Jesus’ right-hand man

by Mathew Block

You can understand why the other disciples were angry. James and John had approached Jesus in secret and asked to be given authority above the rest. “Let one of us sit at your right,” they requested, “and the other at your left in your glory” (Mark 10:37).

The other disciples, we read, were “indignant” when they heard about all this (Mark 10:41). It’s not surprising. “What’s so special about James and John?” you can imagine them asking. “Why should they sit at Jesus’ left and right, and not me?”

In their place, we might ask the same. No one enjoys feeling overlooked. We want to be recognized for our good work and to be rewarded accordingly. So when our acquaintances advance in life while we’re left behind, we feel under-appreciated. Cheated, even. “What’s so special about them?” we mutter to ourselves. “I should be the one climbing up the ladder.”

It’s been a perennial problem for humanity since Adam and Eve: we want all the power and prestige we can get. And if we can’t “be as gods,” as the serpent once promised, then we’ll settle for having a throne next to God’s. We’ll be His right-hand man, just so long as we’re ahead of everyone else. Like James and John, we want a position of power and glory.

We want all the power and prestige we can get. And if we can’t “be as gods,” as the serpent once promised, then we’ll settle for having a throne next to God’s.

Glory. That’s what the text says: they wanted to reign with Christ “in His glory.” But Jesus frustrates James and John’s desires, just as He frustrates ours: “You don’t know what you are asking,” He tells them. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38). Rather pompously, they say they can. So Jesus continues: “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared” (Mark 10:39-40).

This isn’t the way it should be, of course—the disciples scheming to get ahead of one another. In fact, Jesus had explained all this before. One day the disciples were arguing about which one of them was the greatest. Jesus set them straight: “If anyone wants to be first,” He said, “he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35). And to illustrate “the all” of whom He is speaking, He then set a little child among them. Serve unimportant people like this, He told them—a far cry from the lofty works the disciples had been imagining for themselves a short time earlier.

See this article and more in the March/April 2014 issue of The Canadian Lutheran.

When James and John make their request for power, Jesus takes the time to teach the lesson once again—a rebuke to these two disciples, yes, but also a rebuke to the other disciples who were indignant with them. “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,” He explains, “and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42-45).

James and John wanted to reign with Christ in His glory; instead, they were told to become slaves. But if even disciples like this didn’t get to take their place at Jesus’ right and left, who did? For whom had these places ‘been prepared’? The answer comes a few chapters on, at Good Friday. “It was the third hour when they crucified him,” St. Mark writes. “The written notice of the charge against Him read: ‘The King of the Jews.’ And they crucified two robbers with Him, one on His right and one on His left.”

Here King Jesus is enthroned in His glory. But it is not glory the way we want it. It is bloody. It is brutal. It is the cross. This is humility beyond reckoning—God dying for unworthy sinners. Sinners like the robbers “enthroned” on His left and right. Sinners like the disciples who envied those thrones. Sinners, in fact, like you and me.

Here King Jesus is enthroned in His glory. But it is not glory the way we want it. It is bloody. It is brutal. It is the cross.

At the cross, all sin is forgiven—including our self-serving chasing of power. What is more, Christ’s resurrection from the dead promises us we have no need to chase power, to worry about climbing the ladder; God has already bent down to pick us up. We don’t need to scheme to get near His throne; He’s already reserved a place for us in His eternal Kingdom.

So what do we do in the meantime? We do as Jesus told us, as James and John themselves learned to do: serve others. The cross freed them of the need to earn a place in Heaven. It freed them to look outward—to serve others with the mercy they themselves had received.

As Jesus promised, James and John indeed drank from the same cup He had. They suffered many things for the Gospel, and were respectively the first and last of the Apostles to die. Theirs were lives of service to others inspired by the Good News of Christ, without regard to their own suffering. Let us likewise live to serve others.

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Mathew Block is editor of The Canadian Lutheran and communications manager for Lutheran Church–Canada. He also serves as editor for the International Lutheran Council and blogs with First Things.

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