The Twenty First Sunday after Trinity
“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’”
Summary
“The secret to becoming the greatest in God’s eyes is to become the servant of all. In Mark 10:35-45 Jesus once more intervenes as his disciples squabble over who is the best, reminding them that they like him, were sent to serve. Christians have often seen Jesus as the embodiment of the suffering servant we encounter in Isaiah 53:4-12; the one who suffers willingly for the sake of God’s people. But, whereas Isaiah sees sin and suffering as some big cosmic transaction where one person’s suffering can cancel out another’s sin, Jesus offers something radically different: the only way to end suffering is if all of us take responsibility for ending it. Like Isaiah, he insists that God is on the side of the oppressed but not because they are cancelling out sin but because God doesn’t want anyone to suffer, God wants everyone to flourish. We are not called to bear suffering stoically but to fight to end suffering not just for ourselves and our people but for all people. In the kingdom of God everyone’s needs are served because everyone is committed to service. Jesus replaces a transactional view of the world with a relational one: if one suffers, we all suffer. We are in it together.
First Reading
Isaiah 53:4-12
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
Out of his anguish he shall see light;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
GOSPEL
Mark 10.35-45
‘James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him 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.’
