21st Sunday after Trinity, 20 October
Readings: Is. 53.4-12; Heb. 5.1-10; Mk. 10. 35-45
Theme: Status Anxiety
The scene in today’s gospel is very human, all too human in fact. It is clear that there is an inner circle developing in the disciples around Jesus with Peter, James and John appearing as the preferred one’s. Today, we have James and John approach Jesus with a rather bizarre question. The way in which they approach Jesus already gives the game away. They say, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you”. They appear to be ordering Jesus and so have forgotten what the meaning of being a disciple is all about. It is to be a follower of Jesus, someone who learns from him and not someone who acts as if they are the ones in charge. And if the way that they approach Jesus is already indicative of a certain inappropriate behaviour for a disciple, then that which they are asking for is equally off piste. They want to sit at the right and the left hand of Jesus in his kingdom, in glory.
Jesus must have been taken aback by this request as he replies that they do not know what they are asking of him because this is for the Father to decide. However, it gives Jesus an opportunity to explain again what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. This he does by explaining that they will have to suffer and to die in order to be true followers. The language he uses is of drinking the cup and undergoing the baptism that he will, but the meaning is clear. Just as in the first reading from Isaiah, speaking of the suffering servant, it will be through great persecution and suffering that Jesus will redeem his people and show the way of service as the pathway towards the kingdom of God. So, it will be service that is the criteria of reward for discipleship.
In a way, this passage from Mark is speaking about what we today call ‘status anxiety’. The concern we have to achieve a certain position and recognition in a group is what is referred to as ‘status anxiety’ and it is a secular translation of what used to be a common feature of society; namely, ‘salvation anxiety’. James and John are here fusing these two ideas into one and demanding from Jesus that their place in the kingdom is the highest one. Matthew 20: 20 in his account of this episode has the mother of James and John make this request on their behalf, perhaps to soften the glaring contradiction in the disciples between their call and response to Jesus. It is a clear example of the fact that the disciples of Jesus are ordinary, very ordinary people whose journey of learning just what it means to be a disciple of Jesus goes through a great deal of misunderstanding. They seem to be acting in this passage as if Jesus is a worldly messiah who picks his favourites for the top jobs. They have not grasped the great reversal that the kingdom of God entails. This reversal is one which substitutes tyranny and lordship for humility and service in those called to the kingdom of heaven.
At the heart of most of these kinds of anxiety displayed by James and John is the desire to be loved, which is the deepest form of recognition that we experience as human beings. We are born with a hunger to be recognized that displays itself in a great deal of the behaviour of children in families with all kinds of sibling rivalries playing themselves out in families. This behaviour accompanies us in life as we grow up and it can lead to a great deal of pain and suffering as we attempt to acquire the recognition we seek in all kinds of unhealthy behaviour patterns and instrumentalized relationships. This is why fundamental for the disciple of Jesus is to grow in the knowledge that we are loved just as we are. We do not need to perform for this recognition it is given to us freely by God and our task as disciples is to live lives of service which reflect this self-same love of God back to God through lives of service.
So, the anxiety that is in us to be recognized and to be loved is there for a reason. It is so that we learn to realize that only in God is this desire truly satisfied. We are programmed, you might say, to find our way back home through following this infinite desire in us. As we try and satiate it in a myriad of different ways, we gradually learn that it is only possible to do so through love of God and service of one another. When our desire for recognition is so oriented, then it becomes embodied in a life of discipleship. Jesus is thus instructing James and John in this transformation of our desires through this passage and it will be a lesson that the disciples will only properly learn by going on the journey with Jesus through his suffering and death. Once they experience the resurrection of Jesus, then they will truly understand what this transformation was all about. It was the way in which Jesus was teaching the disciples what it means to enter the kingdom of heaven, both here on earth and in the life to come. So, rather than a life-negating strategy as it has sometimes been depicted by thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, for example, this life of service is actually the way in which we truly reach our potential as sons and daughters of God, made for the kingdom.
Understanding this exchange between the disciples and Jesus allows a transformation of the question posed by James and John. Rather than telling Jesus what we want him to do for us, we should aim to live a life which embodies an answer to the question of what Jesus wants us to do for him: love of God and service of one another.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.