pentecost 20 Year B

Job 38: 1-7; 34-41 NRSV text
Hebrews 5: 1-10 NRSV text
Mark 10: 35-45 NRSV text

Poor Mark! He goes to all the trouble of carefully constructing a great story, only to have it sabotaged by the Lectionary compilers. They’ve only gone and left out the third passion prediction from today’s gospel reading, so that it appears as though the account of James’ and John’s request is a direct continuation of last week. It isn’t. We have already learned that we need to pay close attention to the narrative symbolics of geography and movement in Mark’s gospel. This section (10:32ff) opens with an interesting picture: the group is on the move again, going up to Jerusalem. Luke, you will recall, makes the journey to Jerusalem a central narrative motif to emphasise what Mark is telling us here. Ever since Caesarea Philippi (8:27ff), Jesus has been trying to impress upon an increasingly resistant group of The Twelve that this is not a journey to glory but to death. It is the Way of the Cross.

The passion predictions are a three-part “set piece”. Each adds further detail, provokes further resistance, and is the occasion for Jesus to spell out more and more clearly the implications of the Way of the Cross as the only road of true discipleship. Mark’s point is simple yet vital: the Way of the Cross is also the disintegration of the discipleship narrative. The self-sacrifice demanded by the Way means that Jesus will end up abandoned by his followers. He will face the cross utterly alone – abandoned not only by the disciples but by God! We need to look more closely at how Mark constructs his narrative at this point.

The passion predictions, resistance and the demands of discipleship

First passion prediction: Mark 8: 27-38
The first passion prediction follows immediately upon the heels of Peter’s confession of Jesus as “Messiah”. “Messiah”, you will remember, is a code word in Peter’s language for glory. Jesus says, “No, this is the way of death”. Peter’s response is to say, “No way, Jesus! Let’s stop that sort of nonsense right now!” and leads to the saying about losing one’s life in order to save it. There is no other way than through self-sacrifice and death. Everything must die precisely in order for something new to rise from its ashes.

Second passion prediction: Mark 9: 30-49
Note that each passion prediction is demarcated geographically: in 9:30 they “move on” and come to Capernaum. These stopping places are landmarks on the way to Jerusalem. The closer they get, the more the conflict between the Way of the Cross and the disciples’ expectations are thrown into sharp relief.

The second passion prediction leads to the debate about greatness, as we saw (Pentecost 16). Jesus uses the example of how the disciples rate the greatness of a child to show the contrast between “greatness” in God’s economy and his contemporary society. It’s about power – which leads immediately into the story of the unknown exorcist. The section ends with the sayings on cutting off offending parts of the body – a reference, I suggested, to child abuse, which is about precisely the wrong sort of view of the value and importance of the child that Jesus uses as an example (Pentecost 17).

The second and third passion predictions are linked by another stopping place on the way to Jerusalem: the occasion for teaching about the new family arrangements in the kingdom, receiving the gift of the kingdom as a child and the story of the rich man (Pentecost 19).

The third passion prediction: Mark 10: 32-45
This section opens with the dramatic picture of Jesus striding ahead of everyone else, being followed by crowds (including The Twelve) who, significantly, are amazed and fearful (v32). Their unease is supposed to tell us something: they are beginning to have second thoughts about following. They are dragging along behind, unwillingly. There is a sense of impending disaster that quite properly causes fear. This is the Way of the Cross – and they don’t like it one little bit!

In this context, Jesus takes The Twelve aside and is absolutely explicit about what is going to happen to him (v32b-34). There can be no doubt about what is ahead. Significantly, Jesus says that he will be handed over to the Gentiles. In other words, all of his support base will melt away. He has spent time in both the Jewish and Gentile regions around the Galilee. Yet none of the support he has found will be able to save him. Importantly, Jesus doesn’t want saving – at least in the sense that he knows that this is his mission, and is deliberately choosing the Way of the Cross. This is his purpose. This is why they are heading inexorably towards Jerusalem.

And what is the disciples’ reaction? It is to behave as though their script was the one operating! They are blind to what Jesus is telling them – wilfully blind. That is why, at the next stopping point (Jericho), Mark records the healing of Bartimaeus. Here was a blind man who anted to see; the disciples see but wish to be blind to the demands of the Way of the Cross.

“We want power”
This brings us to today’s gospel passage. James and John come to Jesus with a straightforward request: we want power. If this is about the kingdom, and Jesus is the king, then it makes perfect sense to check out the availability of key court appointments with the man himself!

What is at issue here? It’s the blindness of the disciples to the Way of the Cross! As before, the passion prediction leads on immediately to a discussion among the disciples about greatness. They’ve spectacularly misunderstood – or misheard – Jesus previously (Mark 9:35): instead of taking seriously what he had said about the first being last, and the greatest being the servant, James and John make a request to be the first! The anger of the other disciples (10:41) is not outrage at such naked bids for power, but at being outflanked: James and john beat them to it! That is why Jesus calls The Twelve to him (rather than just James and John) and explained yet again how wrong-headed their notion of power is.

In the kingdoms of the world, says Jesus, power is used to impose one’s will on others and to gain influence and respect. It is “power over”. Jesus’ power – as defined by the Way of the Cross – is the power of servanthood: “power on behalf of”. The messianic community, like the kingdom, is not hierarchical. It is a community of servanthood, love, mutual care and provision.

Why do we instinctively hiss and boo the brothers? If we’re honest, we all love power – and tend to love the powerful! That is why we are so fascinated by the detail of the lives of the rich and famous. It’s why we are motivated by promotion in the workplace and in the Church. Even in “flat”, non-hierarchical Church structures like the United Reformed Church, the lure of key positions is as strong as in more rigidly hierarchical forms of Church government. We live in a world of just deserts and rewards – the world, in other words, of “the Gentiles”. True, our best rulers are not tyrants, but the principle remains the same.

Jesus, in other words, is being radically subversive here. The contrast between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world happens on two levels. There is the structural level – the way in which power is distributed in society. Power in kingdom terms is non-hierarchical. It is consensual and democratic. Yet the emphasis here in the gospel is not on the structural but on the heart. It is about intention and ambition. James and John are honest about their intentions and ambitions. They want power, and they assume Jesus wants it too. It is that common-sense, unexplored assumption that blinds them to what Jesus has told them. They may hear what Jesus says about powerlessness, but the unconscious move is to accommodate it, rather than to hear the radical departure from the norm: Jesus dos not want that sort of power! The contrast here is between their attitude and that of Jesus (as Paul writes in Philippians 2: 5-11). Jesus is “striding ahead” in a quite deliberate embrace of the powerlessness of the cross: he is going to “give his life as a ransom for many”. But this is “powerlessness” defined in terms of “power over”. There is a real power to what he is doing. It is the power of resurrection – the power that is stronger than death itself. It is the power of love. And it is power that saves!

The problem of God … (Job 38: 1-7; 34-41)
There’s a theological conflict here which we tend to duck. This is all about the kingdom of God. Yes, Jesus is clearly key here, but nevertheless, it is ultimately about Jesus’ vision and proclamation of God. The problem is that the notion of power that is involved here cuts directly across our theology of God as “Almighty” and “king”. Power is directly linked with God. The desire for power is the desire to be like God. It was Lucifer’s desire and, in the story of the Garden, the bait with which he enticed Adam and Eve: “Don’t you want to become like God?” The bible is rich with such powerful images of God – images that compel and entice.

Jesus asks the brothers if they are able to drink his cup and share his baptism (a reference to the Passion). In other words, he’s saying, “Following me is becoming like me. Are you up for it?” Yet we can’t stop there. Jesus is not only saying, “Become like me”. He assumes that the values he is espousing and the Way he is embracing is also God’s way. And if that is true, we need to feel the force of the way in which Jesus is deconstructing notions of God’s power!

Job 38 is part of Yahweh’s response to Job’s demand to meet him in court and explain God’s ways. Job, you will remember, has suffered terribly at Yahweh’s hands. His four friends have tried to explain that it can only be construed as punishment; that Job must have done something wrong. Job, however, protests his innocence. He is prepared to face Yahweh with it, and take Yahweh on. He challenges Yahweh to show where he has failed. But Job is neither spectacularly egocentric nor blinded to his own failings. Job is right! That is the whole point of the book. Job’s sufferings are presented as a result of divine whim, not divine justice.

Yahweh’s response is a massive restatement of divine power. It boils down to this: “When you can do what I can do, and understand what I understand, then come and we’ll talk. Until then, I’m not going to demean myself by answering you!”

Job is right – but so is Yahweh! Yahweh is indeed so powerful and beyond understanding. It is impossible to fathom what it must be like to have such power and knowledge. The book leaves us deep within the divine mystery: God is God. This is enough for Job. Yet it is a profoundly unsatisfactory response for those of us who do not find that answer satisfying, not least because it is terrifying. Such a God indeed has power to do whatever God wishes and wills. But that means that God may be capricious, cruel, unjust or uncaring – and there is no one who is able to call such a God to account.

Do you see the problem? How can we be sure of God? What can we do, other than to grovel before such a God as helpless slaves, totally dependent on his (and surely such a God must be male?) good will? Almighty power reduces human beings to slaves – and yet Jesus says absolutely that this is not how it is in God’s kingdom! Rather, he says that, if we ought to be slaves, it is because God is a slave! When Jesus says, “I’m like a slave; become like me”, he’s not saying, “I’m God’s slave”. God is not exempted from Jesus’ reconfiguration of greatness!

God’s power, God’s love and Jesus the High Priest (Hebrews 5: 1-10)
Job alone doesn’t give us enough. We haven’t said enough when we say that God is “Almighty” – but neither can we say that God isn’t! This is, of course, only to land ourselves firmly in the problem of theodicy – of how God can be both all-loving and all-powerful, given the presence of suffering in the world. But the gospel passage and the epistle to the Hebrews give us a different slant on the issue.

God’s power is indeed as great (and greater!) than depicted in Yahweh’s speech to Job. But, Jesus tells us, it is power that is deployed “on behalf of”. God’s power doesn’t immunise God against human suffering, or protect God from it. God’s power is not “naked”, sovereign power, to be deployed in a crushing exercise of divine will. Rather, it is the power of passionate love that actively seeks the beloved out, regardless of cost

The story of Jesus tells us two things here: firstly, that God suffers with us and on our behalf. The cross involves God in suffering and loss, and it is voluntarily embraced for us. But secondly, as the writer to the Hebrews reminds us, God enters the human condition in Jesus. The writer to the Hebrews portrays Jesus as the High Priest who is “not unsympathetic to our weaknesses”, but is “like us”. God, in Christ, “knows what it’s like”. This is the story of God’s solidarity with humanity, rather than condemnation and abandonment. It is a story lived out in radical identification with all that God is not. This is how we are to understand the power of God.

It is redemptive power. The New Testament uses the images of God’s power (the power of creation, flood and exodus) to speak about God’s power to liberate us from all that enslaves. This is power exercised on behalf of the least: the poor, the dispossessed, the bereaved, the oppressed. It takes on the systems of economic , social, spiritual and political power that are death-dealing and destructive - even that of the Strong Man – and wins! It is resurrection power; the power of Life. And nothing can stand against it.

It is also the power of forgiveness. It is the power that suffers the effects and consequences of human sin, and then speaks the word of forgiveness that frees, transforms, converts and makes possible a new start. It is the power by which human beings, terminally trapped in the cycles of sin, death, guilt and despair, can be born again into God’s new creation. It is the power of Life. Hallelujah!

Amen.

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