Self-sacrificial love
Self-sacrificial love
Neither self-denial (a repudiation of our sins) nor self-affirmation (an appreciation of God’s gifts) is a dead end of self-absorption. On the contrary, both are means to self-sacrifice. Self-understanding should lead to self-giving. The community of the cross is essentially a community of self-giving love, expressed in the worship of God (which was our theme in the previous chapter) and in the service of others (which is our theme at the end of this chapter). It is to this that the cross consistently and insistently calls us.
The contrast between the standards of the cross and of the world is nowhere more dramatically set forth than in the request of James and John and in the response of Jesus to them.
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘We want you to do for us whatever we ask.’
‘What do you want me to do for you?’ he asked.
They replied, ‘Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.’
‘You don’t know what you are asking,’ Jesus said. ‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?’
‘We can,’ they answered.
Jesus said to them, ‘You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.’
When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’. (Mark 10:35–45)
Verse 35 (‘We want you to do for us whatever we ask’) and verse 45 (‘the Son of Man came to serve...and to give’), the one introducing and the other concluding this story, portray the sons of Zebedee and the Son of Man in irreconcilable disagreement. They speak a different language, breathe a different spirit and express a different ambition. James and John want to sit on thrones in power and glory; Jesus knows that he must hang on a cross in weakness and shame. The antithesis is total.
There was, first, the choice between selfish ambition and sacrifice. The brothers’ statement ‘We want you to do for us whatever we ask’ surely qualifies as the worst, most blatantly self-centred prayer ever prayed. They seem to have anticipated that there would be an unholy scramble for the most honourable seats in the kingdom; so they judged it prudent to make an advance reservation. Their request to ‘sit in state’ (NEB) with Jesus was nothing but ‘a bright mirror of human vanity’.15 It was the exact opposite of true prayer, whose purpose is never to bend God’s will to ours, but always to bend our will to his. Yet the world (and even the church) is full of Jameses and Johns, go-getters and status-seekers, hungry for honour and prestige, measuring life by achievement, and everlastingly dreaming of success. They are aggressively ambitious for themselves.
This whole mentality is incompatible with the way of the cross. ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give....’ He renounced the power and glory of heaven and humbled himself to be a slave. He gave himself without reserve and without fear, to the despised and neglected sections of the community. His obsession was the glory of God and the good of human beings who bear his image. To promote these, he was willing to endure even the shame of the cross. Now he calls us to follow him, not to seek great things for ourselves, but rather to seek first God’s rule and God’s righteousness.16
The second choice was between power and service. It seems clear that James and John wanted power as well as honour. Asking to ‘sit’ each side of Jesus in his glory, we may be quite sure they were not dreaming of seats on the floor, or on cushions, stools or chairs, but on thrones. They rather fancied themselves with a throne each. We know they came from a well-to-do family, because their father Zebedee had employees in his fishing business on the lake. Perhaps they missed having servants to wait on them, but were willing to forgo that luxury for a while, provided that they were compensated with thrones in the end. The world loves power. ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,’ said Jesus, ‘and their high officials exercise authority over them’ (v. 42). Was he thinking of Rome, whose emperors had coins struck featuring their head with the inscription ‘he who deserves adoration’? Or was he thinking of the Herods, who, though only puppet kings, ruled like tyrants? The lust for power is endemic to our fallenness.
It is also totally incompatible with the way of the cross, which spells service. Jesus’ affirmation that ‘the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve’ was startlingly original. For the Son of Man in Daniel’s vision was given power so that all nations would serve him (7:13–14). Jesus claimed the title, but changed the role. He had not come to be served, but rather to be the ‘servant of the Lord’ of the Servant Songs. He fused the two portraits. He was both the glorious Son of Man and the suffering servant; he would enter glory only by suffering. Again, he calls us to follow. In the secular world rulers continue to throw their weight about, manipulate, exploit and tyrannize others. ‘Not so with you’ (v. 43), said Jesus emphatically. His new community is to be organized on a different principle and according to a different model – humble service, not oppressive power. Leadership and lordship are two distinct concepts. The symbol of an authentically Christian leadership is not the purple robe of an emperor, but the coarse apron of a slave; not a throne of ivory and gold, but a basin of water for the washing of feet.
The third choice was, and still is, between comfort and suffering. By asking for thrones in glory, James and John were wanting comfortable security in addition to honour and power. Following Jesus, they had become vagrants, even vagabonds. Did they miss their pleasant home? When Jesus replied to their question with a counter-question as to whether they could share his cup and his baptism as well as his throne, their riposte was a glib ‘we can’ (vv. 38–39). But surely they did not understand. They were daydreaming about the goblets of wine at the Messianic banquet, preceded by the luxurious pre-banquet baths which Herod was known to love. Jesus, however, was referring to his sufferings. They would indeed share his cup and baptism, he said, without enlightening them. For James was to lose his head at the hand of Herod Antipas, and John was to suffer a lonely exile.
The spirit of James and John lingers on, especially in us who have been cushioned by affluence. It is true that inflation and unemployment have brought to many a new experience of insecurity. Yet we still regard security as our birthright and ‘safety first’ as a prudent motto. Where is the spirit of adventure, the sense of uncalculating solidarity with the underprivileged? Where are the Christians who are prepared to put service before security, compassion before comfort, hardship before ease? Thousands of pioneer Christian tasks are waiting to be done, which challenge our complacency, and which call for risk.
Insistence on security is incompatible with the way of the cross. What daring adventures the incarnation and the atonement were! What a breach of convention and decorum that Almighty God should renounce his privileges in order to take human flesh and bear human sin! Jesus had no security except in his Father. So to follow Jesus is always to accept at least a measure of uncertainty, danger and rejection for his sake.
Thus James and John coveted honour, power and comfortable security, while the whole career of Jesus was marked by sacrifice, service and suffering. Mark, who is increasingly acknowledged as a theologian-evangelist as well as a historian, sandwiches the request of James and John between two explicit references to the cross. It is the glory of Christ’s cross which shows up their selfish ambition for the shabby, tatty, threadbare thing it was. It also highlights the choice, which faces the Christian community in every generation, between the way of the crowd and the way of the cross.