To Serve, Not to Be Served: Mark 10:35-45

The timing was breathtaking in its tone-deafness. Jesus had just described in graphic detail his coming torture and death. James and John approached him with a request:

"Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask."

"What do you want me to do for you?"

"Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory."

Thrones. While Jesus spoke of being spit on and flogged, they were measuring themselves for crowns. Sons of Thunder, indeed—the same ambition that would later make the other ten indignant.

"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?"

Cup. Baptism. Old Testament images of God's wrath, of overwhelming judgment, of suffering that drowns. Jesus was asking if they were ready to share his fate.

"We can," they said confidently.

They had no idea what they were promising. But Jesus took them at their word:

"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."

James would be the first apostle martyred—beheaded by Herod. John would outlive them all, exiled to Patmos, tradition says lowered into boiling oil and surviving. They would indeed drink the cup.

The other ten were indignant—not at the theology but at being beaten to the ask. So Jesus gathered them all:

"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."

The kingdom inverted everything: "Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all."

Then the heart of it 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."

A ransom. The price paid to free prisoners, to buy slaves out of bondage. His life exchanged for theirs. The King of Glory came not to sit on a throne but to hang on a cross.

James and John wanted seats at his side. Two criminals would get those seats—one on his right, one on his left, nailed to their own crosses as Jesus died between them.

That was the glory they didn't understand.