

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bit from Philly dressed, his pants needing to be pressed, his hair needing to be combed. He began reading the proclamation, but overwhelmed by emotion. He stumbled through the paragraph, calling for prayer for

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our troops in harm's way. He was clearly moved by the thought of those words and it showed in the time that it took him to regain his composure . I figured out during the rest of the proclamation

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that he was reading that he was craig Stapleton, the United States ambassador to France. And when he finished he stepped away from the lectern. He paused in the middle of the chancel to bow reverently to

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the cross, and he returned to his seat. What moved me. So was the human side of government. His government, for sure, But for any government to be that human? Not so much

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the imperial stuff, the trappings and the beauty and the triumphalism of power, and not the political stuff . The highly charged arguments over who's right and who's wrong about this or that policy. None of that

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. The man at the lectern was positively what I don't think of when I think of printing power. No, because he was there in need of a dry cleaner and a haircut, losing his composure at

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the thoroughly human thought of troops being in harm's way and the vulnerability of life and maybe the spouses and the Children and the parents who are still grieving for spouses and parents and Children lost in a war that

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is harder and harder to justify. And then there in the chancel paying homage to a power greater than any other power he might know something about. He was ahead of me in line going up to the

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altar and I saw him receiving the host and sipping from the cup, think sacrifice, think Eucharist. In the early fall of this past year, K and I went to Atlanta for a weekend, uh

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preached that weekend at First Presbyterian Church there. And since the High Museum of Art is next door, We took in an excellent exhibit of black and white photographs chronicling the civil rights movement. Many of the

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pictures were taken by journalists, some by persons who happened to be standing by when history was made just a few steps away. The pictures documented various chapters in this long struggle of civil rights and it captured

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events in Mississippi and Atlanta and Chicago and Birmingham and a host of other locales across our country. There was one photograph which for me at least stood out above all the rest in some american city, there

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was this March and and there was this picture of a front line of that march, the front line of the people leading the march arms linked together. They were martin Luther King, Jr and Coretta scott

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King and a line of other marchers. It appears the picture was taken a second or two after a loud noise coming from nearby. Was it a firecracker ? Was it a gunshot car slamming into a building

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? Was it something hitting the sidewalk after being thrown out of a window? An angry slur shouted through a bullhorn. We don't know what you see in that picture, is that every soul in that front

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line is looking urgently towards where the sound may have come from. Everyone except for king himself. While the rest of them are distracted, he stares resolutely ahead, straight ahead as jaw set, his eyes

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narrowed, his face set toward Jerusalem and that appears to be all that matters to him. Thanks sacrifice , thank Eucharist. I belong to a cohort of pastors, call the movable feast and we meet for

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the first full week of every january to study the election erI texts for the coming year. We always invited a scholar to come and be with us and on a particular year, 1991 are visiting scholar was

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Fred Craddock, you know that name? You've read his books, maybe he's retired now, but for years he taught home politics and he's one of the best. I took good notes from his comments that

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year on this particular text about James and john and I went to my files and I pulled those notes out as I prepared for this sermon. At one point in the discussion after we have been given a

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chance to preen about what we all know about this text, fred Craddock opened his mouth and asked us if I ask you to do something for me, would you do it? We sat quietly and we

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let that paraphrase of James and john's question just sink in. And he spoke up again. Sometimes people say more than what they say mean more than what they mean. We here Are you able when we

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were 17 and we say yes but we have in mind something great. That's far easier, he said . Then the dribbling on and on and on, of commitment. We sat there some more, just

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kind of marinating in that thought and fred spoke up again, but to drink the cup in one swallow , he said, It's far easier than sipping on it for 40 years. He was thinking, I

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think about the 40 years of ministry that some of you will get when you leave this place. And since I was 25 when I left seminary, he was thinking surely about the 40 years that I probably

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have to drink the cup in one swallow, he said, Is far easier than sipping on it for 40 years. No, dramatic event when photographers come and take a picture of the moment. No,

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not that. Instead you go to bed, you get up, you support your family, you grow the pension fund, you don't write one big check , you write a succession of little checks all through

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your life. And sometimes we feel left out, he said, because there was a time we think when lightning was flashing all around, we feel off the track somehow the big stuff isn't happening. The

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glory days are no more. I think what he was saying about James and john was that they were vying for front row seats. When the big stuff happened again, when the photographer showed up again when

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the Glory Days came back when someone called for us to take to the streets in March. And until that happened again, they would just sort of sit out the part about the cup and the baptism.

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But there hasn't been that much. Big stuff critic went on that big persecution dealt with in revelation. Never happened. Local programs, Yes, but officially Rome hauling up martyrs. It never happened. They

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were more martyrs in 1980, he said then in the first five years of the church, but we'd like more than that, wouldn't we? Sometimes I get phone calls from alums who might have known as

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students here, They've been in their first church and now they're ready to move. I'll say, what are you looking for? What I mean by that question is, what do you think your vocation is

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leading you toward pastoral care, social justice ministries? The vocation of preaching, the vocation of serving the poor, What are you looking for? And sometimes the answer will come back, oh, nothing smaller

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than 1000 members, Preferably a budget of seven figures , something like that. I'll mention maybe a church in a small county seat town, a good church with good people. And I'll say these people need

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a pasture and over the phone sometimes what I hear next is no thank you, been there, done that, it's James and john all over again as if service to the church as if anything worth doing

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is always about lightning flashing around. But more often than not, it's not that at all. The dribbling on of commitment critic says not so much heroics , not the churchy version of american idol, not

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always what we want, just the day in day out of being prosaically faithful. Now, once in a while though, I must confess to you that I myself get in touch with my inner Blagojevich once

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in a while I want more than just what's prosaically faithful. I want more than just the little stuff . I'm preaching a sermon somewhere and some kid waits in line afterwards to hand me something. She drew

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on her bulletin about a story I told and her mom is thinking maybe that I want to bring it home and put it on my refrigerator. And there are times that I can't acknowledge the privilege of receiving

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that gesture because I want more than that. Somebody emailed me and asked if I'll read a paper he's written for this or that class he's taking here and I want more than that. A spontaneous conversation happens

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in the hallway and a staff person writes me a note that says, thank you, You really helped me yesterday and God help me. I want more than that. Any county seat parson can have that

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. Sometimes I want more. I want more than just those monthly checks that I write toward the annual pledge at University Presbyterian Church here in Austin. I want more than those occasional conversations about the faith that

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I get to have with my Children. I want at least 15 Minutes of Fame. I wish you could hear the invocation. I could have written for the presidential inaugural just in case I've been invited instead

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of rick warrant. I want the photographers and the glory days and CNN covering my incisive soundbites delivered at the big march. I want somebody on the radio introducing me on a weekly basis with and no doctor

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Wardlaw. But what jesus offers us instead and swears to us that it's worth. It is 40 years of sipping from the cup, 40 years of living into our baptismal identity, 40 years of the dribbling

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on and on of commitment. Or maybe if we're