Day 29 : Mark 10:32-45
Not to be served but to serve
Jesus and his disciples were travelling towards Jerusalem, and Jesus made it plain to them that very bad things were going to happen to him when he got there. Somehow, James and John heard ‘glory’ instead of ‘suffering’ and wanted some of it for themselves, the best places at the party. When the others heard, they began to be angry. We might suspect not because James and John hadn’t listened to Jesus but because they had asked first. Several times Mark shows the disciples misunderstanding Jesus: these disciples didn’t live in stained glass windows. As we have seen in earlier stories they are very like us, often they got things wrong.
Jesus talked a lot about God’s kingdom, and his desire to bring about the rule of God. The disciples had quite a different idea to Jesus about this kingdom and their part within it. They thought God’s kingdom worked like the Kingdoms all around, perhaps particularly the Roman Empire, where power and authority meant that subjects did things for their rulers and the disciples as yet hadn’t appreciated that Jesus was saying God’s kingdom is very different. Jesus offered a shocking, upside down alternative: ‘whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all’ (NRSVA). Slaves counted for nothing, they literally belonged to others! Jesus radical picture of God’s kingdom was about offering service to others, not expecting it. It was about giving, rather than receiving.
Throughout Jesus’s life we can see he came as one ready to serve others and not expecting others to service himself. What the disciples missed was if he did it so should they. His serving others would extend to losing his life as he had already told them. Many (verse 45) is contrasted here with the self-sacrifice of one showing the inclusive nature of God’s kingdom.
