Untitled Homily

Mark 10:35–45 RSV2CE

And 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.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the chalice that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The chalice that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John. And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

“but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared”

The chosenness of seminarians, getting passed over for what you thought you deserved or what you felt God was preparing for you

It seems they have completely failed to register Jesus’ weightier words that are in fact the heart of his instruction: “Many that are first will be last, and the last first” (19:30). In the sight of God, to promote oneself is in fact to demote oneself. No doubt the brothers, if they heard these poignant words of Jesus at all, must have dismissed them at once as applicable only to others, certainly not to themselves. How quick, indeed, we all are to view ourselves as exceptional, as exempt from those dreary common laws of the spiritual life pertaining only to the rest of mankind! As by an unerring instinct, I secretly picture a conspiratorial wink between myself and God, a complacent divine smile acknowledging my own very special and exempt status that sadly all those dullards out there have clearly failed to see …1

1 Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapters 1–25, vol. 3 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996–2012), 281.

“To sit at my right hand and at my left … is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father”: Jesus’ specific role is to offer us the most intimate possible association with himself and his destiny and, in so doing, to offer us in fact himself, wholly and irrevocably. This is the way in which God surrenders to man and elicits a similar reciprocal surrender to God from man. As for the assignation of particular rewards and placements, Jesus unsurprisingly leaves it all to the inscrutable and sovereign freedom of the Father, thus mirroring the way in which the owner of the vineyard claimed for himself utter freedom to do with his goods as he saw fit1

1 Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapters 1–25, vol. 3 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996–2012), 282.

But in the end v. 40 undermines the whole premise on which their request was based, that status in the kingdom of God can be bestowed as a favour, or even earned by loyalty and self-sacrifice.1

1 R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2002), 414.

Verse 40 surprisingly does not deny that there will be such places of honour, but refuses to reserve them for even the most ambitious or the most loyal disciple1

1 R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2002), 417.

 For God’s ‘preparing a place’ for his people cf. LXX Ex. 23:20; Mt. 25:34; 1 Cor. 2:9; Heb. 11:16. But we are left no wiser as to who these favoured people are, and that is surely deliberate. In the light of the preceding pericopes, we may be fairly certain that it will not be those who would have been expected, or who would expect themselves, to take precedence, but rather those who are like the child, the little ones. The effect of the whole exchange is in the end, even after James and John have accepted the necessity of the cup and the baptism, to rule out of court their request and the concern for status which underlies it. The well-informed reader might reflect that those who were soon to be on Jesus’ right and left were to be not honoured disciples but λῃσταί, and the setting not a throne but a gibbet (15:27).1

1 R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 2002), 417–418.

Or else, it is not mine to give to you, that is, to proud persons, for such as yet they were. It is prepared for other persons, and be ye other, that is, lowly, and it is prepared for you.1

1 Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Mark, ed. John Henry Newman, vol. 2 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1842), 212.