What Do You Want Me to Do for You?

by | Oct 28, 2024 | Blog

Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?”

– Mark 10:51

I don’t want to steal any thunder from Rev. Wendy, who is preaching this Sunday, but I cannot get this question out of my head. I was absolutely going to write about something else here but this question is rather a drumbeat, a blinking lighthouse, a text message from a candidate that won’t stop asking me for money these days. Insistent. Relentless. When you come to church this Sunday (not IF, people …when, am I right?) you will hear Jesus ask this question of the son of Timaeus. The scriptures on Sundays lately are absolutely chock-a-block with one great question after another, and if you read my piece last week, you know I am a fan of good questions, and of the better question that gets underneath the surface and makes us uncover something perhaps more valuable, deep in the dirt. 

When I hear this question – “What do you want me to do for you?” – the first thing that happens is that I notice my…habit. Walk with me here, won’t you? I am standing in front of Jesus, whom I understand to be someone who knows and shows what Real Love is, in every interaction he has with the one in front of him. I know that he will not make fun of me, reject me, judge me or look at his phone while I stand there and think about how to answer him. He may even quietly encourage me to not think at all, just answer…which is so thoughtful and observant, because I am already overthinking my answer. He may know, as I do, that it is my habit to just ask for what I think I can get instead of trust that I can ask for what I really want. What I really want! He is here, saying, “What do you want me to do for you?” and if I understand all this correctly, he is prepared to follow through on whatever it is I ask of him. And yet. What is in the way of me asking for what I really want him to do for me? A short list of possibilities includes:

  • The habit of expecting that I will be so hopeful and the follow through will be…meh.
  • The worry that he will actually follow through and I won’t see it, or I won’t even have the capacity to receive it, because I am committed to the story that sounds a bit like “that won’t ever happen so don’t get excited”.
  • The irritation that I don’t want him to DO anything FOR me!! I can do it myself, thank you! Oh wait, but I haven’t…I didn’t. Should I try harder? Is this disempowering? Jesus, I thought you were a feminist, what even is this question? (Commence overthink, say nothing…it’s ok, he’ll wait.)
  • The questioning that I won’t actually deserve the thing he will do. I mean, I hardly let the kid take my groceries to the car for me, will I let what he wants to do for me unfold?
  • The befuddlement that he might come through with something even better because he loves bigger, and thinks bigger, about my life than I do?

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted,” says Job to God in chapter 42 of that book (Seriously! Come on Sunday! The stories are SO GOOD). This is a man who is at his absolute lowest moment, who just got dressed down by God and is super woke to this now: “you, God, can do all things.” This is it: God does what God is. Jesus is what God is, does what God does. Jesus does what Jesus is. If he tells me to ask, and the implication is that he will follow through…why not go for broke? Why not risk that he will do the very thing for me that I have not been able to do for myself, by myself?

 And that’s it right there, isn’t it? He will not do for me what I can do for myself. I don’t need that…if I can do it, I would have, and if I just haven’t yet, he won’t take my own agency from me because he is a feminist after all (phew). He will do the thing that I have not been able to do for myself if I tell him what it is, specifically, that I want him to do. And then I get out of the way and trust that he will do it. Bartimaeus wanted to see. Perhaps that’s a good thing for which to ask when I feel like I am driving through the fog with bad headlights. Perhaps there is something else, something even deeper, that I really want and it is bigger than what I think I can get (“think I can get” is a.k.a. what the smaller version of me, in scarcity and shadow, tells me I deserve).

So, Grace Church People, what do you want Jesus to do for you? When was the last time you asked, and I mean really asked? What is in the way of your asking? “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” (Mark 10: 49)

See you on Sunday, can’t wait.

Sarah Christopher

Associate Pastor