It’s not an easy thing to be a disciple – to be a follower of Jesus. You’ve got to do a lot of things that seem backwards. You’ve got to forget things that you’ve taken to be true all of your life. Things like – “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Things like – “Always look out for number one.” Somehow being a disciple changes all that and it’s not easy.How do we know it’s not easy? Well, just look at the first disciples. When you read through the gospel of Mark, a clear question emerges which has vexed the best biblical scholars over the years: Where on earth did Jesus find such a hopeless bunch of disciples?
I’m not trying to be unkind to the first apostles here. They obviously ‘got it’ eventually, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. But they have absolutely no clue what is going on throughout the entire book of Mark. And that’s true not only of the lesser-known disciples like Thaddeus, Bartholomew and Fred. [You didn’t know there was a disciple named Fred? See how little known he was?] It’s also true, and maybe particularly true, of the big 3 that they didn’t know what was going on. And who were the big 3? Peter, James and John.
Let’s just run down the list here, shall we. Chapter 6 – Jesus walking on the water. It’s just after the feeding of the five thousand and the disciples have gone on ahead in the boat while Jesus stayed on the mountain to pray. A rough storm comes up, Jesus walks out to the boat on the water, the disciples think he is a ghost, Jesus gets in the boat and the storm ceases.
Now after all that drama on the high seas, what do you think impresses the disciples most? Mark 6:51-52 says, “They were astounded because they did not understand about the loaves.” Walking on the water, calming the storm – they could handle that, but what they really want to know is, “What was that bread trick all about?” They still don’t get it two chapters later when Jesus wants to feed the four thousand. Having seen it all before they can’t understand how Jesus is going to feed the crowd with seven loaves and a few fish.
Chapter 9 – Jesus tells the disciples about his coming crucifixion and the first response of his group is to argue with one another about who is the greatest. Jesus is very calm about this conflict and he sits them down and he tells them two things: First from Mark 9:35 – “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Sound familiar? The second thing he tells them in verses 36 and 37 is that they had to welcome children if they were to welcome God and follow him.
Well, it’s only shortly thereafter that the disciples send the children away from Jesus and are rebuked for it and only shortly after that that the disciples become very concerned because Jesus says it will be hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. What does this tell us? The disciples had very short memories and they kept having the same conflicts over and over.
Which brings us to the passage for today. It’s getting late in the story now and Jesus has finally turned toward Jerusalem – the place where the final scene in this drama will play out. As he walks on he’s being followed by this group of disciples who are no more in the picture now than they have ever been. The disciples, the text says, are amazed – probably still trying to figure out how to get a camel through the eye of a needle. And the other followers are afraid, but then again people are afraid all through the gospel of Mark – the disciples in the boat, the woman healed of the flow of blood, the woman at the tomb when they find it empty. At any rate, it was not exactly an informed and courageous group that was setting off on this final journey.
So Jesus decides to stop and talk with the twelve disciples and, for the third time, he told them what was going to happen. This time he makes it more explicit than any other time. He says, (and here I’m reading from Mark 10:33-34), “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; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again." This is the first time he’s told them about the abuse he’s going to suffer before being killed. Before he’s simply said that he would be killed.
This time, when they hear it, the disciples don’t react with anger or disbelief as they have in the past. In fact, they don’t seem to respond at all. Maybe they’re getting it! Maybe they finally understand what this journey to Jerusalem is all about! You might think that, but you’d be wrong.
James and John now come to the front. Poor James and John – convinced to the last that Jesus was going to lead them to power and ambitious to be right beside Jesus at the head of the nation. They ignore Jesus’ dire warnings and all the stuff about the first shall be last. They come to Jesus and say, in verse 35, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” That’s not presumptuous, is it? It’s kind of like the prodigal son asking his father for half the inheritance without waiting for him to die, isn’t it?
Maybe the brothers thought they had earned this special treatment. After all, Jesus had asked them to go up on the mountaintop for the transfiguration when he appeared with Moses and Elijah and his clothes were transformed into a blinding white and God’s voice spoke from the sky. The only other disciple who got to be there for that was Peter. They also got to go along with Jesus into the synagogue leader’s home when Jesus raised a little girl from the dead. They felt they had a special relationship with Jesus.
“What do you want?” Jesus asks.
“When you come to power, let us be your right-hand men. Well, actually, let us be your right-hand and left-hand men – one on each side.”
Jesus shakes his head and says to the brothers, “You don’t know what you’re asking.” And they really don’t. These are the disciples we’re talking about, remember. So Jesus goes on to ask them if they can drink his cup. Now what could that mean? What is the cup that Jesus is going to drink? It’s his suffering and death.
In Mark 14:36 Jesus is praying in the garden of Gethsemane before his arrest. He has taken three disciples along with him. Can you guess who? And even though he asks them to stay awake, Peter, James and John fall asleep while he is praying this prayer. He prays, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” That’s the cup he’s offering to James and John. And the baptism? It is the baptism into his death. As Paul says in Romans 6:3, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”
That’s what Jesus knows is ahead – not the kind of glory that he disciples expect – but something much harder than they can imagine. And at the end, when Jesus’ glory is finally revealed on the cross, who does get to be on his right and his left? None of the disciples. Jesus is crucified between two thieves and they are the ones who are present as his glory is revealed.
James and John know none of this, though. So when Jesus asks them if they can drink this cup and receive this baptism they say, “We can. We are able.” Jesus accepted their commitment but goes on to tell them that what they ask for is not his to grant.
So the brothers go back to the other disciples. The reunion did not go well. You remember that this is the same group that was just arguing about who was the greatest. For the brothers to now go back to the other disciples, having sacrificed their relationship with them in order to secure a pledge from Jesus of special treatment – well, you can guess how that went over. I guess if the disciples had really been listening to Jesus and had accepted their status as servants of all – servants even of these upstart brothers – they wouldn’t have gotten upset. But they did, and so Jesus has to come settle the dispute.
“Look,” he says, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” The word ‘servant’ in Greek suggests a household steward, someone who might wait on you at the table. We get our word ‘deacon’ from this word. But Jesus doesn’t want them to get the impression that they should stop there. It’s not enough to be a servant with some status. They’ve got to go lower. “Whoever wants to be first among you must be slave of all.” A slave has no status. No legal rights.
Jesus goes on to point to himself as a model. “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve,” to use his status in an unconventional way, “and to give his life as a ransom for many,” to give up his status entirely in order to win the whole world and to save our lives.
Those eager, ambitious, foolish disciples – ready to jump to the glory seat without counting the cost or reckoning the purpose of the journey. So slow to learn, so slow to understand – and yet they followed, in wonder, fear and hopefulness.
A lot like us really. We are a people who often find ourselves following after Christ without any concept of what we’re doing. Oh, we made a commitment. We chose our course by saying, “Yes, Jesus is Lord,” but did we really have any idea what the journey would entail? Have we really given any thought to what might be required of us if we took this journey seriously? Do we yet know or understand how our own personal dreams of fulfillment are tied up in this Christian enterprise or what it will mean for us to find ourselves if the most prominent symbol for finding ourselves is a cross?
Jason Byassee, who teaches leadership courses at Duke Divinity School, wrote an article this week about David McClure as a model of leadership. McClure played on the Duke basketball team until last year and that is a very prestigious group to be a part of. Duke wins basketball games and stars from that program go on to be stars in the NBA. But David McClure was not a star. In fact, Byasee says, most folks probably won’t even remember his name.
What McClure did, though, was invaluable to his team. He was all over the court. He was the guy they put on the opponent’s best player to guard. He was the guy you could count on to do everything he could to get a rebound or a loose ball. He was the guy who set up his teammates so that they could make the shots that would end up on the highlight reels. One of his teammates said, “Somebody who doesn’t watch us closely won’t understand how important he is…He’s a glue guy. He does a little bit of everything.”[i]
Byassee says that glue is an interesting word because it’s also the word that St. Augustine used to describe the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is “the glue, or the love, between the Father and the Son. Likewise the Spirit is the One who glues us creatures to the Son and so to the Father.” Is it too much to say, then, that if we are to imitate the work of Jesus and the work of the Spirit in this world, that it will be something like the work of glue in binding people together rather than breaking them apart? Maybe, Byassee suggests, we need more “invisible, sticky leaders” who will lead by being servants…being glue.[ii]
What was the great failure of the disciples in this passage we read for today? I believe that is was their failure to count the cost of discipleship and the cost of discipleship is love – a love that gives itself to the world in service…a love that does not neglect the importance of our relationships with others…a love that reorders the values of this world for those who see it through the eyes of love.
In short, the cost of discipleship is a love like Christ’s, which neither forsakes the world for other realms nor is content to leave the world as it is. And if we are fools like James and John who foolishly answer Jesus’ question with the ignorant reply, “We are able,” the journey to the kingdom does not take us directly to a glory seat but instead leaves us at each other’s feet as servants of life in a land of death.
In the shadow of the cross we sense the light of resurrection. In the mystery of Jesus’ self-giving we find the brilliance of God’s love. You can be glue. Thanks be to God.
Mark 10:32-45
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, saying, "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; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again."
They came to him – James and John, the sons of Zebedee – and said to him, “Teacher, we would like for you to do for us whatever we request.”
He said to them, “What would you like for me to do for you?”
They said to him, “Appoint us to sit, one on your right and one on your left, in your glory.”
Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you’re asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink? Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
They said to him, “We can.”
Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink and the baptism with which I am baptized will be your baptism, but to sit on my right or my left is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”
When the other ten heard this they were angry with James and John. Jesus called them over and said to them, “You know that the ones who seem to rule over the Gentiles lord over them and the great exercise authority over them. It should not be so among you, but rather whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be slave to all. For the Son of Humanity did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
[i] Greg Paulus, quoted in “Featherston: McClure is Duke’s ‘Glue Guy’”, GoDuke.com, 2/4/2009, http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=3662455.
[ii] Jason Byassee, “Invisible, Sticky Leaders,” Call and Response Blog, Duke Faith and Leadership Insititute, 10/15/2009, http://www.faithandleadership.duke.edu/blog/10-15-2009/jason-byassee-invisible-sticky-leaders.
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