“Radical Reversal”

Mark 10:32-45

August 21, 2005

If we were to take a time machine and go back in time to walk with Jesus and the disciples on the way to Jerusalem, and listen to this conversation between Jesus and James and John unfold, no doubt we would be amazed at the denseness of these two ambitious brothers. Jesus has just told the disciples, for the third time, what will happen to him in Jerusalem. There was no ambiguity in what Jesus said, no way to misinterpret his words or his meaning, no way to not understand what would soon take place.

But is it any wonder why the disciples missed the significance of Jesus’ words? It was an unthinkable prediction. They may have heard the words, but they were not listening. They were not able to grasp the significance of what Jesus was saying. It is very difficult for minds and hearts steeped in other ideas and other ways to suddenly consider new possibilities and new realities. And so as the group finds themselves headed to the place where Jesus will be crucified, James and John, still clinging to the old ideas and old ways, run up ahead of the other ten disciples and take the opportunity to have a private moment with Jesus with have another agenda in mind.

James and John may have had apprehensions and fear about going to Jerusalem, but they had no reservations about what they expected to happen. Jesus had stirred their ancient hopes in the Messiah and the kingdom he would bring. Finally, the long awaited Messiah had come to establish his earthly kingdom with glory and power and reverse the standards and values and structures of society. And James and John, as least, wanted a part of that glory and power.

In the coming kingdom, after the victory had been won and the king of glory had taken the throne in triumph, James and John ask for a prominent place in Jesus’ new administration. Maybe they felt they deserved the two prominent places next to Jesus’ throne because, more than once, Jesus had made them part of the inner circle. Maybe they felt that they were ahead of the other disciples, on the fast track to glory and kingdom leadership. Maybe they felt that they deserved these two seats of power because they were better off than some of the others. Their father, Zebedee, had enough money to have servants, so maybe they figured that their higher ranking in the socio-economic system entitled them to these two lofty positions.

But one wonders where James and John have been all this time with Jesus. Where were they when Jesus put a small child in their midst and said, “to such as these belong the kingdom of God?” Where were they when Jesus welcomed those who were powerless and empty handed and said, “that unless one received God’s reign in such a way they could not enter the kingdom?” Where were they when Jesus challenged the rich man to give up his status of wealth, power, esteem and privilege in order to follow him? Where were they when Jesus said, “if any want to become my disciples, let them deny themselves and take up their cross?” Somehow they had missed the message along the way. Somehow they had failed to hear the message of the kingdom of God.

Even when Jesus tells them that they do not know what they are asking for and again tells them the hardships he will go through using the imagery of the cup of suffering and the baptism of death, James and John fail to catch the meaning. They fail to understand the way in which the kingdom will come – not through armed insurrection, not through military overthrow, not through a revolution of the masses, but through suffering and death.

Their thirst for power and prestige and privilege is too strong for them to grasp the significance of what will happen and the message Jesus has been speaking all along, and they insist that they are able to go through what Jesus will go through. I wonder if they remembered this promise as they were running into the night to abandon Jesus at his arrest. Oh, they will go through what Jesus will go through. James will be beheaded by Herod Agrippa, and John, although not martyred, will suffer much for Christ.

But to sit at Jesus’ right or left hand is not for Jesus to give, that decision belongs to the Father and is given to those for whom it has been prepared. Even when the other disciples catch up with Jesus, James, and John, they are angry more out of jealousy than anything else, because they too share the thirst for power and want their share of it when the kingdom is established.

We probably should not be so hard on James and John or the rest of the disciples for their lack of vision and self-centered ambitions. Jesus wasn’t. They were a product of their own culture, a culture based on a socio-economic system of haves and have nots, rich and poor, master and slave, landowner and servant, where power and prestige and privilege held the upper hand. The disciples would have been all too familiar with the plight of the disadvantaged and oppressed. They would have been all too familiar with the various forms of injustice that rolled down from the upper class to the lowest class, from the highest levels of government to the lowest levels of society.

Of course, the disciples wanted a reversal of the way things were. They lived in a time when emperors ruled by power and might, doing whatever they wanted, to whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted. They lived in a time when to lowest in society were harassed daily for taxes to the Empire, when the scales of justice favored the social elite and the politically powerful, when whole groups of people were enslaved to the class above them either financially or physically and sometimes both.

For them, Jesus was to change all of that and turn the culture upside down, reversing the way things were so that those on the bottom would now be on the top. Oh, Jesus would bring a reversal all right, but what the disciples failed to grasp was just how radical that reversal would be.

As the disciples stand around Jesus, Jesus once again gives them the same teaching he has always given them. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” The picture Jesus has laid out for his disciples must have shook them to the core, for what Jesus was saying was so radical that even we miss it if we are not careful.

Greatness in the kingdom is not about gaining power, prestige, or privilege after not having it. Greatness in the kingdom is not about turning the political and social and even religious pyramid on its head and putting new people on top. If Jesus was merely doing this, then the disciples would be no better than the Gentiles, whose leaders lord it over them, and all too often become tyrants. But, this is not how it is to be for the disciples. Greatness in the kingdom is about service and sacrifice, about following the way of Jesus Christ who came to serve and not be served and give his life for the many.

The disciples had in their minds a new order of things, but they were still stuck in the old ways of how things should be. Living in a world where greatness and the highest honors were often given to those who could seize power, rank, and status and hold onto them, the disciples had hoped that once the Messiah’s kingdom was established those who once served would become the ones who were served. But, as Jesus explains, this is not the way of the kingdom, for in the economy of the kingdom of God, the greatest at the table is not the one who was once a servant and then no longer a servant; the greatest at the table of God is the one who willingly and sacrificial serves others.

Even today, this radical reversal falls on deaf ears. Too many people are presented a gospel with a no-risk offer, and a promise for promotion and prosperity and even status in the kingdom without self-sacrifice and service. Too many people are left completely unchallenged by an over-simplified, and self-serving offering of the gospel where one only has to “get right with God” before they die in order to be a disciple.

But Jesus presents us with a much more radical understanding of discipleship and challenges us to see discipleship not as a means to an self-serving end, but as a purposeful and sacrificial act by which we demonstrate our gratitude for what God has done for us through Jesus Christ by serving others. Jesus wants his disciples to quit thinking in terms of what the kingdom means for them, and to start thinking about want the kingdom means for those who are in fact the least, the lost, and the left out.

Jesus went to Jerusalem not so that he would become a great king, but to do the will of the Father. Jesus went to the cross not so that he would become great in the kingdom of God, but because he was willing to sacrifice himself so that the world would be freed from the clutches of sin and death. And he wants his disciples to do the same. He wants his disciples to be a people who serve the Lord even at the risk of their own lives. He wants his disciples to be a people who know that they have been ransomed by God and live by it.

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is a risky proposition. To be a disciple puts us at odds with the standards and values and structures of the world. To be a disciple sets us apart from the culture in which we live. After all, that is the meaning of holiness. To be a disciple Jesus Christ challenges us to not get caught up in the world’s understanding of greatness, but to embody in our lives the radical reversal of the kingdom, so that through our lives of service and sacrifice, others may see the one who came not to be served but to serve, the one who came and gave his life as a ransom for all. Amen.