Jesus shares with them what the Kingdom of GOD is like, GOD’s Great Economy, not so they have something to look forward to later, but so that they would live in it now. Right here. On the road to Jerusalem.

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The Great Sort has already begun
Proper 24B  |  Mark 10:35-45

The Approach

Before we dive in, let me read the three verses the lectionary cut out at the beginning of our story. We remember that at the beginning of chapter 10, Jesus and the disciples have arrived in Judea, the country where Jerusalem is, so they are coming close to their destination, and big crowds come to Jesus, seeking him out, wanting to meet him and be with him.

And this crowd brings two great encounters. The Pharisees come looking for Jesus to comment on the Mosaic Law on divorce. And the other is a man who comes to Jesus looking for “what must [he] do to inherit eternal life?” All of this is spun through and surrounded by Jesus teaching about children and being like children and how this reveals what the Kingdom of GOD is like: the Great Economy of GOD. This is the context when we read

They 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.’

'Is this why they are afraid, following him?' Share on X

So we begin after the third and final Passion Prediction. Jesus is telling them again what is going to happen. And now they are getting close to Jerusalem. Is this why they are afraid, following him?

The Confusion

As much as we can understand Peter trying to prevent Jesus from dying and then the second Passion Prediction is in the midst of the disciples fighting over which one is best, this request from James and John, the Brothers Zebedee, is about as crazy a thing to encounter as we find. Are they serious? Do they really think that Jesus is going to make them his co-number 2’s? Who asks this?

Imagine you’ve put a year in at a job and you walk into the president’s office and say

1. Do what I want.
2. What I want is to be VP of the company.

Come on! This is ridiculous! Are they even paying attention? Didn’t Jesus just say something about this? Hasn’t he been saying over and over that they are to upend their thinking? The first shall be last. How then can they ask to be made first? What do they think they are asking for?

Their question and confusion helps us see the upside-down nature of GOD’s Great Economy. We get to see the foolishness of the question, because we know what Jesus has said. But here he speaks to them, perhaps with a gentle voice, not like with Peter, not like his rebuke to Peter, for they are not trying to derail the mission, they are looking to attain human glory. That doesn’t get them a rebuke, but perhaps pity.

And he promises them glory, but it is the upside down glory. And they don’t get to be first, but they will come soon. For Jesus must go first, not as king, but as servant. And the glory is being lifted up, not on a throne, but here, on the cross. And he says that they aren’t ready for the cup, the cup, even he isn’t ready for, that he asks his Father to remove from him in the Garden. Peter and John can’t take his right and left hands because those are reserved for the insurrectionists on the cross, the two who will be crucified with him.

Again, the low and the powerless, the prisoner and the criminal rise with Jesus in his glory.

The Becoming

So here again is this description of the Upside Down vision of GOD’s Great Economy. And it is given, again, with the specter of death, with a glory which comes through death, not wealth, through sitting with the criminal, not the powerful. And if we need any further explanation for who Jesus wants us to love, then it seems as if we haven’t been listening.

Of course that is why we have the disciples: that we can see how they keep missing the teaching or misreading Jesus on this. They don’t believe him. They don’t believe it. But perhaps they are worried that Jesus actually is telling the truth. Perhaps their fear of approaching Jerusalem is that they do hear Jesus and do believe him. And that’s the problem. They don’t want to see the situation Jesus wants them to.

They want to see the Temple as the locus of their faith, to sacrifice, to celebrate the Passover and be good Jews. They want to join the liberation army and rescue their people from Roman occupation. They want the revolution to be covered by the support of Jesus. They want to put the Jesus stamp on it and say “GOD wills it!”

We do the same, don’t we? GOD wants us to be rich. Or GOD doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle. Or GOD sent a hurricane to punish South Carolina. Whatever smoke we blow at each other and call it GOD’s will. But this is nothing at all like what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus shares with them what the Kingdom of GOD is like, GOD’s Great Economy, not so they have something to look forward to later, but so that they would live in it now. Right here. On the road to Jerusalem.

The Already Are

We hear Jesus tell them:

“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.”

This is what you see in the world. This is what the world looks like to your eyes. It is how people have ordered themselves without GOD. When our people wanted a king, it was to have that world. But Jesus says

“But it is not so among you”

It is not so among you. You aren’t like this. You can see the Great Economy. You know the Great Economy because you know me. You can see the Great Economy isn’t only the great reconciling of the world in the future, it is in the world in which you live now.

In his powerful response to the Job reading this week, my friend David Henson writes

Job cast a vision of a world overshadowed by pain and suffering. God responds by showing him the beauty and hope of the same world.

Job puts GOD on trial, as Job has been on trial throughout the book, and Job regards all of the pain and asking where GOD is and GOD comes and speaks and instead of messing about with the ugly, he says, but look at the beauty.

Our us vs. them mentality, our sacred vs. secular mentality, our good vs. evil mentality: these all make us think that things are so plainly and easily divided. Our politics makes that certainly seem so. But Jesus shows the disciples that this isn’t the end, that the future isn’t all there is, and that suffering in the now isn’t brought on by a tyrannical GOD, but this is our creation, this is the world that GOD made and called good, the world GOD gave to the first human and told him to preserve it, protect it, and till the soil, for he came from the soil. Like he told the people grumbling in the desert to protect the immigrant because they are immigrants. Like prophets continued to remind the people of their immigration status, regardless of their comfort in the land in which they were born.

As Jesus says to the disciples, the ways of the world around you aren’t your ways. You are already sharing in the Great Economy. That’s the deal we’re doing here!

We are living in it now when we share what we have and give sacrificially. When we serve. When we let others in line before us. When we accept that we aren’t the powerful or repent for the power we possess. Every act of turning our world upside down in the name of Christ that empties us of power makes this the kingdom. Fulfills the dream. Reconciles us to one another and to our GOD. This is our mission: to give away our power and serve the world in love and hope in the midst of its ugliness and its blinding beauty.