Day 28 : Mark 10:13-31
The first will be last, and the last will be first
Mark keeps telling us that God doesn’t see things the way humans do. Jesus keeps on turning our expectations on their heads, and cutting across accepted way of doing things.
People wanted Jesus to bless their children. To the disciples this seemed an irrelevant distraction. Jesus had a very different take suggesting that their dependence, acceptance and need of parental support, made children a good model for our human relationship with God. This image is based on who God is rather than on what we can do.
The rich man was serious about God-stuff and claimed to have grown up keeping at least some of God’s commandments. He was a wealthy educated male in a society that valued all these things. Unlike the children, he prospered from this position of privilege and power. His question ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ (NRSVA) suggests he thought being right with God was dependent on the actions he could take. Jesus challenged him about his dependence on that wealth and told him what he could do to inherit eternal life. In response he turned away and declined Jesus’s offer.
Jesus used his response to teach his disciples using a picture of a camel and a needle, leading them to despair and ask ‘then who can be saved?’ (NRSVA): the place to which Jesus was leading, as he answered ‘for mortals this is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’ (NRSVA). The rich man asked what he had to do to be right with God: Jesus says that this was mission impossible: only God can make us right with God.
