“What Reigning with Jesus Means”
Mark 10:32-45
3/29/09
Allow me to set before you a little pretend
scenario... Suppose you got to have an audience alone with Jesus
face to face and were allowed to ask Him for anything you wanted.
What would you ask Him for? More money? Maybe a house, a
car, success at work, good health? Maybe you’d ask Him for
more noble things like wisdom, patience, or the ability to love more
perfectly. But would you ask Him if He would make you a servant
and slave of everyone else? Would you ask Him for suffering and
the cross? I doubt it! And yet, that’s what He
promises His disciples in today’s Gospel text.
Here James and John asked for the things that you
and I would have asked for had we been there with the rest of the
disciples face to face with Jesus. Oh, yes, we can sit in
judgment of them now as we read Jesus’ response to their
request. It’s easy for us to call them fools and to
maintain that we wouldn’t have asked for the same thing they
did. And yet, the same desire was on the minds of every one of
the Lord’s twelve. The others were angry at these two
brothers simply because they hadn’t gotten to Jesus first,
proving that all of us are alike and that we would have been and in
fact are just as greedy for power and glory as they were. If
those closest to Jesus struggled with these issues, why would we be any
different?
We suffer from the same disease as James, John, and
the rest of the disciples - sin. And the foremost thing that sin
does is put itself first, making itself out to be the most important,
crowning itself as its own god. Sin thinks about nothing but what
it wants, at the expense of everyone else. Sin wants to be
served, not to serve, and instead treats everyone else as its servants
and slaves.
It’s sin that prompted James and John to make
the request of Jesus that they made. We can see this not only in
what they asked of Jesus, but in the way they asked it of Him.
Notice that Jesus didn’t come to them and offer to do for them
anything they might ask. No, they came up to Him as if He were
some kind of Santa Claus and outright demanded Jesus to do for them
whatever they asked of Him. Shocking, isn’t it? We do
it all the time. Like James and John we approach Jesus as if He
were some kind of servant and slave of ours given to do for us whatever
we ask of Him. We don’t care about what He wants for us;
it’s all about what we want for ourselves. My will be done,
not Thy will be done. Thus, we turn Jesus into a kind of genie,
who’s supposed to grant us our wishes. Oh, we may go
through all right kinds of religious exercises, thinking that such
things should soften Him up. We might pray much more fervently,
fast more, give more; we might even make vows and promises. But
in the end all of these things are just attempts at getting from Jesus
what we want.
The thing that James and John wanted from Jesus was
to sit at His right and His left in His glory. Here again, the
request is a product of sin, as only sin would make such a
request. Sin is only interested in glory for itself, and this is
what it seeks from the Lord. But in their sin James and John had
a misunderstanding of what it meant to sit on Christ’s right and
left in His glory. They thought it meant sitting in some
air-conditioned palace on thrones of gold with servants and slaves at
their beck and call catering to their every whim. For them,
reigning with Jesus meant power, earthly power, the power to subdue
others, so that their life could be as free from suffering and hardship
as possible.
But Jesus gently told these brothers that they
didn’t know what they were asking for. Jesus’ reign
isn’t about subduing others and making them His personal servants
and slaves. It’s about Him making Himself our servant and
slave by giving Himself into death on a cross for our salvation.
Jesus’ throne wasn’t made out of gold located in an earthly
palace somewhere. Rather, it was the cross on Calvary, where the
seats on His right and left were occupied by two thieves. There,
yes, Jesus would be reigning in glory, but this glory would be hidden
behind His suffering. It was a glory that was manifested in His
giving His life as a ransom for many.
So, Jesus asked James and John whether they were up
for this kind of glory. Would they be able to drink the cup of
suffering that He was to drink? Would they be able to be baptized
with the bloody baptism with which He was to be baptized? Their
response was as foolish as their request: “We
can!” Silly boys! Never tell Jesus you can do
anything! You’ll just be made a fool of. Worse than
that, make sure that, when you ask Jesus for something, you ask for
what He wants for you, not what you want from Him, and ask that His
will be done, not yours; otherwise, He might just give you what you ask
for. Given their “We can,” Jesus then told James and
John that they would indeed drink the cup that He would drink and be
baptized with the baptism with which He would be baptized. Both
of them suffered and died for their proclamation of Jesus. James
was put to death with the sword by Herod, and John was exiled on the
island of Patmos. And yet in this way they both got to
participate in the Lord’s glory and they did get to reign with
Him in His kingdom (only it was a kingdom that was not of this world,
and they didn’t get the glory of reigning with Him on His right
and His left at Calvary.)
Now, we’d come away with the wrong message if
we concluded that Jesus was just presenting Himself as an example for
James and John to follow, so that through their own suffering and death
they could earn the glory of God themselves. Jesus isn’t
teaching that, if you suffer and die in service to others just like He
did, you will achieve eternal life. That would be to negate what
Jesus says here that He came not to be served but to serve and to give
His life as a ransom for many. Jesus’ suffering and death
on the cross alone is your ransom. It alone sets you free from
your servitude and slavery to sin and the devil. In this way
Jesus is your servant and slave, but only because He made Himself to be
such for you, not in order to give you the things that you want, but to
grant you the things that you need. Dead in our trespasses and
sins as we come into this world, we don’t know what we
need. It’s all about what we want and what our felt needs
are. Jesus knows what we need, and that is to be ransomed from
sin, death, and the power of the devil. His suffering and death
alone could do that. And so He subjected Himself to these things,
in order that you might be set free. He drank the cup of
God’s wrath to the dregs for you and was baptized with a baptism
of blood, so that you might be delivered from suffering under
God’s wrath yourself.
For Christ’s sake we Christians are now free
people. We are as free as Jesus Himself. As the Apostle
Paul writes, God has “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us
with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...” Not
only are we free, but we reign with Christ right here and now.
Yet elsewhere Paul writes, “For you were called to freedom,
brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the
flesh, but through love serve one another.” Having been
freed by Christ from our slavery to sin and the devil, we are now to
make ourselves servants and slaves of one another. And that is
what Jesus means when He talks here about what kind of authority His
disciples have and what it will mean for them to be great. The
authority He gives them is to lay down their lives for one another,
just as He laid down His life for them, not in order to pay for their
own salvation, but to serve others in their need. In doing this
they will be called great by their Lord. But this life of living
for others and serving them will involve suffering and the cross, since
making ourselves slaves of another means dying to ourselves. For
this reason, we too should expect to drink the cup of suffering that
the Lord drank and be baptized with the baptism of the cross, just as
He was, because like Him we also no longer live to be served but to
serve.
Now, most people will appreciate it when we give of
ourselves to help them. But Christ’s disciples not only
have the call to serve others in their physical, temporal needs, but in
their need to be freed from their slavery to sin and the devil just as
we were. Christians are to serve their neighbors with the Gospel
about Jesus crucified and risen from the dead for their
salvation. This is a need, however, that people neither feel in
their hearts nor want to hear. And so Christ’s Church is
going to suffer the cross precisely because people reject the Gospel
and hate Jesus. Since the world persecuted Him, they will
persecute those who love Him.
But this is part of the glory of reigning with
Christ. We reign with Him now in this life as we partake of His
suffering and death, living in service towards others. But the
cross can no longer harm us, because Jesus has overcome it with His
resurrection, in which we also participate. And so we look
forward to reigning with Christ in the glories to come. After we
have born the cross a little while in this life, we’ll go to be
with the Lord in the new creation, where there will be no more
suffering and death ever again. There, as Jesus tells His
disciples, “He will dress Himself for service and have them
recline at table, and He will come and serve them.”
To reign with Jesus, then, is not something that we
came and requested of Him. Who would ask for the cross and for a
lifetime of servitude towards others? But this is a gift that has
been given you by Jesus Himself, who though He is Lord of all, humbled
Himself to serve and give His life as your ransom from sin, death, and
the power of the devil. You have been given the privilege of
reigning with Him here and now, as you live as He did in service
towards others, proclaiming His salvation to them, and then when this
life of cross-bearing is over, you will live and reign with Him forever
in His kingdom of glory. Serve as you have been served by the
Lord, and you will be called truly great by the greatest Servant-King
of all, your Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.