Proper 24, Year B: Mark 10:35-45
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
October 17, 2021
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
…it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” – Mark 10:43-44[1]
Chances are, at some point in your life, you heard your parents or a teacher say, “That’s not how we behave.” Maybe you were cutting in line or picking your nose. Maybe you were stretched across the table reaching for seconds with company visiting. Or maybe you were being a bit of a bully toward your friends. Despite its brevity, “that’s not how we behave” can catch us in our tracks. It isn’t simply a reminder to stop. It invokes social pressure, subtly triggering a person’s sense of honor and shame, the weight of family and reputation. It’s a warning that your actions right now aren’t about you—they’re about us. We want to please those we love. We want people to think well of our families. Although phrased in the negative, “that’s not how we behave” ends up being a quiet reminder for us to act out of our best selves, to show the rest of the world what our group—whether that’s our country, church, class, or family—stands for. It calls us to align with something outside ourselves, both a marker and a goal of collective identity and pride.
When I was in first or second grade, my school was holding a field day, where instead of spending a morning and afternoon in the classroom, all the students would be competing in races and other sporting events at a nearby park. Largely imaginative and intellectual even at that age, anything remotely athletic evoked pure fear from me. I remember a growing sense of dread in the weeks leading up to this least desired of all field trips. I undoubtedly worked myself up into genuine, physical sickness with my fear and anxiety. I cried and begged my parents not to force me to participate in this most cruel and terrifying of events. However, they just wouldn’t give.
The night before my world was to end, this looming day of doom and darkness, my dad whispered something as he was tucking me in bed. He confidently told me I would do great because our family had a secret advantage over everybody else: thanks to our German heritage, we came from a long line of barbarians. It doesn’t sound like much of a motivator now, but with my favorite game at the time being “Vikings & Barbarians,” his words drew forth a powerful spark deep inside me. For the first time in weeks, I slept soundly, and the next morning, I grimly but steadfastly prepared myself to do my ancestors proud.
I remember little about the day itself other than intense sunshine, glowing green canopies of late-spring leaves, and my feet pounding the ground as I ran full-speed around a lake (which, in retrospect, was probably just a pond) yelling at the top of my lungs about being a barbarian—and undoubtedly embarrassing my older sister in front of her classmates. I don’t recall the day’s results, but I do remember being proud of myself both for how well I had done and for upholding my family’s honor. Although I had long known that “acting like a barbarian” was “not how we behave” in modern society, that day I discovered that if necessary, I could call upon that heritage—that unknown sense of self and history—to bring out a strength and tenacity I hadn’t known before, to prove to others and myself that this is how our people could behave.
Today’s Gospel opens with a different youthful scene as the brothers James and John—pretty significant characters among the apostles—march up to Jesus with an equally well-recognized childhood demand—“Promise me that…”—hoping, of course, to leave out the “that” until their target made his promise. Rather than just shutting the whole thing down like I probably would have, Jesus actually starts playing along. “Promise you what?” “Promise me that when you take charge, we’ll be in charge right beside you.” Jesus practically doubles over laughing in response, “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”
As Christians, we tend to get over-serious about what we read in the Bible. The Gospel of Mark in particular offers a good bit of humor if we’re willing to let our guard down, and this is one of those instances. Unfortunately, the Lectionary left out the three verses between last week’s tale of the rich young ruler and today’s exchange that really set up the scene. So to fill in the missing context:
“[Jesus and the disciples] 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.’”[2]
And that’s exactly the point where James and John march up to Jesus with their “promise me that.”
Whether or not these two situations happened in close sequence in real life, by setting them side by side, Mark is definitely poking some fun at the brothers here—clearly someone hadn’t been paying attention to their teacher. And while Jesus appears to have found it pretty funny, the rest of the apostles turn on the brothers with barely contained rage. They’re more than just feeling annoyed or indignant—these people are so mad that they’re physically shaking! Teams start to form for what looks to be a schoolyard brawl when Jesus cuts in: “Enough! That’s not how we behave!”
While Mark clearly has Jesus addressing the way he wants his followers to treat one another in contexts of leadership and fellowship here, I wonder if we shouldn’t reflect his statement back a bit farther—back to his warning on the road that the Lectionary skipped, back to the eye of the needle and the rich young ruler, back to the disciples preventing the children from gathering, and even back to the divorce exchange two weeks ago.
After these last few weeks of emotional and physical rejection, of unhealthy attachment to possessions or relationships, of defining ourselves by anticipated persecution or the drive for self-martyrdom, of climbing to the top only so we can shove other people down, Jesus’ response is both simple and consistent: that’s not how his followers behave. We don’t spurn or mistreat one another. We don’t put up roadblocks for those searching for God’s love. We don’t abandon one another to go it alone, buried under growing mounds of burdens or drowning in regret. We neither run away nor rely on ourselves in the face of impending fear. Jesus is right—that’s not how we behave!
But as I said earlier, this phrase doesn’t simply stop in our tracks; it calls us to something greater, to a sense of collective identity, hope, and honor. So now that we’ve caught ourselves before causing any harm, what exactly is it that we do?
Fortunately for us, once he interrupts the fight, Jesus doesn’t stop speaking but instead makes his ideal very clear: “…whoever might hope to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever might hope to be prominent among you will be everyone’s slave.”[3]
There it is, plain and simple: the Way of Love, the path of Christ, and the life found within the cross.
Jesus wants us to follow him, not into power and glory, not into domination and subjugation, but into humility, self-submission, and—above all—into active, practical love. He calls us to look deep inside, past our desire for control, past our fear, and past our pride. He calls us to recall our heritage as God’s children and to expose the reality of God’s image—a God who creates and builds, who sets self-interest aside, who bends down to the grave to lift even the most insignificant and unworthy of us into the Holy Presence. Jesus reminds us to call upon that heritage—that all too often forgotten sense of self and history—to bring out a strength and tenacity we forgot we even had, to prove not only to others but to ourselves that this—this is how we Christians behave.
“…whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Mark 10:32-34
[3] Mark 10:33-34 (my translation)