The Cup He Drinks

Mark 10:35-45

October 20, 2024

 

A British television show that I absolutely love is The Vicar of Dibley. This is a British sitcom from the 1990’s about the first woman vicar to serve the small and slightly insane English village of Dibley. In the episode that I’m thinking of, Geri Granger, the vicar, has a sudden rise to fame. Her rise begins when she is asked to fill in as the last minute guest on a radio show. She accepts the invitation because she wants to talk about the importance of getting a nursery school started in the village; a worthwhile and important project which hopefully media attention will help make happen. But her performance on the show is hilarious, and she gets the attention, not the nursery. Geraldine is funny and wacky, much as she is every day, but this time a much larger group of people hear her. From that first appearance she’s asked to appear on all sorts of shows. 

Originally Geri promised herself and the church council that her media career would be temporary, again just a way to get the cause of the nursery school out to the public. She knows that her place is with her church, not as the BBC’s newest rising star. But the fame and the attention go to her head. It all culminates in an interview being done about her in one of the papers. Geri tells the members of the council that a reporter will be coming to the village to interview them about her. But it backfires. The story about the vicar gets forgotten and it instead becomes a profile on the other characters in the show. They are insulted, humiliated and just plain ridiculed. 

It’s horrible and embarrassing for the vicar and everyone else, and the rest of the episode is devoted to her willingness to make a public fool out of herself as an apology. The vicar has a shot at personal glory, and it doesn’t work out so well. To be fair, Geri did not go seeking glory, it came to her. But once she gets a taste of that fame, that glory, she can’t let go. 

In our passage from Mark’s gospel, James and John, the sons of Zebedee whom we first meet when Jesus calls them to be his first disciples, go to Jesus seeking glory through an intimate, but exclusive relationship with Jesus. One commentator describes the way they make their request of Jesus as being like a child to a parent.

“Dad I want you to do something for me.” And Jesus, like any good parent responds with, “Tell me what is first.” 

“’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?’” 

Their request was that they be allowed to sit at his right hand and his left when he is in his glory. There’s a sense of kingship and royalty to their request isn’t there? You get the image in your head of a king on this throne, with his two most treasured and important advisors on either side of him. I suspect that’s how James and John viewed Jesus’ glory – a great kingship. And maybe this view of his kingship would be understandable if Jesus had not spent so much time telling James, John, and the other ten disciples that he was not the messiah they thought they wanted. For Jesus, to be the messiah meant pain and suffering and death, then resurrection.

Now if James and John had never heard any of this before, we could perhaps understand why they go to Jesus with their request. But the truth is, they’ve heard these words from Jesus three times. The third passion prediction happens in the verses immediately preceding these. Jesus once again pulls the disciples aside and tells them what is going to happen to him. What’s more, the larger context of our passage is that they are on their way to Jerusalem. Jesus has his face set toward the great city, meaning he knows what will happen to him when he gets there. This makes their request even more audacious and in our modern parlance, tone deaf.

It seems that Jesus could plainly tell these disciples a hundred times what is about to happen to him, what must happen to him, and they still would not get it. They still misunderstand him, and their misunderstanding seems willful at this point. I don’t care what Jesus says about his death and resurrection, I am just going to refuse to understand him.

But Jesus’ response to James and John does not read like a rebuke. Instead, I hear compassion in what he says to these two misguided disciples.

“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?”

James and John reply with a resolute, “We are able.” 

Jesus replies in the affirmative. Then you will drink this cup, and you will be baptized with this baptism. But I can’t tell you who will sit at my right or my left. That’s not my privilege to grant. “It is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

I think that Jesus is reminding them that this privilege they seek may only be granted by God alone.

When the other ten hear about James and John’s request, they get angry. Clearly they were offended that James and John would go grabbing for glory and leave them out of it. What if James and John get the glory and they don’t?! How dare they try to push to the head of the pack and leave the rest of them hanging in the wind, on the outside rather than on the inside?!

Jesus then pulls them all aside, one more time, and tells them that the cup they think they’ll drink is power and glory and status and rank. But that is the cup the Gentiles drink, and among the Gentiles, there are tyrants and rulers that hold all the power, and those tyrants and rulers lord it over their subjects. But that’s not true for the disciples. If one of them wants to be great, then they must become a servant to everyone. If they want to be first, they must become a slave. The Son of Man came to serve, not be served. The Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many.

One commentator at WorkingPreacher.org said that folks get so caught up in this last line in verse 45 that the rest of the story tends to get glossed over. It’s a powerful image, indeed, to think of Jesus giving his life as a ransom for ours; to understand that if we read this literally, Jesus buys back our lives with his own. 

But what about that whole grasp for glory party at the beginning? How does that relate to us? How does that raise conflict and tension in our understanding of what it means to be disciples versus what it means to be successful? 

I realize it may be a stretch to make glory and success synonyms, but I think in this case it fits. The disciples, especially as Mark portrays them, had to battle their cultural understanding of the way things should be in contrast with the way Jesus said they were. A messiah was supposed to be strong, invincible, a warrior, someone who would come and whoop the oppressors. Following that, the messiah meant greatness and it meant glory. It meant power. Being the messiah should bring about praise and accolades. The messiah should receive nothing but adoration, flattery, and subservience. But Jesus turns all these cultural assumptions on their head. 

The Messiah has come to die. In his weakness, there will be strength. In his death there will be life. He did not come to lead a great uprising or a bloody revolt. His revolution comes in the form of love, and that love will turn the world upside down. Jesus has come to make the love of God and the kingdom of God visible. But guess what? That happens through suffering, through serving, through humility, through death. 

And that whole bit about glory and greatness that the disciples seek? You want to truly be great? You want true glory? Truly being great means being a servant, a slave. You want to be first? Then you must be last. 

None of this is easy for the disciples to hear. And no matter how many times Jesus told them the truth about being the messiah, that truth seemed incomprehensible, and impossible to live out and live into. But let’s be honest, even though our cultural contexts may be different, living out the truth of the gospel is no easier for us. We are bombarded with the message that success and greatness comes from being stronger and tougher and even more ruthless than everybody else. We are inundated with the idea that those who are famous, who are celebrities, who are power brokers and power influencers are the ones who are supposed to be on top, and not the other way around.  

In our culture, much like the culture that Jesus and the disciples lived in, our understanding of what it means to be successful is about winning and winning and winning some more. Glory equates to fame and fortune and power. Glory is something to strive for.

But when James and John come to Jesus seeking glory, Jesus tells them once again that they misunderstand what glory is and from where true glory comes. Gory is found not in fame or fortune. Glory is not found in power. Glory is found in the cup that he drinks. That cup holds the suffering and sorrow of the world. That cup holds the ignominy of a criminal’s death. The cup that Jesus drinks is the cup of death, but it is also the cup of life. James and John and the other disciples will eventually drink from that cup. And they will be baptized with the same baptism. But in this moment they don’t fully understand what it means. Maybe they just don’t want to understand. But one day they will.

One day they will understand that drinking from the same cup as Jesus means a life turned upside down. It means taking a place at the end of the line, going last so others can go first. It means serving others, not the other way around. It means being willing to suffer and die. But it also means that death does not have the final word. The cup that Jesus drinks is the cup of life, new life, full life, true life. The cup that Jesus drinks is the cup of the gospel, the cup of good news. Are we willing to drink from it too?

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.