October 20, 2024, Who Is Greater Than Elon Musk? Mark 10:35-45 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ October 20, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon click the link above. The text is below.

Thousands of years ago, when human beings decided to design their own gods, they pretty much invented the first superheroes. Zeus and Poseidon and Ares and Athena: they were basically just bigger, stronger, faster, more attractive versions of what all humans wish they were.

People designed that kind of gods because the world is, and has always been, all about power: muscle power, political power, military power, financial power, the power of intellect or persuasion, or the power of intimidation. Whatever works. Whatever gets you ahead, keeps you on top. “You know how it is with the Gentiles,” Jesus said, “how their rulers lord it over them, and how their great people get to be the boss of everybody.”

And the disciples did know exactly how that was, because they were on the receiving end of all that lording-over every day. The occupying forces of Rome walked the streets of the Jews’ own land with their swords and their armor and with the authority of the whole Roman Empire to back them up, like the Storm Troopers in Star Wars. The disciples knew all about the ways of the Gentiles.

But they also knew what it was to crave that kind of power, because the thing about power is that it only seems like a bad thing if it’s not on your side. That’s one reason the Jews had been so eagerly anticipating the coming of the Messiah. They envisioned God’s Messiah charging in as a kind of divine superhero, who would beat up the bad guys (the Romans) and establish peace and prosperity for the good guys (us), and put everything back the way it was supposed to be, ruling like King David in Israel’s Golden Age. James and John, making their audacious request, were just hoping to be Jesus’ wing men, standing at his side for the big win. After all, they were the ones Jesus had taken up on the mountain. They were had seen Jesus in his full glory, chatting with the great prophets of old. They’d gotten a taste of glory, and they were hungry for more.

But then Jesus told them, “That’s not how it it’s going to be with you. If any of you wants to be great he has to become the one who serves. If you want to be Number One, you have to be the slave of everybody else. Look, even I didn’t come to be served. I came to be a servant. And not only to serve; I came to give up my own life.”

I read two articles this past week about two very different ways of living in the world. One was about Elon Musk. It was an article from back in June, when the shareholders of Tesla voted overwhelmingly in favor of restoring Musk’s 10-year pay plan, valued by the company in April at $44.9 billion. According to PBS, the company says Musk deserved all that money because he turned Tesla into the top-selling electric vehicle maker in the world, increasing its market value by billions.

By way of comparison the article said that the median pay package for your run-of-the-mill S&P 500 U.S. CEO last year was $16.3 million. Translated, that means Elon Musk’s earnings would be 275 times the salary of your average very rich corporate executive.

And just out of curiosity, I did a little research and simple math and figured out that Elon Musk’s annual income would be 129,000 times the average salary of a factory worker in the US. If you turn that around, they’re saying that Elon Musk, the man, is worth as much as 129,000 people, all of them working full time to feed their families and pay their bills. So, you get the idea.

The other article I read was about parents and children who live in places where life is precarious and there isn’t always enough food to go around. It was a really sad article, but also very interesting, because they didn’t just give statistics, they interviewed the people. They let the parents tell their story.

The article was asking the question: “What is it like to raise children when there’s not enough nutritious food to eat?” The families they talked to are from all over the world, but they all shared a determination to do everything they could to provide for their children. A lot of the parents said they often go without eating themselves when there isn’t enough food for their children. All of them had to make choices between feeding their kids more nutritious foods or getting cheaper foods they can afford just to stave off hunger.

One mother in Ecuador talked about making corn flour cakes – arepas – in different shapes like stars and dolls, for her son, when he is hungry and she doesn’t have meat or vegetables to feed him. She says he tells her, ‘Mom, you saved the day.’ “At that moment,” she says, “I feel like a superhero mom who works miracles.”

A father in India says, “Every day, from dawn to dusk, the one thought that floods my heart and mind is that the kids shouldn’t ever go to sleep hungry. No matter what happens to us, their nutrition and their education have been our priority. They have dictated all our choices. And even then, I’m painfully aware of how we’re falling short.” That family moved into a smaller house to save on rent and applied for a governmental free rations program. And even so, it takes a third of his salary to pay for food.

I think the most heartbreaking story was a mother in Nigeria. Sometimes they run out of food for the day, and her children cry because they are so hungry, so she fills a pan with water and pretends to cook food. She says the children calm down, watching her, and eventually fall asleep.

In the first story, the dazzling rise of Elon Musk is just the kind of success story the world loves. Like Jesus said, “You know how their great ones lord it over everybody else.” Elon Musk is the poster boy for every wannabe billionaire, and we’ve seen how he’s translated his financial power into political power as well.

But the second story, about the love and sacrifice of those parents, who are literally pouring out their lives for the sake of their children – that is a reflection of the heart of God. That is the way of the Kingdom. In the Kingdom, the one who is great is the one who serves. The one who is living in the image of God is the one who is willing to offer their very life out of the abundance of their love. Those parents are a model for us.

If you look through TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, you see people of outstanding intellect, people who have wielded great political power, people who have overcome great obstacles, people to admire and applaud, beautiful people, or just people with an ability to dominate. The world’s great people. You won’t find many servants on the list; humility doesn’t rank very high, though there may be a few. But there are holy superheroes serving in small, unnoticed ways all around the world, giving of themselves out of love: children and old people, nurses and teachers, good friends and kind neighbors and devoted parents. They don’t make it to the cover of TIME, generally speaking. Servanthood and sacrifice aren’t very sexy or glamorous things to aspire to in the worldly way of things, but that is the way of life Jesus modeled for us.

It is unimaginable within the framework of this world that the greatest act of power ever displayed was when the Lord of the Universe was born into a poor family in a nowhere village, when he was rejected by his own people, and died a shameful death. It is unthinkable that he did all that, not for the sake of the deserving or the noble or the innocent, but for the poor and undeserving, for the hopelessly flawed, for the guilty. For us.

You know how it is in the kingdom of this world, how the great lord it over everybody else, how truth belongs to the one who can talk the loudest, how the end justifies the means, how might makes right and the winner takes all. That’s how power works around here.

But it shall not be so with us.