“When we read the gospel of Mark we understand that there is an interesting dynamic in play. Mark has a primary audience for whom he writes, but he also understands that what he is writing will have a permanence to it. We don’t know if he necessarily recognized that his book would become a permanent part of New Testament canon, though he might have had an idea that some such thing would eventually come about. But he almost certainly believed that what he was writing would be copied and passed around among other churches—that it would become authoritative—and probably even intended for that to happen.
So Mark writes primarily for his target audience—the Christians in Rome. He writes secondarily for the wider Church of his day. And he writes also for the sake of posterity. And here we are nearly 2000 years later looking at what he wrote and it is possible to see a few things that must have been going on in Mark’s day. One of those things was the difficulty of proclaiming a crucified Messiah. How does one make sense of that? In other words, how can Jesus be, at one and the same time, the Blessed One and cursed? Or how can he be both King of kings and crucified on a Roman cross?
‘Crucified Messiah’ was an oxymoron to most Jews and almost blasphemous to assert. That’s why Paul called it a stumblingblock to the Jews. But he also called it foolishness to the Greeks. Why? Because how could power come about through weakness? How could defeat end in victory? How can exaltation come through humiliation?
Proclaiming that your God was crucified by the Romans was a pretty difficult public relations problem to work through. No wonder it was difficult to see or accept at the time. And this would be why Mark has recorded Jesus three different times in three succeeding chapters telling his disciples that he was going to be rejected, arrested, and executed. Mark wants his readers to understand that this difficulty is not something that came out of left field taking everyone by surprise. This was a part of the plan all along.
And no doubt this was all very difficult for the disciples to grasp as well, as they were ascending to Jerusalem, which is why Jesus keeps reminding them of it. What is about to happen is going to be so psychologically difficult they are going to have to have his words to remember and fall back on.
None of these things are as difficult for us, because to us it is old hat. It is what we already know to have happened and we had no Messianic expectations going in. But that wasn’t true for the twelve, nor for the others who lived in Jesus’ day. These false expectations are an obstacle for Jesus to overcome. So fresh off his third crucifixion announcement in three chapters, Jesus is confronted with this . . .”
What happens next is that James and John come and request a favor of Jesus. That request prompts a discussion of the kingdom and who will be greatest in it. In the answer Jesus gives we will be made to understand the economy of the kingdom and we will be reminded both of who is the greatest in the kingdom and what it is that makes him so great.
Below you will find a link to the audio page which contains an MP3 recording of this sermon. I hope you will take the time to listen. God bless.
Click here: Mark 10:35-45 - The Greatest In The Kingdom
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