Servant Drama

Text: Mark 10:35-45

There is a little three-act play almost exactly in the center of Mark’s Gospel. And in each act, there is a three-part dance. The dance is the same, with some variation, in each act. For those following along, they appear in chapters 8, 9, and 10. We just heard the third and final act and saw the third dance. Jesus and the disciples are the dancers. And the dance goes like this.

In the first movement of the dance, Jesus tells the disciples that the Son of Man, whom we read to be Jesus himself, is to be handed over to the authorities. They will condemn him to death, and he will be executed. Three days later he will rise again.

In the second movement, the disciples are non-plussed. The do not understand what Jesus just said to them, or do not want to believe it, or rebuke Jesus for even mentioning it, or pretend like he did not. That’s the case today, where James and John, after hearing Jesus discuss his death, say as if they never heard him at all: Thanks for sharing; now, when you come into power, can we have the best and most prestigious and most influential seats? They hear the bad news and without missing a beat, ask Jesus for special favors.

And in the third movement, Jesus makes the disciples sit down while he explains what he said and what it will mean to them. Which is that things will be different. The last will be first, the first last. In today’s reading: if you want to be first, you have to be slave of all people.

We traditionally call the three acts “the Passion predictions of Jesus,” because they say what we readers know is about to happen. You will see a title like that in your Bibles. In our Bible, its says “A Third Time Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection.” But those heading are not actually part of the Bible. They are titles stuck in by the editors—a kind of interpretation. It is true that there is some predicting here—about the handed over, execution, and resurrection part. We are used to thinking about that. And though it was a shocker when Jesus said it, it does not shock us so much. Because we know the story.

But in each case, there is also the first and last, slave and servant, gaining and losing part. That has to do with the kind of messiah Jesus might be and what kingdom the messiah might bring about. Which is doubtless harder to think about. So perhaps it would be useful to instead name these three acts: “what kind of messiah Jesus says he is.”

And what Jesus says is that he is a servant. And that the kingdom of God will be filled with servant people. That is how he describes himself and his mission. The Son of man came not to be served but to serve.

The Isaiah passage we heard is called the Suffering Servant. We recognize Jesus in this passage. Not because Isaiah was talking about Jesus, but because the words in Isaiah seem to us to be a really good description of Jesus, a good description of the way we think of Jesus, and what we teach about Jesus. At Faith we emphasize Jesus as the good shepherd—thus the mural—but the shepherd is not the boss of the sheep but rather serves the sheep.

And being a servant is the way Jesus lives. And it is the way he describes the way his disciples must live if they are to follow him, to be his followers. If you are to be first, he tells them here, you must be slave of all. This is the third movement of the dance repeated almost identically in the each of the three acts. If you want to be a leader in the kingdom that Jesus preaches, you must think of yourselves not as people enjoying the benefits of great power but as the people who are humble servants. It is explicit and it is scary. To be a servant to another—and it comes down in the end to one real person at a time—is purposely to make that one real person superior to you. This is not super palatable to the disciples or to us.

To be first you must be last, or a servant. This—being first—is about leadership, which is what makes it so odd. We call political leaders public servants and they say they want to serve the people—and they might. But we do not believe it. We do not really expect our leaders to be humble, and they rarely act that way. And being an oppressed people in Palestine, the disciples probably did not expect them to be, either. So there is a kind of “I’m not sure I heard you correctly” moment in these stories. “You don’t really mean that.”

I read an article about this passage in which the scholar said that the best response to our tendency to think of ourselves first—which for sure we have—the best response to that was to be “cautious and self-reflective about our motives.” I’m sorry, that is just equivocating baloney. It is not what Jesus is saying at all. Jesus says that the best response to our tendency to think of ourselves first is to deny ourselves. The scholar did not like hearing that any more than the disciples did or we do.

Jesus teaches humility. To deny oneself means to deny that we ourselves are the most important thing, that we are the most deserving of life, riches, love, what have you. To deny that we are the most wise and capable, and therefore the one who should be listened to and relied on. That we should not let opportunity pass by but rather seize the day because if not us, then who?

And though this all sounds like a problem of arrogance, it is instead more about being greedy. The opposite of humility is not pride but greed. To serve others adequately is to be willing to give up everything in order to serve them. To keep nothing for ourselves. James and John are not proud, but they are greedy, not only for power and prestige but also for affection and admiration.

Jesus instructed his followers—instructs us—about a new a way of living. There is a plan here, a proposal for an alternative way of relating to people and things. It is hard plan to swallow. In two thousand years, we have not accomplished it.

Why is that? We have to ask ourselves whether we believe Jesus when he says that being humble—being last, having little, serving all others before ourselves—is the way to a better life in this world, and a better life for this world. If yes, they why aren’t we doing it? And if not … well, certainly the alternative—that is, business as usual—has not worked out so great so far.

The Gospel of Mark pivots around this three-act play. The disciples evidently begin to understand what Jesus has to say—Jesus no longer has to explain it. The messiah is a servant to all. It is an important pivot in our faith as well. It is a hard concept. The question Jesus asks the disciples we ask ourselves: can we commit our lives to a humble king? Can we follow such a leader? Will we take his word?