We’re already in our third week in this Chapter 10 of Mark, a chapter where we have noticed that everybody “asks the wrong question”. And from what it looks like, one week after another, we add a layer of wrongness on top of the other. No only the requests are getting more extravagant, but they also come from people who are closer to Jesus and therefore should know better than that.
If you remember, the first week, we had Pharisees asking if it was okay to divorce their wives who had become displeasing to them. Kind of tough, but it didn’t really come as a surprise either. Pharisees are often presented in the Gospels as legalistically minded, most of them are focused on the law, rather than they do wonder about what is the loving thing to do.
Then last week, we had this man who wanted to know how he could inherit eternal life. Unlike the Pharisees who weren’t very impressed with Jesus, this man seemed eager to follow, yet not at the cost at leaving everything behind. He still thought about eternal life as something to add to his many possessions rather than an experience to be lived out in answering the call of the Gospel.
But now this week, it’s Jesus’ very own disciples who don’t get it, and they really, badly, don’t get it. And this comes as a surprise because they’ve been following Jesus all along and indeed they should know better. And their demand is actually doubly wrong:
– First they ask for glory when we know that Jesus taught the way of humility
– And then they ask for glory when Jesus has actually just mentioned his own death. We are at the gates of Jerusalem, Jesus announces his passion for the third time. The lectionary skips this passage, but it’s right there in the preceding verses (v32-34).
Speaks about insensitivity! If we can shake our heads at the request of the Pharisees or at the rich man’s question, this demand from James and John is probably much more shocking – and the story says that actually the ten (others disciples) were quite angered with James and John, cuing the reader in the right way to react. And we are not the only one to be shocked! If you have in mind Matthew’s Gospel, it’s James and John’s mother doing the asking. Well, most scholars assume that it’s the way Matthew put the story because it was too shocking for him to see the disciples being so wrong about something (Remember, at the time Matthew wrote, James and John were probably church leaders!)
Now we can be offended at James and John – but look at what Jesus does: He takes this opportunity to teach all of the disciples. I wonder if Jesus is offended – maybe he’s well aware of James and John’s naivete and maybe he knows the ten are not far from this thought process as well. They think: Yes, we follow Jesus but in the end…what’s in it for us? Remember from last week when Peter reminded Jesus that they had left everything for him (unlike the rich man) – surely, they would get rewarded too?
And so maybe we are offended, like the ten, but maybe we too have something to learn because I am pretty sure most of us have wondered at some point what it is that we would gain by following Jesus. We have wondered about that, first of all, because it seems like a reasonable question to ask before you do anything – whatever it is, it’s better to do something knowing why you do it! – and we also wonder about that because at times we don’t see the benefits of following Jesus, we’re discouraged or just impatient.
To this, as he did to James and John, as he did to the ten, Jesus responds again today: Don’t look for yourself, don’t look for your own advantages, as I came not to be served but to serve. Jesus says: “If you want to become great, be a servant, if you want to be first, be a slave to all”. I mentioned last week that Jesus had difficult words to those who ask wrong questions and indeed this could use a little bit of unpacking, right?
Well, there are three things I would like to draw your attention on and leave it to your own reflection for this Sunday:
– First of all, notice that Jesus is addressing all the disciples, the whole community. Those words of “servants” and even “slaves” can ring very wrong in our modern ears (and probably at the time too!) but Jesus is not asking his disciples to be servants or even slaves of their Gentiles masters. On the other way around, he says that the disciples shouldn’t do what the Gentiles do! Jesus says to the disciples that they should be servant and slave in their community, and more important towards one another, for one another. It’s not about serving someone who lords it over you, it’s about serving someone who is also your servant! Don’t let anyone abuse you by telling you that because you’re a Christian you should do whathever they need you to do!…If they want you to serve them, they have to serve you as well. That’s what being a Christian is about.
This model of servanthood actually reminds me of how a functioning couple works: It’s not one partner serving the other, it’s partners mutually serving each other. Jesus models a servanthood that brings reciprocity to the relationships. In this sense slavery could have a must different understanding. When Jesus tells the ten they need to be “salve to all”, it does not mean the disciples should let themselves be abused by their (rich and powerful) Masters, it means that they belong to one another in a life given for one another. And this I how our Christian communities should work as well! Everybody serving everybody: Not the priest being served by everybody and not the priest doing all the ministry, not the vestry serving everyone, but not the vestry being a position of privilege either, and not just a few volunteers for all the community but everyone serving everyone according to their own skills and abilities (You will find that that frequently in Paul’s letters!).
– Now we know what servanthood is about, we can wonder why Jesus mentions servanthood as a response to our own aspirations to glory (in the case of James and John) and to our aspirations to reward (like Peter)?
It’s funny because I read a lot of commentaries about this passage and nobody asks this question. I guess we just assume that Jesus wants quite literally to bring everybody back to earth and give them a lesson in humility. Well, there could be some of that, but beyond that, if we put this passage back in the context of Chapter 10, I think Jesus, again, is redirecting everybody towards relationships, like he did with the Pharisees towards their wives, like he did with the rich man towards the poor. What is Jesus’s glory in the end? Jesus’s glory is his friends and the love he has for his friends (Remember the Farewell Discourse in John?). That’s where true joy and true life is to be found, in loving one another. That’s the reward for all of us.
– Last thing I wanted to add is that maybe the wrongness of James and John’s request is not so much that it is arrogant or insensitive or inappropriate. Maybe the wrongness is just plainly that it does not make any sense. If we’re genuinely looking for God and understand who God is, how could we wish for anything else? There is nothing to be found beyond God. Our relationship with God is in itself its own reward. Maybe what James and John asked for was in a very clumsy way a request to be close to Jesus for all eternity – that would make sense. Yet Jesus reminds them that for now they have to be “drinking his cup and sharing his baptism” and it does not sound like a good news first, but it could in fact be good news because it means that we don’t have to wait for Eternal glory to know him, we can know him right there, where we are, even if it’s through our suffering. And so Jesus shows us that Glory is not an escape from this world but rather a life lived deeply in love with another and with God.