James and John Ask a Favor
Proper 24/22nd after Pentecost, Year B; Mark 10:35-45
We had been following the text of Mark very closely for a few weeks, but the lectionary skips a couple of crucial verses just prior to this Gospel:
32 They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, 33saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; 34they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’
This is the third and final prediction of the Passion by Jesus, but it starts with a very firm re-iteration of the “road” theme. The lectionary compilers may have been confident that we won’t forget that all these stories take place on the road to Jerusalem; I am not so sure we don’t need the reminder. This third prediction is remarkably detailed compared to the previous ones, and is sending a signal that these events are imminent and affect the current story. Morna Hooker even suggests this “can be described as the beginning of the passion narrative.”1
In the past few weeks the road narrative has offered the difficult teachings about disability (or mutilation), divorce, and wealth. These seem to have some broader ethical relevance, although in each case there has been a specific connection with the reign of God and the community established among disciples (such as the place of the “little ones.”). Here however, the conversations about power turn more directly to the arrangements in the community on the road, and their dealings among themselves rather than with the wider world.
The clumsy request for power by James and John must be linked to the imminence of the arrival in Jerusalem (hence, again, the importance of the omitted verses); these two still imagine thrones of glory next to a national liberator who throws out the Romans. The irony of asking for seats at his right and left will become apparent when two thieves do “reign” at his right and left (15:27), elaborating the kind of triumph Jesus has just predicted for himself.
It is awkward that this ham-fisted power grab comes from two depicted as part of Jesus’ inner circle, and Matthew seems to soften the blow by having their mother make the request. Not only do they not understand Jesus as Messiah, they do not understand him as teacher, a fact underlined by their address of him as such.
Remember though that Peter has already disgraced himself (at least from our later and more complete perspective) when Jesus first predicted the passion—so these two are, odd as it may seem, joining Peter in the inner circle by demonstrating the frailty or inadequacy of their understanding of Jesus. These who would later be seen as apostolic heroes did not gain their credentials by insight or courage apart from what Jesus would ultimately teach them about power when they arrived in Jerusalem. The other disciples, by the way, seem angry not because they have a better understanding but because James and John broke ranks and tried to get an advantage.
While the imagery of cups and baptisms (vv. 38-9) will evoke sacramental practice for many readers (and may have done at a very early point for Mark’s first readers too), they are probably meant to be understood as metaphors drawn from life in general, and indeed had some previous history. “Cups” both appealing and appalling are found in the Old Testament (see Pss 23:5 and 75:8; and cf. Mark 14:36), standing for divine will or at least the experience of life before God, while “baptism” here (which doesn’t specifically mean the sacrament, but bathing) is whatever one is immersed in, rather than ceremonial initiation. Some assume this passage shows knowledge of the specific fates of James and John, but while James is reported as martyred early on, some sources tell of John living to a ripe old age. The point though is that all who follow Jesus are sharing in these experiences.
Jesus draws a lesson with clear application to leadership in community life, but whose reception has at best been mixed. It has proven easier for Christian leaders to dress power up in the language of servanthood than to embody it. Their and our failures are at least in good company here; we are assured, obliquely, that even those closest to Jesus have made the same mistakes. The point remains however that Jesus’ own practice, even the part of it that now looms in the coming episodes, is the model for leadership. This does not mean a refusal to act with authority, but a sense that the welfare of all—or more particularly of the most vulnerable— must be paramount.
Jesus finishes this section with a famous statement that links this model of servant leadership (an overused term, admittedly) with his saving action:
‘For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’
A ransom is of course a payment made to free a hostage, or otherwise to transact some sort of release from bondage. Jesus’ point here is certainly based on that economic and political imagery—and it has a more specific and dramatic focus, namely that he will give not just a precious gift but his own life in exchange for others. This combination of a ransom and a substitution—two different ideas—involves recurrent themes that we find in the New Testament writings to interpret the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection, or more generally the atonement. These do not however amount to a “sacrificial” image, nor are they related to the idea of expiation, as some commentators suggest. Sacrificial images are of course also used to think about atonement, as in the Epistle reading today from Hebrew, but this isn’t one.
Some commentators see allusions here to Isaiah 53—one of the famous passages about “the Lord’s servant”—in this explanation by Jesus, but the connections are loose. Isaiah does think of the servant’s suffering as representative (53:4-5), as a sacrifice (53:10), and as benefitting many (53:12) but this is a poetic combination of ideas. There were also some near-contemporary Jewish writings that combined related images to make sense of other experiences of persecution. In the apocryphal 4 Maccabees, the deaths of righteous Jews martyred under pagan rule are thought of via such a mix of metaphors: first they are called “a ransom for the sin of our nation” but then also a “propitiatory sacrifice” (4 Macc 17:21-2). These are however still two quite different ideas, combined to interpret these noble sufferers as adequately as possible.
Why does this matter? The breadth of ideas the NT uses to think about what Jesus achieved is considerable, and deserves respect and attention. Some common interpretations have failed to offer that respect by reducing all of these images to one idea, such as “penal substitution,” which is certainly not the topic here in Mark. By using the language of “ransom” (not sacrifice, or anything penal) in this passage, Jesus in Mark 10 depicts himself not as priest or victim, but precisely as the political and economic liberator whom James and John were looking for, but did not yet understand. He has come to free his people, taken into bondage by the forces of evil; what the disciples will eventually see is how this victory is won in his own body, so that what seems to the world to be failure and suffering will be transformed into the the triumph in which they will share.
The Gospel According to Saint Mark. London: A. & C. Black, 1991, 343.