Mark 10:35-45
Palm
Sunday
March
25, 2018
William G. Carter
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus
and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of
you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And
they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your
left, in your glory.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘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?’ They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus
said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with
which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or
at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been
prepared.’
When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with
James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘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. But it is not so among you; but 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.’
It is an unusual text for Palm Sunday.
There is no mention of a donkey, a cheering crowd, or the shouts of hosannas.
But for the Gospel of Mark, this story sets up what happens on Palm Sunday.
Jesus is not only moving toward the city
of Jerusalem. He is moving toward the cross. Jesus is very clear about that. According
to Mark’s Gospel, he predicts the cross three times. The last prediction is
still dangling in the air when James and John put their hands in the air to
say, “Ooh, Lord, can you give us special seats when you go into glory?” It’s a
ridiculous request, a tone-deaf demand to the One who will enter the city to
face his death.
Now, this is the Gospel of Mark, which
insists the disciples of Jesus never get the point. In this case, they think
that following Jesus is the path to personal advancement. They expect to get
ahead of everybody else by claiming some kind of special relationship with the
Lord. But Jesus reminds them once again of what he has said to them before: “If
you want to be my disciple, pick up your own cross and follow me.”
Before anybody hears all the hosannas and
hallelujahs, we have this stark reminder that a disciples is a servant, not a
master, because the Master himself is a servant. His entire ministry has been
one of service. There’s no glory in that, because it’s service. Jesus expects
no preferential treatment for himself, and therefore his servants shouldn’t
expect any special seating for themselves.
With single determination, Jesus enters
the Holy City to offer his life as an act of service. That’s how he understands
his own cross. And the word that he uses to sum up this mission is a curious
word. He will give his life as “a ransom.”
A ransom – what comes to mind when you
hear of a ransom? I think of a movie, or any number of movies. Somebody is
kidnapped. There is a note demanding money for the release. The phone rings,
and Liam Neeson or Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford snarls at the kidnapper’s
demands. Perhaps a time and place are set for the money drop, the cops are not
to be called. You know the basic plot. There are at least eighty-five movies
that demand some sort of ransom.
In every case, the demand is for an
exorbitant sum of money to be paid, in order to release someone you love from
captivity. That is the ransom…according to the movies.
Yet it sounds different when we hear this
word come up in the Bible. Nobody ever gets kidnapped in the Bible, but there are
plenty who are held as captives. As Israel wanders in the desert, for instance,
God instructs them to put up a tent for worship, as a kind of traveling
sanctuary.
Once
a year, as they gathered to worship on the Day of Atonement, the annual event
of national forgiveness, everybody was required to bring a half-shekel, a small
coin, and present it as an offering in worship. God said, “This is a reminder
to the Israelites of the ransom given for your lives.” (Exodus 30:16)
A
ransom – what is this all about? Well, “ransom” is a Passover word, an Exodus
word, a get-out-of-Egypt-because-God-sets-you-free kind of word. When we gather
this Wednesday for our congregational Passover Seder, listen to the memory of
Israel: “We were slaves in Egypt, and God brought us out of slavery with a
mighty hand and an outstretched arm.”
In fact, from that point on, even when some of the Jews themselves had
slaves (apparently some of them had short memories), it was possible for a
slave to purchase his freedom or the freedom of his loved ones. The price tag was
called “the ransom.”
And Jesus says he gives his life as “a
ransom.” It’s an Exodus word. He is going to free people from the captivity of slavery.
Yet in the Bible, it is also an Exile
word. Nearly six hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the people of Israel
were invaded. Their temple was destroyed. Their society was broken up. Most of
the nation’s best and brightest were taken in chains to Babylon. It was a terrible
crisis, striking at the heart of the nation’s faith. They thought they were God’s
people, protected and sanctified, that something like that would never happen
to them.
Forty years later, the empire had a change
of heart and allowed the Jews to go home. The Bible sees this as something more
than a change in the political wind; it was a spiritual homecoming, a liberation
from an oppressive and tyrannical system.
In some of the most beautiful texts of the
scriptures, God sings of this return home. Here’s a few verses from the prophet
Isaiah:
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your
Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange
for you.
Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love
you,
I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your
life. (Isaiah 43:3-4)
Imagine
a God who loves you so much that God buys you back! That God pays out whatever
it takes to bring you home! That’s the sense of the word “ransom.” It is an
Exile word.
What
it means is that there is a change of ownership. No longer do you belong to the
system that oppresses, demeans, and puts you down. No longer do you belong to an
entity that dominates you and is complicit with evil.
·
For ancient Israel, no longer do
you belong to Pharoah and his brick-making quota.
·
For exiled Israel, no longer do you
belong to the Babylon that steals, enslaves, dominates.
·
For the Israel of Jesus, no longer do
you belong to the dominion of evil that makes you ill, that withers your soul,
that plunders your hope.
Jesus comes to pay the ransom to set you
free and buy you back. Now it is God who places a claim on you, the same God in
whose image you were created, the God whose image is revealed in the mercy and
love of Jesus the Christ. And it’s through him that those same words from Isaiah
now ring true for you and me: “I am the Lord your
God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior... You are precious in my sight, and
honored, and I love you.” God says, “I have paid the ransom to get you back.”
This is how the Gospel of Mark understands
the cross. It is the conclusive announcement that Jesus comes to set us free
from all the powers that oppress us and to claim us as his own.
From Day One of his ministry, he healed
those ill of body and spirit. He confronted and defeated the emotional and
spiritual powers that oppress human life. And as he crisscrossed the Sea of Galilee
between Jewish and Gentile land, he broke down the invisible but very real boundaries
that divide people from one another, create prejudice, and build hatred – he stepped
through those divisions to create a new dominion called the Kingdom of God.
Now, he enters the city where he will face
all the hatred and brokenness that he has been confronting since his baptism in
the Jordan River. They are going to try to capture him, humiliate him, and
silence him once and for all – but they are not going to win. Jesus is going
pay off the powers of hell by giving his own self. That is the once-and-for-all
ransom payment to win us back.
What does that mean? It means we are free,
as long as we welcome his freedom, as long as we say “No!” in his name to every
sick and broken power that would threaten to snatch us away from God. The
ransom is paid on the cross once and for all. We belong to the God who loves
us, and not to anything or anybody less than God.
There is nothing new about this. It was
written centuries ago in one of the Psalms: “God will ransom my soul from the
power of Sheol, for God will receive me” (Psalm 49:15). This is the deepest meaning
of that grand, old Bible word “redemption.” God has bought us back. God loves
us so much as to claim us as precious, adopted children. And even though evil
continues to be very real in this age, it need not define us, possess us,
oppress us, or sell us out. We have been “bought for a price.” (1 Corinthians
7:21)
That’s
why we can join the crowd on Palm Sunday with confidence and joy. Redemption
begins today as Christ climbs onto the humble donkey and rides into the city. This
will be the moment when all who will trust in him will be set free. There will
be no more despair, no more fear, no more degradation.
The
words of the ancient prophets ring true again and again:
So the
ransomed of the Lord shall
return, and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting
joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow
and sighing shall flee away.
For I am
the Lord your
God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.
I have put
my words in your mouth, and hidden you in the shadow of my hand,
stretching
out the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth,
and saying
to Zion, “You are my people.” (Isaiah 51:11, 15-16)
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