“Slightly deaf, are they?

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Thursday, August 17, 2023

Mark 10:32-45 (Forward, p. 19) CEV p. 1041

Somehow, they just don’t ‘get it’. It is almost as if what Jesus has just said has gone entirely over their heads. Or, as if they are slightly deaf. Jesus has just told His disciples that they are on route to Jerusalem where He will be handed over to the Jewish authorities, sentenced to death and then given over to foreigners, that is, the Romans, who will then treat Him shamefully and put Him to death. Then, after three days, He will rise again.

So, what happened immediately after these words of Jesus, this passion prediction (as the scholars like to call it)? It is almost Jesus had not said anything at all about it. James and John sidle up to Jesus and ask Him to grant them a favour. And what is that favour? It is to sit at Jesus’ left and right hand, the places of honour and power and prominence, when Jesus comes into His glory.

What, then, I must ask, in all that Jesus has just said, would indicate that He was coming in glory? And in some earthly kingdom, no less, which is what the two brothers were suggesting? They clearly hadn’t ‘got it’, clearly hadn’t heard what Jesus had just said about His passion. There wasn’t anything glorious about it, anything powerful, and certainly not even a hint of some earthly kingdom. It was as if the two brothers were slightly deaf—or, at very least, not wanting to hear!

However, from what comes next, it would not seem that they were the only ones to think and act this way. When the rest of the Twelve got wind of the request of James and John they were most upset. They were angry with the two brothers. And why was that? My thinking is that it wasn’t because they had heard Jesus properly and understood fully well what He meant, which means that they were upset that James and John got it so wrong. My suggestion is that they were angry and upset that they hadn’t thought about it first. In other words, they were upset that James and John had beaten them to the punch, had beaten them to the front of the line and asked Jesus for what all of them secretly wanted!

Well, Jesus squashes all such notions. To James and John, who’d so glibly told Him that they would be willing to share Jesus’ fate, to be baptised

with His baptism and drink from His cup (meaning His death), He told them that this would indeed take place, but that those positions of power and honour and influence were not His to grant, but were up to His Father in heaven.

And to the whole lot of them, Jesus really set them on their heels with His next pronouncement. In it, He reorders the entire way they looked at life. He tells them that they are not at all to be like the earthly authorities that they know, who have fancy titles and power and like to throw that power around. No, to be truly great, they are to act like servants, slaves, who give themselves entirely to the service of others and never worry about their ‘place in the line’. Indeed, Jesus says, that is exactly how He has lived His life on earth: not to be a master but to be a servant, a slave, who would give His life as a ransom for all.

And indeed, is this not what Jesus mandates for all of His followers, all of us in fact? Does He not call us all to be servants, not masters, not the people in charge, not the people who get to throw their weight around and see that their personal wishes or agendas are carried out? Speaking personally, and from years of experience in the church, I would suggest that this is very difficult for us. Most of us like to have some clout in the running of the church, and if truth be told, to have our ideas and agendas taken seriously and, yes, implemented. It is very hard for most of us to just sit back and be servants. And so, in reality, it often is not just those original disciples that were slightly deaf in hearing what Jesus says, but we as well. But, maybe we can learn, and become better at it. Amen.

Forward notes: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (verse 38b).

“When I was a child in the Methodist church, we used to sing a rousing hymn:

‘Are ye able, said the Master, ‘To be crucified with me?’

‘Yes,’ the sturdy dreamers answered,

‘To the death we follow thee.’

‘Lord, we are able. Our spirits are thine.

Remold them, make us, like thee divine.’

“To a young boy, this song heralded bravery, courage, adventure, and glory—just the things James and John imagined for themselves when they

asked Jesus for one teensy favour: to let them sit next to him in glory.

“But Jesus dashed the hopes of James and John—and all our hopes for easy glory—with a reminder that greatness resides in service and suffering, not in places of honour. And the question still begs our response: Are you able? We dare not sing this great hymn unless we mean to be remolded, remade, and placed next to Jesus on his road to the glory of the cross.”

Moving Forward: “in the context of this song, what does it mean to be ‘able’?”