Have you ever told Jesus what you expect of him?  All of us who call ourselves followers of his have expectations of Jesus and not just about what happens to us after we die.  Most often, we never tell Jesus what we expect of him, unless we hit a brick wall of some kind of crisis.  Even our prayers are often too shallow because we say what we think God expects us to say but never really tell him what we expect of him.  We just live with our silent dreams until some form of disappointment exposes them.  But, somewhere, some time, some way or another, life doesn’t add up.  We expected to be better looking, smarter, wealthier, healthier, better positioned, something, by the time we got to wherever we are in life.  And, because we’ve been repeatedly told that faith in God puts us on an upwardly mobile inside track on getting what we want in life, when life doesn’t add up to what we expected, we get angry, of all people, at God.  We expected more.  We just never had an honest with God about what we expected.  Not so James and John.

Unapologetically, brazenly, right in front of their best friends, they tell Jesus two things.  First, they tell Jesus that they want him to do whatever they ask.  No restrictions.  No limits.  “‘We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’”  Sounds arrogant and cocky, even childish in some ways, for James and John to say that to Jesus.    But, let’s at least give James and John credit for having the courage to tell Jesus exactly what they wanted.  Not that they deserve it and not that they are going to get it, by the way.  They’re not even going to come out looking very good for having asked Jesus for what they wanted the way they did.  But, at least between them and Jesus, there were no secrets, no hidden agendas.  Jesus, we want two things, they said.  First, “‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’”  Whatever! 

Jesus decides to take their cockiness out for a test ride and asks, “‘What is it you want me to do for you?’”  It’s almost like the disciples have rubbed the magic bottle and a genie has popped out granting them three wishes.  “What do you want?” Jesus asks them.  By the way, as an aside, this is a great skill for conflict management. 

Often times we get into conflict with people because we have unrealistic expectations of each other.  And, often, we never tell each other what we expect until we don’t get what we want and then get angry because someone didn’t give us what we never told them we expected.  If someone ever makes an unreasonable demand of you, ask them Jesus’ question, “What is it you want me to do for you?”  It’s amazing how that question can bring clarity in conflict because that simple question can finally cause people to get honest about their expectations.  So, Jesus asks the disciples, “What do you want from me?”  And, they tell him exactly, very specifically, what they want.  “‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’” 

They still didn’t understand who Jesus was and what he was up to.  They’d obviously begun to connect the dots from what they thought the Messiah would be and who it looked like Jesus was.  But, still thinking that Messiah had something to do with political power or prominence or position and authority over others, they wanted in on the enterprise early while the stock was cheap.  They’re about to get the shock of their lives. 

The first thing Jesus tells them is that they have absolutely no idea what they’re asking for.  Again, we’ve all heard it before.  Be careful what you pray for, you might get it.  This is a classic example.  If James and John had known what it would cost them to follow Jesus on his rise to the top they might think again because getting to the top, for Jesus, would mean getting to top of a hill called Calvary where he’d soon be nailed to a cross.  There’d be plenty of room for others up there if anyone were interested.  “You really want some of this?”  Jesus asked them.  Then, Jesus says to them, in essence, “if what you want is position and authority, you’ve come to the wrong place.  I can’t help you with that.  That’s out of my hands.  But, if what you want is true greatness, then I’m your guy.  But, this is the first thing you must learn if you want to be great.  True greatness is something you gain on the other side of not caring anymore about being great.” 

Jesus is about to redefine greatness for them, and us.  By the way, isn’t that something we must always do, redefine what we believe makes our lives matter for what is truly great?  Do we ever come to the end of that?  True greatness, Jesus said, was what you achieve when you come to the place where helping others get what they need is more important to you than getting others to help you get what you want.  True greatness is what you’ve achieved when you can look around at this world and everyone in it and say, with all your heart, “It’s not about me anymore.”

Right in the middle of the apostle Paul’s well known love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, he inserts these mysterious words, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways (1 Corinthians 13:11).”  At first glance, those words may look out of place.  But, when you look closer, they couldn’t fit better.

When we are infants, the world is centered around us, we think.  It’s all about us.  When we cry, someone comes to us and meets our needs.  With nothing much more than a whimper, the world we know is on call 24/7.  The process of growing up involves the sometimes very painful discovery that, in fact, the world is not all about us.  There even comes a time, the apostle Paul said, that we have to choose to take the step toward maturity that only comes when we choose be more concerned about giving love than getting love. 

At the center of this conversation we’re having these days about living from the inside out is this decision about moving from spiritual infancy to spiritual adulthood.  By the way, as I get ready to have this conversation with you every Sunday, I do so by taking a good look into the scripture and at the same time a good look in the mirror.  We’re on this journey together, right?  It’s just that, in my life, I’m ready to take yet another step toward what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.  Scott Peck once wrote that “Of the thousands, maybe even millions, of risks we can take in a lifetime the greatest risk is the risk of growing up.  Growing up is the act of stepping from childhood into adulthood.  Actually, it is more a fearful leap than a step, and it is a leap that many people never take in their lifetimes (Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled).”  Remember, in early infancy and childhood, as far as we’re concerned, we’re the center of the universe.  Moving toward maturity means taking a fearful leap toward what Jesus said it means to be his follower.  “‘Whoever wishes to become great among 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 for many.’” 

The fearful leap from childhood to adulthood, as Jesus defines it, involves looking around at this world and our place in it and concluding, even as Jesus did on the cross, “It’s not about me.”  We never grow up until we choose to love, until we choose to live from the inside out, asking how our lives can be used to serve the human community God has given us to live in.

By the way, as they say, I’m “preaching to the choir” now.  I’ve never in my life known a more servant-minded church than Cliff Temple.  It’s truly incredible.  Yesterday, we attended Robyn Byrd’s wedding.  At the reception, they took a group photograph of all the children who have grown up here at Cliff Temple.  It was truly remarkable looking at all those children who were raised in and by this church and who have grown into servant-minded young adults.  They are a real witness to the character of this church.  So, I’m saying all of this today as much as anything by way of confession about my own journey with Jesus into servanthood. 

If I had to describe the single most significant struggle of my soul in the last few years it would be this.  When I was “growing up,” somehow or another I concluded that being a Christian meant primarily holding the right set of beliefs that would insure my eternal salvation after I died.  It’s not that what we believe doesn’t matter.  It certainly does.  The way we live expresses what we truly believe.  It’s just that the more time I spend with Jesus in his word, the more I’m coming to understand him to say that, no matter what I say I believe, I cannot truly call myself a follower of Jesus unless my life is less and less about me and more and more about others.  Isn’t that what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 13?  “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I am nothing (1 Corinthians 13:3, NIV).”  Even if we have such deep religious convictions that we are willing to die for them but our death was about self-promotion instead of empowering others, then it was a meaningless death.  Jesus said that he came to “‘give his life (as) a ransom for many’” and that, if we are interested in true, eternal greatness, we will follow in his steps, no matter to what kind of death, or life they lead. 

One of our young businessmen handed me an article this week on what his industry is doing to target Generation Y, what it sees as its economic future.  Generation Y is American history’s second largest generation, born between 1979 and 1994.  It’s a fascinating article about how this generation sees the world, what it values and doesn’t.  It’s the most technologically literate generation in history.  Very self-reliant, Generation Y values diversity and tends to be very mistrusting of corporate and institutional power among other traits.  If you want someone in Generation Y to be your client, you have to find some way of helping them make a hands-on connection with those things they believe will shape their personal destinies.  (Kate Kuehner-Hebert and Barbara A. Rehm, “Do Banks Get Their Future Customers?” American Banker, August 27, 2003).  Let’s see, first there were baby boomers, then Generation X and now Generation Y.  Frankly, my head is spinning.  We can’t expect this upcoming generation to join our church, in other words, just because we’re here and we’re Baptist.  So, how can we ever hope to build a church program that is uniquely tailored to reach Baby Boomers and Generation X and Generation Y, each with its unique values and worldviews? 

What if we just take Jesus seriously and at his word?  “‘Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.’”  What if always make certain that, no matter who we’re dealing with, no matter what age, no matter what sexual orientation, no matter what race, no matter what, we’re always more concerned about what we can do for them than what they can do to help us grow this church?  While demographers can teach us why people do and don’t go to church and what we can do to reach them, Jesus, I believe, would remind us that a spirit of genuine servanthood will always translate well with any generation.  That spirit speaks a language that crosses all cultural and generational lines.   

When I was in college I took Dr. Ray Ellis for three years of Greek.  Dr. Ellis was a no-nonsense professor who took his work very, very seriously.  So seriously, in fact, that those of us in his third year Greek class decided we needed to loosen him up a bit.  One day, before Dr. Ellis got to class, we turned all the desks in the room to face the back wall and sat down.  When Dr. Ellis walked in the room, all he saw was the back of our heads.  We thought we were pretty funny and creative.  Dr. Ellis simply turned and walked out of the room, down the hall to the back door of the room, walked in, turned a chair around to face us, and without saying a word, taught the class as though nothing had happened.  It was more important to him to teach us, even if the way we wanted to be taught that day was backwards, than to throw a fit because we’d upset his normal pattern of teaching. 

We live in world that, in many ways, has turned its back on traditional religion, especially institutional religion.  Will we be willing to come in the back door and face them where they stand?  Is it more important to us that we serve them than that they sit in the pews the way we have them turned?  Where is this leading, you ask.  I don’t know.  I think it’s leading toward, as Jesus said, being a “‘slave of all.’”  Jesus said that people achieve greatness by forgetting about greatness and learning to ask a version of the same question he did of the disciples, “How can I help you?”

Isn’t that a question anyone in Generation Y would understand even if a Baby Boomer is asking it?  Isn’t that a question any Baptist would understand even if a Catholic were asking it?  Isn’t that a question any boss would understand if any employee were asking it?  Isn’t that a question any wife would understand even if her husband were asking it?  How can I help you?  Go home this afternoon and try it.  You haven’t been getting along?  Be the first to ask, “‘What is it you want me to do for you?’”

It’s one thing for us to tell Jesus what we expect of him.  It’s altogether another when we start asking the world and those God has given to live with, “What can we do for you?”

That’s not a question we come by naturally.  It’s only a question we ask when, having looked closely at the Jesus who gave his life a ransom for ours, we each say to ourselves, “It’s not about me anymore,” and then follow Jesus into the world he lived and died for, wherever that may lead.  No matter what we expect of Jesus, we know for certain what he expects of us.