James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
came to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever
we ask of you." He replied, "What do you wish me to do for
you?" They answered him, "Grant that in your glory we may sit
one at your right and the other at your left." Jesus said to them,
"You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I
drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" They
said to him, "We can." Jesus said to them, "The cup that I
drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will
be baptized; but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give but is
for those for whom it has been prepared." When the ten heard this,
they became indignant at James and John. Jesus summoned them and said to
them, "You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord
it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But
it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will
be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of
all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give
his life as a ransom for many."
Mark
10
This overarching theme of this blog is
that God is unconditionally loving; in other words, He will love us regardless
of what we do or don’t do. This sounds
like the ordinary Christian position, but it is more uncompromising: God requires nothing – no behavior, no
contrition, and no belief – in order to love us. The result is universal
salvation and it is almost universally rejected. God knows we don’t like universal salvation
and so innumerable stories and parables criticize
us - those who demand that God judge and condemn. Remember the elder brother in the Prodigal
Son story? Remember Jonah and the Ninevites? Remember the lost sheep and the
lost coin? Remember the vineyard workers
who started work earliest? Remember the multiplication of the loaves? All these stories speak of a God whose love
is so abundant that it can feed everyone with more leftover, and the people who
don’t like that. Yet we always read these stories as requiring something from
us: usually altruism.
In this case we read the story to mean
that God requires humility. And certainly
this Sunday’s Gospel and last Sunday’s Gospel can be read as instructions to
clergy to live an ascetic, simple life and not to organize themselves into hierarchies. They can also be read as instructions to the laity
to give generously to charity (although the story seems to call for something
more extreme) and to be humble. And maybe Jesus became incarnate to encourage
these traits in us – but it makes Jesus seem a little prosaic. More
importantly, that view requires that God is not unconditionally loving; He
imposes conditions. It is an inviting interpretation because it allows us to
tsk tsk at unpleasant arrogant people, or to critique the Church. And that’s easy and fun.
What is the true meaning?
It is hidden in plain sight. Two millennia after the life of Jesus we have
become numb to the extraordinary message of the Gospel. God became incarnate! Whether this is true in every respect or true
just in the most important ways, this is an extraordinary thing. And He didn’t become incarnate to establish dominion
over humanity. Scholars say the Jewish
innovation was monotheism. I believe the
Jewish innovation was divine regard and love for humanity. Before Abraham’s encounter
with God in which God tells Abraham he must not sacrifice his son, the divine
was either wholly disinterested in human affairs, or imposed a transactional relationship:
you do this for me, and I’ll send rain, or fertility, or let the sun come up
again. Today, we hear something extraordinarily different:
For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to
serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Think about that. Or think about how good it is to be humble.
