Sermon — October 20, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
I came across an article this week entitled “The Road to Hell is Paved With… ‘Other Duties As Assigned.’”
The author, a recruiter and consultant, writes, “I spend a lot of time talking with employers and candidates about job descriptions. Almost universally, employers list ‘Other duties as assigned’ among the bullet points outlining a given role. The intention is well-meaning on the employer’s part… I mean, the job description cannot effectively capture every job or task you’d ever ask an employee to consider, right?”
But he goes on to describe all the ways in which “other duties as assigned” can become a trap. The phrase is ambiguous when the org chart isn’t quite clear—other duties, “as assigned” by whom? Inessential tasks can end up being prioritized over the core part of the job. The work someone ends up doing day-to-day can be quite different from the task they thought they were signing up for, or what they’re skilled at. “Other duties as assigned” can provide a rationale for all sorts of ill effects.
And yet it occurs to me that much of life consists of taking on “other duties as assigned.” What’s true at work for working people is even more true outside of work for all of us. I think of all the spouses whose relationships transform from a romantic story of love to a less glamorous caretaking role some time later. I think of all the parents whose children’s roads to adulthood aren’t quite the smooth highway they signed up for—surely the job description is to keep them “alive until 25,” right, and then you’re done? I think of church wardens who become, in the event of an emergency, the acting rector of a church; and of clergy who feel God calling them l to preach the good news of Jesus’ love for the world, only to find out that the work of ministry consists in large part of folding and unfolding chairs.
I think of the apostles James and John, who ask to sit at Jesus’ right hand in glory, and at his left; and find that his idea of what that means turns out to be quite different from theirs.
I want to give James and John some credit this week, because their part in this story is actually even worse than it seems. There’s a bit of context skipped over in the transition between last Sunday’s gospel and this one. This story begins, with Jesus and his disciples “on the road, going up to Jerusalem… And, once again,” Mark writes, “taking the Twelve aside, Jesus began to tell them about what was about to happen. ‘Look,’” Jesus says, “‘we’re going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they’re going to hand him over to the Romans… who will beat him, and kill him, and after three days, he’ll rise again.”
And it’s then, in the middle of this speech, that James and John come up to ask: “Is there still space in the C-suite here? Have you filled those openings for a left- and right-hand man?”
I’m sorry— Were you even listening to what he just said?
They clearly weren’t, and Mark gives it away with a single, well-placed word in the narrative. He writes that Jesus began to tell them about what was to happen… and while Mark the narrator lets Jesus finish for our sake, James and John jump in, interrupting Jesus before he’s had to finish saying the rest.
But they already know it all. This isn’t the first time he’s predicted his suffering and death. They’re going up to Jerusalem, where it’s all going to go down. But the disciples are stuck in an old frame of mind. They’re still thinking he’s going to establish a new kingdom on earth. They want to be enthroned at his right hand and his left “in glory.”
But if you’ve ever seen a painting of the crucifixion, or heard the story of the Passion, you know what it means to be seated at Jesus’ right hand and at his left. It means to be nailed up there, on a cross, one of the two bandits who’ve been crucified on either side.
So Jesus tells them: You can be my right-hand man, or left. You can be my second-in-command—“and other duties, as assigned.”
Well, he doesn’t quite say it that way. He checks: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” Absolutely we are, they say. Maybe they’re still imagining the royal cup at the feast and the luxurious bath in the palace. Jesus sizes them up. “You’re going to drink that cup, all right, and you’re going to be baptized like I am. But to sit at my right hand or my left? Well, that part isn’t in my hands to give.”
It’s the Romans, after all, who will choose which of the criminals before them deserve death. And it’s God who’ll decide who sits at Jesus’ right hand in the end.
And then, as he often does, Jesus follows his specific response to a specific situation with a more general point. Among the Gentiles, he says, the leaders “lord it over” them, and their great ones are like tyrants. But not among you. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,” Jesus says. James and John come looking for a promotion, trying to outmaneuver the other disciples with a kind of naïve office politics, as though they could secure the top jobs by simply calling dibs.
But Jesus responds: If you want to be a leader in the church, you need to serve. It’s not the scale of your ambition that matters, but the depth of your service. If I, Jesus, the Son of Man, came not to be served but to serve, to give my life for you—how much more should you be servants of the others in this world? And we extrapolate from this conversation to build up an idea of “servant leadership,” the kind of leadership in which authority comes from being a servant first.
There’s a nuance to what Jesus says here that’s missing in nearly every translation I see.
Jesus doesn’t use what’s called the “jussive” here, the third-person imperative form, in Greek. He doesn’t actually say, “those who wish to become great among you—let them serve!” or “they should serve!” It’s simply the future tense: “Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant.”
That isn’t a command: “Your leaders must serve!” It isn’t a strategy: “If someone wants to become a leader, she ought to put some service work on the resume.” It’s a simple, declarative claim: Whoever wants to be great, will serve.
Greatness, for a Christian, is found in those “other duties as assigned.”
This implies something for every one of us, whether we think of ourselves as leaders or not. It tells us that our greatness in God’s eyes is not measured by the moments in which we think that we are great. The measure of our greatness is not how close we rise to the top of the organizational chart, but how tenderly we serve whoever’s at the bottom. The moments in our lives when we are closest to Christ are not when we’re surrounded by adoring crowds—they’re the moments when we are barely hanging on.
Ten years after I move on from this church, nobody will know how many times I changed the cover on the changing pad in the bathroom, and brought it home to wash. No one will know that I once spent thirty minutes on the phone trying to help a senior citizen install Zoom—only to fail, because she didn’t have her email password written down. You’ll see me ritually washing people’s feet on many a Maundy Thursday to come, but will you ever ask—Who empties out the foot-wash water? Who washes out the used foot-washing bowl?
No one will know but me, and God, and that’s the way these things should go. And this is true for every one of you, as well. No one will ever stand and applaud you for the diapers you have changed. You might never be thanked for cleaning up the abandoned muffin tray after breakfast at work. No one will know how often you visited a parent or friend who was sick; sometimes they won’t even know you were there.
The things we do to care for one another day to day are some of the most draining and least-prestigious work. But they are the moments in which we are especially dear to God. Because greatness in God’s eyes is not found in sitting in glory at Jesus’ right hand or his left; our greatness comes, day after day, in unnamed, unnoticed, “other duties as assigned.”