Arise: of Thrones & Cups - 15 March, 2026

So I want to invite you to open your Bibles, if you would, to

Matthew chapter 20, Matthew 20. Now Jesus was going up to

Matthew 20 · chapter mention

Jerusalem and on the way he took the 12 aside and said to them,

We are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man will be delivered

over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law.

They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the

Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.

On the third day he will be raised to life.

Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to Jesus with her sons

kneeling down, asked a favor of him.

What is it you want? He asked.

She said. Grant that one of these two sons

of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in

your Kingdom. You don't know what you're

asking, Jesus said to them, Can you drink the cup?

I am going to drink? We can, they answered.

Jesus said to them, You will indeed drink from my cup, but to

sit at my right or left is not for me to grant.

These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by

my Father. When the 10 heard about this,

they were indignant. Indignant with the two brothers,

Jesus called them together and said, You know that the rulers

of the Gentiles Lord it over them, and their high officials

exercise authority over them. Not so with you.

Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your

servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave, just

as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and

to give his life as a ransom for many.

Her name is Mary Solomi. You might know her as Solomi or

the other Mary. She showed up with the group of

disciples and women that had been following Jesus.

She was Mary's the mother of Jesus sister.

So sometimes she's called the other Mary, and here she is as

Jesus's auntie, showing up with her two sons and kneeling.

This is a mother's request. How many of you know that your

mother prays for you? I wonder what her requests are

like. This is a prayer request.

She's kneeling at the feet of Jesus.

She's going low so that her sons can rise up.

She wants good things for her kids.

How many of you had an internal reaction as you read the

scripture? Like, oh wow, how dare she?

I mean, how would you feel if your mother showed up in front

of the president of UBC on Maine Mall and dragged you along and

knelt in front of the president and said, President Makan,

please give my daughter a job here in your office.

Anybody volunteering for that? This is a little awkward.

She is kneeling in front of Jesus.

She is going low so that her kids could rise up.

It's a reasonable request, isn't it?

Maybe in terms of family, she's looking around at those 12

disciples. She's heard them talking that

Jesus says they're going to Jerusalem.

But maybe they're all still missing the point that Jesus is

going to Jerusalem to go low, that Jesus is going to Jerusalem

to suffer and be raised up, and his his rising up will first be

on a cross. But it is a reasonable request

if you think that Jesus is going to have a physical Kingdom in

which he rules. And who would be the best to

help him? Not those other 10 disciples who

seemed to not have it all together, but her two sons,

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, known as the Sons of

Thunder. They've got it together.

They would be the best bodyguards on either side of

Jesus, at his left and on his right.

Keep this in the family, Jesus. So maybe it's a reasonable

request that she's looking around and saying who's going to

be the most helpful to Jesus. She wanted her kids to be

helpful to Jesus. Maybe you're like, oh, Craig,

she came and asked for a favor. Why are you having such a good

opinion about her? It is in our nature these days

to assume the worst of those who seek a position.

We assume the worst of politicians.

We assume the worst of those who say I want to lead a group.

Please don't assume that. Even if people do, hey, let it

go like water off a duck's back and come to the small group

Leaders workshop today, we assume the worst of people who

rise up in the club in order to be elected.

We're like, who do they think they are?

Well, at the best, the best option is that in some way they

want to be helpful. They think they can make a

difference. And so they're standing up.

Or perhaps they're going low. Yeah.

Ronald Rolheimer or Roll Roll Heiser has three stages of

discipleship. They're almost like 3 stages of

life. They're each three immense

struggles of our life. The first struggle he calls

essential discipleship. This is the struggle to get our

stuff together. This is the struggle to get it

together. It all goes well until puberty

hits, and then it's like, what kind of creature have I become?

How do I get my life together? Some of you call this adulting.

You keep putting it off. You're like, I'll just take more

classes, more classes, I'll just get another degree.

And then somehow in the mix it starts to happen that you have

to start getting your life together.

You have to start organizing. I can go to bed, I can wake up,

I can take on responsibilities. I can do things.

I can pay my bills, bills. I can.

I can do these things. Essential discipleship is just

what we've all been invited into.

But Jesus is inviting us into another level of discipleship,

and that's mature discipleship, the struggle to give our lives

away, to become a person who looks not just after ourselves,

but looks after others and gives our lives away.

There isn't just a morning where you wake up and you're suddenly

that person. But this is the longest section

of discipleship, if you live a while, is that this generative

discipleship of becoming a person who gives your life away,

where you learn more and you face the struggle of how will I

give my life away while I'm earning a fair bit of money?

How do I give it away? I have all these skills and

abilities in my life. How do I give it away?

Wow, I have these children in my life.

How do I give myself away to them?

Wow, my parents have gotten older.

How do I give myself away to help them in the latter years of

their life? Wow, I have this responsibility

in this company. How do I give myself away

without losing myself in this place?

This is the struggle of mature discipleship.

It is the struggle that Jesus disciples were facing.

It was the struggle that even Mary Salome was facing.

How do we give our lives away? What is required in order to

give our lives away? Do I require a position or do I

require a posture? What is required in order to

give my life away? The third stage is this radical

discipleship, and it's the struggle to give our deaths

away. I barely understand what he

means, but you can go read about it in his book called Sacred

Fire. Jesus models all three of these.

In fact, we're inviting you this summer into a reading challenge

that will invite you into a consideration of all three

stages of discipleship. The first book we're inviting

you into is called Theo of Golden Great Story by Ellen

Levi. It's a fictional book.

No slide. We're inviting you.

We'll have the slide next week. Debbie made a beautiful slide.

We're going to use it next week. But Theo of Golden, we want to

invite you to read a fiction book.

How many of you have read a fiction book in the last year?

Oh, a few of you are reading books.

I'm so excited. Wow, that's really exciting,

right? Wow.

We want to invite you to read this.

The second book is called The Return of the Prodigal Son by

Andre Nuen and this one you'll you'll really start to get the

connection on discipleship. We'll talk more about these

books. I learned this morning that if

you have Spotify premium Spotify as a student, both of these

books are already available there for you to listen to.

I know like, wow, it's already there, but I tell you, I am old

school. If I'm not driving the van, I

really like to hold my book and read.

So I encourage you order a copy and read it because we want to

invite you into a lengthy conversation about this kind of

discipleship. Sometimes you just need to see

it in a story. Sometimes you need to process it

in the stories and art of others.

And so we're going to invite you into both of those this summer,

these three stages. Where do you see yourself?

Are you still struggling to get your stuff together?

Are you struggling to give your life away?

Or have you been blissfully unaware that this is actually a

struggle to give your life away? You still wanted to be a taker

rather than a giver. This is the shift, because you

can miss this and you can be 75 years old and still being a

taker and not a giver, it's possible to miss it.

Teresa of a villa, she said this.

When one reaches the highest degree of human maturity, one

has only one question left. How can I be helpful?

How can I be helpful? I actually learned in university

that this was a really difficult question to fulfill.

I don't know. Somewhere along the way, we had

been challenged to sort of ask the question, how could I help

you? I was hanging out in the Baptist

Student Union. There was hardly anyone there.

No one was there. The sun was shining.

It was a beautiful day. And I was in the lobby and in

walked an older man with a suitcase.

This was before suitcases with wheels.

This was just a suitcase that he was carrying.

He had a straw hat on. And he came in and he did not

look like the average university student.

So I asked him how can I help you today?

And he said I need a ride. I said OK.

And so then I took him for a ride.

Like, I drove him for 50 miles to this little tiny town that

had one tiny little hotel, and that's where he was booked to

stay. And on the way, I learned all

about his life as a record salesman.

And then I drove back to Athens and on the way back I was like,

God, why did I ask that question today?

I really wasn't looking forward to a drive.

But I must admit that was really interesting.

I met a really interesting person.

How can I be helpful? Do you know the 10 did not like

this at all? When the 10 heard about this

event, which they weren't very far away, they were.

They were just just a stone's throw away at this moment.

They were indignant with the two brothers.

They couldn't bring themselves to be mad at Mary Solemi.

I mean, that's Mary's sister, the mother of Jesus.

But they could bring themselves to be mad at those two guys,

those two brothers, because why? They've gotten ahead of them in

line, asking to be useful to Jesus, asking for a special

place with Jesus. And they were a bit competitive.

Sometimes I wish the disciples here were a little more

competitive, but they were competitive, and so they also

assumed something treacherous about the hearts of their

brothers, their fellow disciples.

They were indignant. And what Jesus shows us next,

and how Jesus addresses it, is that Jesus shows us that he sees

into the hearts of those 10 men, and he sees a problem about what

they see about being useful to Jesus.

Jesus wants to reframe their quest.

So he says, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles Lord it

over them, and their officials exercise authority over them.

Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become

great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be

first among you must be your slave.

This is how Jesus says we can be helpful to him.

If you want to be helpful to Jesus, don't seek the position

that creates power to Lord it over others.

Instead, seek the posture that allows you to serve and even be

the slave of others. You will go low and be raised

up. If you go low, you will be

raised up as great. If you go low, you will be

raised up as first on occasion. Sometimes that may result in a

position. Sometimes that might even result

in a job. Sometimes we're reluctant to

take a small job because we say it's beneath me.

But God is using it to form you as a person so that he can raise

you up. And even others can say, oh,

there's some essential skills in your life.

There's essential qualities in your life.

And they give you a chance. Jesus seems to indicate the same

thing, that being useful to Jesus is not about lording it

over others. Being in charge, being control,

taking, taking, taking is usually what those positions are

about. Not so with you.

It's such a simple phrase. Would you?

Would you turn and say it to your neighbor?

Not so with you. Some of you imagined that you

were going to get married and that finally there would be

somebody who would do what you told him to do.

Not so with you, Jesus says. Not so with you.

Some of you imagined that you were going to get married and

finally there'd be somebody to just take care of you all the

time. In a way that's sort of true,

that the invitation in marriage is mutual submission, that we

move towards the other so that we go low to see how to serve

the other. And when we are equally doing

that in occasions and over the course of our lives, then our

marriage is great because first things have been addressed.

This plays out in so many areas of our lives.

Some of you were so excited you were going to have children and

now there'd be people to do the chores in your house.

And you just discovered, no, they just create more chores.

Even the dishes have babies just on their own.

They're, they're just multiplying there all the time.

The struggle in our lives is to figure out how to give our lives

away without resentment, without bitterness, to give our lives

away without anger and rage, to give our lives away, even our

forgiveness away. This is the invitation of Jesus

in a way. Jesus is on a mission very much,

he says, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but

to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

He's saying, this is how I want you to live.

I want you to live the way I lived and I struggled.

Is this Jesus on mission, or is this Jesus's motivation?

St. John of the Cross says that if

you want to live into this second area of discipleship, you

must let your life become saturated with the vision of

Jesus in action, and then you must let your life mirror his

motivations. Jesus's motivation is to serve.

Jesus's motivation is to give just like his Father in heaven,

just like the Spirit of God, and to give his life specifically as

a ransom for many because many have been taken hostage.

Many have been kidnapped from the life that they were intended

to live. Their life has been derailed and

they've been snatched up. And he's like, I'm going to pay

the price for their freedom. I will be there ransom.

And this is what we know. Jesus left his throne to take

this cup of suffering. He asked these two disciples,

James and John, even even Mary, I believe, was present for this

question. Can you drink the cup?

I'll drink. Can you drink the cup of

judgement that I'm going to drink?

Can you drink the cup of suffering that I will drink?

And in their eagerness they said, we sure can, We can do it.

And Jesus says you will. You will drink that cup.

But not yet. The Scripture later says in Luke

that Jesus withdrew on a night before he was betrayed.

He had taken some disciples, Peter, James and John, to pray,

and he withdrew about a stone's throw.

How far can you throw a stone? Jesus knew that what he was

really facing, he had to face alone.

And sometimes in this middle area of discipleship we feel

alone. It feels lonely and really

sorting out how to give our lives away, how to live

purposely. It feels lonely sorting out what

you're going to major in and then where is your career going?

It feels lonely. You have to disengage.

About a stone's throw away, you can see your friends there.

They're sleeping and you're praying, you're pondering,

you're wondering, how is my life going to be useful?

And Jesus knows that there is a cross in his destiny.

And he kneels before the Father, and he says, Father, if you're

willing, take this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be

done. Jesus left a throne to drink

from the cup. He went low to do something for

you and for me. We had been taking ransom.

Those of us who know we're being tempted, those of us who know

that we've already succumbed to temptation, those of us who know

that we don't have our stuff together and our life is a mess,

know we need a daily prayer of Jesus the Rescuer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a Sinner.

This showed up in the 5th century in Egypt, scratched into

the cell of a monk, one of the desert fathers, and then it was

popularized all across Europe and now around the world.

And if you've been following with Lectio 365, you've been

able to pray this during Lent. So I'm going to invite you to

stand with me. It's a three times prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a Sinner.

Would you pray it with me? Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

have mercy on me, a Sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

have mercy on me, a Sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

have mercy on me, a Sinner. As we come to the table, we hear

the words of Peter reminding us that Our Calling is to be holy

because God is holy. And it was not with silver or

gold that you were redeemed, that you were rescued, that you

were ransomed from an empty way of life that had been handed

down to you. But instead you were rescued,

redeemed, ransomed with the precious blood of Christ, a Lamb

without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the

creation of the world, but was revealed in these last days for

your benefit. Through Him you believe in God

who raised Him. So now your faith and your hope

are in God with those helping with the Lord's Supper come

forward.