Glory Daze
Scripture Reading: Mark 10:35-45
My high school reunion is coming up next month. Thirty-five years. I’m planning to go. I’ve been to most of them, including five years ago when I was on sabbatical from the church in South Korea and was able to be home for the holidays. Other than one or two close friends, most everyone else I hadn’t seen since either a previous reunion or even since high school, when waistlines were thinner and hairlines were thicker.
For some people, high school represents their glory days, a time of athletic or academic success, expansive social circles, few responsibilities, and the physical vibrancy of youth. A time before marriage and divorce, before mortgages and medical expenses, before bifocals and back pain. The funny thing is, when we were actually in high school, I doubt that many of us ever thought that we would one day think of those years as the “glory days.” We were high on hormones, spotted with acne, and struggling to pass chemistry. The glory days surely lay ahead of us.
For the people of Israel in the first century, the glory days of the nation lay in the distant past. A true king, i.e., one not appointed by Rome, had not sat on the throne in Jerusalem for more than 600 years. But the true glory days of Israel lay even further in the past, back during the reign of David, who was crowned roughly 1,000 years before the life of Jesus.
But as Jesus leads his disciples toward Jerusalem, as we’ve read these last few weeks, there are rumors and rumblings among the disciples that the glory days of Israel may be about to return. Something is happening. The disciples can feel it. There’s an excitement in the air. Momentum is building. Jesus is gathering more and more people to him. Surely it won’t be long now until Jewish rule is restored to the land of Israel. Jesus, an heir of David, will enter the holy city in triumph and be crowned king.
This is not fantasy. This is what the disciples expect to happen. So convinced of Jesus’ impending coronation are the brothers James and John that they make a special request of Jesus. You can tell they know that what they’re about to ask is beyond the ordinary. For one, they talk to Jesus alone, away from the other disciples. They don’t want the other ten to hear their request.
And second, they do that thing wherein they try to secure a favorable response before stating what it is exactly that they want. It’s like when you say to someone, “I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise that you’re not going to get angry.” To which most of us would reply, “I can’t promise that. I don’t know what you’re going to tell me.”
And so, ambitious and naïve, James and John approach Jesus and say, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” It sounds like a good deal for James and John, but Jesus wants more information. “What is it you want me to do for you?” he asks.
The gospel of Jesus Christ completely subverts our understanding of glory.
I imagine James and John looking over their shoulders to make sure that no other disciples can hear them before laying their cards on the table. “Appoint us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
Oh! Is that all? Sure, no problem!
James and John want to be recognized. They want to be rewarded. Jesus, we’ve been with you since the beginning of your ministry. We left our father and his fishing boat to come and follow you. That was no small sacrifice. Among the twelve, we’ve been your closest confidants (okay, Peter, too). We saw you transfigured upon the mountaintop. Now that you’re about to come into your glory, we want to be by your side, one at your right and one at your left. What do you say?
James and John aren’t the only ones who want to be recognized. It’s human nature to desire recognition, to want to be perceived by our peers as successful and praiseworthy. We look for recognition in our careers, in church, in whatever social clubs we belong to, among our neighbors, and increasingly online, such as on social media.
Recognition in and of itself, for a job well done, for use of our God-given talents, is not a problem when it brings forth from us gratitude and the desire to praise God for the gifts that God has given us. The problem comes when we lose sight of the giver and focus solely on the gift and what it can do for us.
James and John want to be recognized not for any talent they’ve received from God or for any service they’ve rendered to God; they simply want to be recognized as somehow greater than their peers. They want to bask in the glow of the glory that will emanate from Jesus when he sits upon the throne. They want some of that glory to shine on them. They want to hear people say, “Look at the sons of Zebedee seated right next to Jesus! How richly the fishermen have received God’s favor!”
But the thing is, James and John have no idea what they’re asking for. Jesus comes right out and tells them as much. “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
In their ignorance, they think he’s talking about a cup of blessing, like in Psalm 23: “You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.” There the cup symbolizes the blessings that the Psalmist has received from God. But what Jesus is referring to is the cup of suffering, like in the Garden of Gethsemane. Just before he is arrested Jesus prays to God that he might be spared from the cross: “Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me, yet not what I want but what you want” (Mk. 14:36).
Unbeknownst to them, and contrary to their desire for earthly glory, James and John would one day drink from the cup of suffering, as Jesus tells them. James would be martyred by Herod, as recorded in the Book of Acts, and John would spend his final years living in exile, having been banished by the Roman Emperor Domitian. The glory they would taste would be the glory of the crucified king.
You see, the gospel of Jesus Christ completely subverts our understanding of glory. We think of glory as victory, as success, and measured in those terms, Jesus in his lifetime was certainly a failure. He endured suffering, rejection, and death. He died as one abandoned by his closest friends, rejected by the religious leaders, and executed in the most horrific manner by the state. Who in their right mind, seeing all that, would find even the faintest hint of glory? Who would dare have the temerity to declare that victory? What utter foolishness!
And yet, the glory of Jesus Christ is found on the cross. Take a moment to let that sink in. You know, I try to preach the gospel here every Sunday, but even I sometimes struggle to wrap my mind around it. I say this now as much for my own benefit as for yours: the glory of Jesus Christ is the cross. It’s not the number of his followers or whether he is crowned king. For Jesus, glory is not a golden crown, it’s a wooden cross. Glory is not drawing to himself an army but embracing the world with outstretched arms, with arms nailed to a cross. That is where the victory is won, victory not over his political enemies but over sin and death, our existential enemies.
For Jesus, glory lies in giving himself for the life of the world, for all of us collectively and for each one of us individually. It didn’t have to be this way. Jesus could have done as the disciples had hoped and expected. He could have been a political and military leader on the order of his ancestor David. He could have marched an army into Jerusalem while mounted upon a war horse instead of riding humbly upon a donkey with his twelve disciples. He could have visited death upon the enemies of Israel rather than subjecting himself to death by being crucified between two criminals, one on his right and one on his left.
That’s right. Those positioned beside Jesus when he came into his glory would not be his disciples but criminals—enemies of the state. From the moment he was born and had a manger for a bed until the hour of his death when he was crucified between thieves, Jesus humbled himself for our sake.
And a lesson in humility is just what we and the disciples must learn over and over and over again. When the other ten disciples hear what James and John had asked Jesus, they get angry. What? Do they think they’re better than me? More deserving of honor? I worked just as hard as they did. I gave up just as much, maybe even more! Who do they think they are?
Do you know what irony is? Irony is the disciples competing for positions of honor even after Jesus has just told them for the third time that he’s going to Jerusalem to be handed over, condemned, and killed. He tells them this right before this passage that we’re reading today, in verses 33 and 34, but the disciples are in such a glory daze [D-A-Z-E] that it doesn’t register, and so he has to explain it to them again.
“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.” In other words, the way of the world is to seek glory for oneself at the expense of others. It’s a zero-sum game. There’s only so much glory to go around. There are winners and there are losers. If you don’t get yours, someone else will.
“But it is not so among you,” Jesus says. “Instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” Jesus’ death ransoms us from captivity to our glory-seeking ways and frees us for a life of service in his name.