Mark 10:35-45

Service Defines the Christian Community

The disciples generally seemed to have been in a state of psychological denial, unable to hear and to take on board what Jesus had told them about his impending death. They were preoccupied with other concerns, as the following incident clearly showed, and their original unity was in danger of collapse.

Mark 10:35-45 – Request of James and John

The two brothers seemed true to type. Previously John had indicated his concern about what he had perceived as threats to his own specialness from the person casting out devils in Jesus’ name (9:38). That same concern for specialness surfaced once more, evidenced now in their desire for preeminence within the group of disciples.

Their focus on eventual glory and triumph illustrated clearly their deafness to Jesus’ emphasis on his coming passion. Places at the right and left referred to a sharing in power.

The cup that Jesus would drink referred to his suffering. Prophets had used “ drinking the cup” as a metaphor for suffering:

From the context it was obvious that Jesus’ talk of baptism also referred to the dynamic of suffering into which he would soon be swept. 

The brothers had either missed the reference, or were living in an unreal world, ignorant of their own weakness. Rather than face into suffering, they would abandon Jesus in his moment of powerlessness (14:50).

Jesus warned them that inevitably they would indeed be brought face to face with suffering - and in fact they would initially fail the test. In this, their situation would be no different from that of the rest of the disciples.

Jesus made the additional point that to share in the role and power of Jesus was not up to Jesus himself. The disciples’ ultimate destiny would be determined by God and would require the cooperation of the disciples themselves to take up their cross and follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

The Fuller Import of Baptism

This third reference to baptism in Mark’s story(1:4;1:7-9) served to confirm and tie together a number of themes hinted at in previous incidents.

In the opening scene of the narrative, the Baptist had spoken about Jesus, the stronger one, who would soon be baptised, and who would in turn baptise his disciples with the Holy Spirit (1:7-8).

What was the connection between baptism, the Holy Spirit, conflict and suffering, and the greater strength of Jesus?

According to the book of Genesis, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters of the Chaos, to draw out from them, at the moment of creation, life and order (1:2). It would be into these chaotic waters that Jesus saw himself being metaphorically baptised/plunged during his life, and particularly at his death (and into which John and James would also be submerged) – only to arise from that chaos to resurrection and new life.

Being plunged into the overwhelming turbulence of the waters of chaos symbolised Jesus’ encounter with the evil of the world - his being tested by Satan. The strength of that evil would take concrete shape in the power blocks of both the Roman military and the debased Jewish religious administration. 

The testing by Satan in the wilderness of his life and death would be a participation in the cosmic battle of the beasts and the angels, imaged so powerfully in the Book of Daniel (Cf. Chapters 7-10). The only occasion in the narrative where Mark explicitly returned to the notion of Jesus as the stronger one was when Jesus responded to some scribes who had accused him of being himself possessed by evil. In parabolic language, Jesus had implied that to confuse his strength with the undoubted strength of Satan (embodied in that instance in the scribal establishment) was precisely to sin against the Holy Spirit (3:22-30).

An on-going task of disciples, baptised into the baptism of Jesus, would be to distinguish Jesus’ greater strength (his inner truth and love originating from the Spirit who had descended on him after his baptism) from the demonic strength only too obvious in the power structures of the world. In choosing the way of Jesus, the disciples would experience in their own lives the turbulent power of evil. They, too, would drink the cup of suffering, of apparent impotence and failure – but through their fidelity they would share in the ultimate victory of Jesus.

In a wonderful irony, Mark would reveal that the two who would find themselves at the right and left of Jesus at his real moment of revelation and of triumph as Son of God - his crucifixion - would not be James and John, who would be nowhere to be seen, but two bandits crucified for challenging the imperial “order” imposed by Rome (15:27).

The reaction of the other disciples was predictable. They were all no doubt interested in first places in the Kingdom. The cohesive band of disciples that first formed around Jesus continued to be rent by rivalry and power plays. Disillusioned with the leadership, they turned to arguing among themselves.

Almost at a loss to know what more to do to hold the group together and focused, Jesus repeated the message he had shared with them before, even at the risk of their disintegrating altogether:

The problem addressed was not precisely authority as such. Once any group expands beyond a certain size, roles and responsibilities need to be determined, one of which is to have particular care for the unity of the group and for the harmonious integration and cooperation of all. Someone needs to be in charge. Jesus himself was in charge of the group of disciples.

What Jesus was concerned about was how that responsibility would be exercised. He condemned “dominating” and “tyrannising”. In Jesus’ community, to rule properly would be to care for others, to serve others, to be the slave of all.

Mark no doubt intended Jesus’ message, addressed firstly to the disciples, to be seen as a message also for his own community. The difficulties encountered by the original disciples would be constantly repeated across the centuries wherever disciples banded together to pursue the mission of the Church. 

Within the community envisaged by Jesus, to obey responsibly would not mean to submit one’s conscience to the will of another. It would be to recognise the need for individuals within a structure to be helped to cooperate with each other in pursuit of the common good and to accept the responsibility of those with the role of oversight to give directions in matters relevant to that common good. 

Nor would oversight be a matter of personal honour; responsibility would not be a source of greatness. Over the centuries the Christian community has struggled to keep clear the vision of Jesus. Those with oversight have at times tried to inflate their own importance. Those “overseen” have often (unconsciously?) wanted those with authority to lord it over them, to tell them what to do, to take from them the burden of forming and following their own consciences.

The life of any group tends to move from initial euphoria through competitiveness, struggle, argument, doubt and disillusionment to eventual disintegration - unless deliberate steps are taken to avert the process. For disciples of Jesus, the issue is not greatness or power but mutual service, a decision costing nothing less than death to instinctive and pervasive self-interest.

The narrative continued. The next comment could be taken as added personally by Jesus, or it could have been an editorial comment made by Mark.

Jesus (or Mark) cited Jesus’ own example of availability to the disciples and to the mission generally. As disciples they were to follow his lead. In selfless service would lie greatness and glory redefined. 

The male disciples failed miserably to grasp his point. It was the women in their virtual invisibility who best embodied the message of Jesus (in line with the example of the first woman mentioned in the narrative [1:31], the mother of Simon, who, cured of her fever, had immediately set about serving Jesus and his companions).

Life Given as Ransom

Jesus had spoken of his death as the inevitable consequence of his continuing mission - the “final solution” in the eyes of the power elites to a troublesome movement disturbing the status quo. Now for the first time he gave a further meaning to that death. He made two points. 

Freely. He said that his death was something to which he himself consented: he faced into death knowingly and deliberately: he came “to give his life” freely. 

Jesus was not purely a helpless victim of imperial power. If he were to have kept quiet, to have no longer lived according to his conviction of the unassailable dignity of every human person, he would have been ignored and able to continue his life untroubled. But Jesus chose not to be silent. He was clearly conscious of the mission entrusted to him by his Father and totally dedicated to it. He would not keep silent, even if his refusal meant his eventual arrest and death.

At the same time he strongly maintained his own innocence. His innocent death would serve to highlight the violence of the community and its leaders.

Ransom. Equally significant was that Jesus saw his death as contributing to the “ransom of all”. It simply meant more than the singular – “people in general” – and could be understood as “all”.

“Ransom” also was not to be taken strictly as a payment made to someone in exchange for the release of others. Jesus was not paying anything to anyone. God, his Father, was certainly not demanding the life and suffering of Jesus as the price for the liberation of the sinners of the world. Rather the term is to be understood loosely. Jesus was simply inferring that his death would be instrumental in the liberation of the world. He was not giving a theological explanation of redemption. 

Jesus was prepared to metaphorically “pay the price” of his choice for integrity, rather than to betray his own inner truth or in the process to betray his fellow human beings whom he loved and called to integrity. He remained faithful for the sake of the world: Jesus died for the world. 

He knew that his Father was God of love and of truth. He believed that his Father must ultimately make sense of his own deliberate choice for love and truth, even though that choice would cost him his life. His Father could not but further the cause – the liberation of people from the destructiveness of sin - for which Jesus died.

Next >> Mark 10:46-52