Transcript
Close Encounters: An Encounter with James and John
First Baptist Richmond, October 20, 2024
The Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 10:35-45
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
I love the fact that we read the Bible in church, that someone steps up to the pulpit, reads a paragraph or two, and we all say, “Thanks be to God!” Because the Bible is a gift. It’s the Word of God for the People of God and when someone is bold enough to read it aloud we should be grateful enough to say thanks. But we should also realize that we’ve heard only a very small portion of the Bible, sometimes only a verse. And while we’re thankful that something has been read rather than nothing we also need to recognize that texts can only be understood in context. This morning’s reading from Mark, for example.
It begins with this unusual request from James and John, the sons of Zebedee. They come to Jesus saying, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” Jesus says, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they say, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” It’s outrageous enough all by itself, but when you put it in context it’s even more outrageous. Because in the verses just before these Jesus has told his disciples for the third time that he is on his way to Jerusalem, where, as he puts it, “the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; 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.” In other words, “I’m not going to Jerusalem for a coronation, boys; I’m going for a crucifixion.” The only hopeful note in what he says is this notion of rising again after three days. I’m not sure the disciples even know what that means.
But then again, I’m not sure that they know what any of it means. The first time Jesus said that he was going to suffer and die (8:31) Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. The second time he said it (9:31) the Twelve began to argue among themselves about which one of them was the greatest. And now, after the third and most detailed prediction, James and John ask for the places of honor when Jesus comes into his glory. New Testament scholar Fred Craddock writes, “With their request, the blindness, not only of the Twelve but of the inner circle (Peter, James, and John) in particular, is complete. Also complete is the vast difference between Jesus and his followers on the nature of the messianic mission.”i
The nature of the messianic mission.
Can we talk about that for a minute? Because if you had asked James or John before they met Jesus what the Messiah was supposed to do they could have told you in ten words: “The Messiah is supposed to restore the nation of Israel.” They would have looked back to the Golden Age, when David was king. They would have told you the story that their father Zebedee had heard from his father and passed down to them: that one of these days a savior would arise who would conquer Israel’s enemies, sit on the throne of his ancestor David, and usher in a whole new era of peace and prosperity.
So, when Jesus showed up in Capernaum saying, “The time is fulfilled, and
the kingdom of God is at hand!” they got excited. And when he came walking by the seashore and called them to follow they may have leaped out of their father’s boat. They knew it wouldn’t be easy. They were prepared for things to get messy, maybe even bloody. But they believed that in the end there would be glory—glory enough to share. And so, as Jesus walks ahead of them toward Jerusalem, they take a few running steps to catch up with him. They say, “Teacher…when the smoke has cleared and the bloodshed has ended, when you have been crowned king and seated on the throne of your ancestor David, can the two of us sit on slightly smaller thrones, one on your left and one on your right?”
And Jesus just looks at them.
What they don’t seem to understand is the nature of the messianic mission. But to be fair I’m not sure that we understand it any better. If you ask the average Christian what Jesus came to do she might say, “Jesus came to die on a cross and save me from my sins so that when I die I can go to heaven instead of hell.” That’s a lot more than ten words, but I’m not sure it’s an improvement. Fred Craddock says that in this passage there appears to be a vast difference between Jesus and his followers over the nature of the messianic mission and there may still be a vast difference. And so the question I want to ask is this: not how do we understand the mission of the Messiah, but how did Jesus understand it?
I’ve got a theory about that and it begins in Jesus’ hometown synagogue, where people also used to read aloud from the Bible. We know that they had a Torah scroll because you couldn’t have a synagogue without one, but we also know that they had the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, because Jesus read from it on one of his visits. Other than that they may not have had a lot of scripture. Those scrolls were expensive and theirs was a small synagogue. So, I picture Jesus sitting
there Sabbath after Sabbath, listening to readings from the Law of Moses, but also from the scroll of Isaiah. There was one passage in particular that resonated with him. It’s in Isaiah 61, where the prophet says, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
I can picture the boy Jesus sitting there, listening to that, and saying, “Yes! That’s what I want to do!” and then pointing his life in that direction from that moment on. So that when he went to the Jordan to be baptized he was thinking about bringing good news to the oppressed. And when he spent 40 days in the wilderness he was thinking about binding up the brokenhearted. And when he came into Galilee, full of the Holy Spirit, he was thinking about proclaiming liberty to the captives. And it was there, in Capernaum, that he said, “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near! Repent, and believe the good news!” And when he called Peter and Andrew, James and John, they didn’t think twice. They were ready for a revolution.
So, he began to go around from one small town to another: healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, casting out demons, and telling everyone who would listen about the coming Kingdom of God. Luke tells us that he eventually made it to his old hometown of Nazareth, and on the Sabbath day he went to the synagogue, as was his custom. They asked him to preach, and he found that place in Isaiah that had inspired him so many years before. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he said, “for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s
favor.” When he finished he said, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And everybody loved it, everybody loved him, until he began to suggest that his mission was bigger than the village of Nazareth, bigger even than the nation of Israel, and then they tried to throw him off a cliff.
And I think this is where things began to change for Jesus. I think this is where he began to realize that the Kingdom wasn’t going to come voluntarily, that those who had power weren’t eager to give it up, even for God, and that those who had preconceived notions of how God was going to save them weren’t willing to change their minds, not even for God’s Messiah. I think this is when Jesus began to look at other parts of Isaiah, including one of the lectionary passages assigned for today: Isaiah 53:4-12. It is one of four “servant songs,” written at a time when Israel was in exile.ii This one describes Israel as God’s suffering servant and includes a verse that has become very familiar to us: “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his stripes we are healed.” I can’t hear that verse without thinking of Jesus, but it was written hundreds of years before he was born, and it wasn’t looking forward to something that would happen, but backward to something that already had. It was describing Israel’s exile in Babylon, as if the suffering God’s people had endured would atone for the coming generations. But I can imagine that as Jesus reflected on Israel’s past it began to sound more and more like his own future.
Now, this is just my theory, but I believe that Jesus stopped looking at Isaiah 61 as his job description and started looking at Isaiah 53. Or maybe it was just the back page of his job description. Maybe the front page was all about preaching good news to the poor and opening the eyes of the blind and only on the back
side did Jesus realize that if he kept doing that, if he kept bringing God’s helping and healing power into the world then those who had power were going to resist it, and those who saw him as a threat were going to look for a way to stop him. “He was despised and rejected by men,” Isaiah wrote (Isa. 53:3), speaking of God’s suffering servant, and Jesus said, “Yes he was.” So, after that experience in Nazareth, up on the road near Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus asked his disciples who people said that he was and Peter said, “The Messiah,” Jesus said, “Let me tell you what it’s going to mean to be the Messiah; it’s going to mean suffering and dying.” And Peter said, “God forbid!”
He tried to tell them again, a chapter later, and they began arguing among themselves about which one of them was the greatest. He tried to tell them again, just before today’s reading, and James and John came to him asking for places of honor. And the question Jesus asks them, afterward, is the question he might want to ask us today: Can you follow a Messiah who is going to suffer and die, or only a Messiah who is going to conquer and rule? In other words, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” When he asks James and John they say yes, thinking perhaps that he only means, “This is going to get messy, this is going to get bloody. When we get to Jerusalem we’re going to have a fight on our hands.” Because they’re ready for a fight, as long as on the other side of it, when the smoke has cleared and the bloodshed has ended, there is glory.
And that’s when Jesus brings his disciples together and says, “Look, that may be how it is in the world. It may be all about the glory of the thing, about achieving greatness and getting ahead. But that’s not how it is in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom greatness is not achieved by lording it over everyone else—not by
being a tyrant—but by being a servant. So, if you want to be great, you’re going to have to be the servant of all, and if you want to be first, you have to be the slave of all. Even the Son of Man didn’t come to be served but to serve, and like the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, to give his life as a ransom for many.”
I get the feeling as I read through the Gospels that Jesus’ understanding of the messianic mission changed over time, and I don’t think it’s blasphemy to say so. Luke tells us that when he was a boy, going to that synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men (Luke 2:52). To say that he “grew in wisdom” is to say that his understanding changed over time. What I wonder is this: Can our understanding change over time?
If you grew up thinking of God as an old man sitting on a throne in heaven can you see him differently now? And if you thought that all Jesus came to do was die on a cross to save you from your sins, can you see things differently now? Can you see that he really was trying to bring heaven to earth, and that he was stopped by people who weren’t willing to give up their power? Can you see that God used his power to raise Jesus from the dead because he wasn’t willing to let people stop him? Can you see that Jesus passed along to his disciples the mission of bringing in God’s kingdom, and promised them the Holy Spirit so that they would have the power to do it? Can you see that God’s kingdom will come not because we use that power to lord it over everybody else, but because we use it to serve everybody else? Can you see that we will achieve greatness not by becoming tyrants, but by becoming servants?
That’s not a bad thing to be reminded of, especially in an election year. There are people out there who are hoping to be elected, hoping to achieve greatness. Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever would be great among you must
be least of all and servant of all.” And that may seem unrealistic. It may not sound like the kind of advice that actually applies to a world like ours. But let’s test that theory: of all the people who have ever lived, has anyone been greater than Jesus? And if you wanted to be great, wouldn’t it make sense to listen to the one who actually is the greatest of all time?
—Jim Somerville © 2024
