Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. For 2,000 years Christians have seen in those words, and in that whole passage of the Hebrew prophecy of Isaiah, the redeeming work for humanity of Jesus Christ, who said of himself – as we heard in the Gospel – the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
The appropriation by the Church of Hebrew texts such as that of our first reading today, and the Christian interpretation given to them, often draws criticism. Clearly, written hundreds of years before his birth as it was, this passage from Isaiah was not intentionally about Jesus of Nazareth. It dates from a period in which the Israelites were beginning finally to return to Jerusalem after a period of exile and captivity. So the first hearers of this prophecy might have seen themselves as having been ‘cut off out of the land of the living’ and ‘stricken’. And yet this lofty poem – one of four ‘servant songs’ in Isaiah – refuses any conclusive identification of just who its so-called ‘righteous servant’ really is. Yet for Christians, this ‘servant song’ fits beautifully with the saving life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Very quickly the early church recognised this ‘servant’ as Jesus, who in his Passion was ‘despised and rejected by men’, silent before his accusers and condemned unjustly to death.
So in the light of this mature Christian understanding of Christ as the Servant King, we may wonder just how the sons of Zebedee – James and John – could get it so wrong? How could they ask Jesus to grant them ‘whatsoever they’ should ‘desire’, and when asked by him what they would have him do, to blurt out Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory? It’s easy for us to see these two brothers as naïve and self-centred, and even to enjoy a frisson of spiritual superiority, convinced that we would never seek after anything so crass! But a consideration of the circumstances that all the disciples were in at this time might moderate our judgement. Firstly, at this point in the Gospel, Jesus’ ministry was in the ascent, with his charismatic teaching, his dramatic healings and exorcisms. The disciples were already basking in his reflected glory, and it must have seemed that his success and popularity could only increase without limit. Intoxicated by this meteoric rise they were all deaf to Jesus’ quiet repeated insistence that eventually he would be arrested and killed before rising again. Ironically, in the verses immediately before this scene in Mark, Jesus has again been telling of the things that would happen to him, before these brothers makes their request. The reaction of the other ten to their request – of competitive outrage – is not much more commendable; indeed, in the previous chapter, Jesus has had to intervene when all the disciples have been arguing with each other as to which of them was ‘the greatest’.
There’s also the possibility that Jesus himself might be seen to have triggered such a presumptuous desire in James and John to sit on his right and left hand. In certain episodes of the Gospel these two were selected out of the larger group by him, along with Simon Peter, to be privy to key moments – one of these being the experience of the Transfiguration recounted, again, in the previous chapter of Mark, when at the top of a high mountain Jesus’ ‘raiment became shining’ before them, and ‘exceeding white’.
Maybe Jesus recognised in Peter, James and John a particular appetite and zeal for the divine truth and reality he wished to share with them – things that they could not, however, process all at once. In jostling for position as all the disciples did – despite living in the presence, and learning at the feet of Jesus himself, they were playing the world’s game and revealing a human streak known to us all. Jesus alludes to this powerfully in his lesson to them at the end. When he says ‘Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles [literally, those who ‘seem’ to rule…] exercise lordship over them’ he’s setting up the starkest contrast between worldly ways and the values of his kingdom: But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: 44And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.
The early Church father John Chrysostom remarks that in the way he couches his question to these brothers – can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? – Jesus is appealing to their natural desire to be one with him. When they answer ‘we can’ he promises them that they will in fact do both. James was indeed to be one of the earliest Christian martyrs.
In the light of Jesus’ teaching we will not want to ask of him what James and John did, but to pray that we may be one with him. To that end, the prayer of St Richard of Chichester might be appropriate: ‘Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me. O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother, may I know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly, day by day’. Amen.