Uphill to Jerusalem

“For the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mk 10:45)

Today’s gospel represents a peak in Jesus’ teaching, a focal point for every Christian, and place of return for each of us as we tend to drift from the source of our vocation and indeed of our existence.  But the story starts earlier than what we hear at Mass.  James and John’s request and Jesus’ response form an answer to an earlier question.  In Mark, Jesus predicts his passion and death three times, with ever growing intensity.  And each time, the disciples respond to his unspoken question – Do you understand?  Will you walk with me? – with confusion and an unspoken “No”.  Jesus in turn uses these moments to teach them more clearly what his identity as suffering Messiah means for them as his followers.  The first passion prediction, which we heard about a month ago, is immediately followed by Peter’s rebuke, and then by Jesus’ counter-rebuke and the teaching: “Take up your cross and follow me.”  The second passion prediction came to us just a week after the first, and this time the disciples did not understand and were afraid to ask.  Instead, they got into an argument about which of them was the greatest, to which Jesus responded by placing a child in their midst as a symbol of himself, and teaching: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.”

The passion prediction is omitted today.  Perhaps the liturgists felt it was overkill.  Perhaps the disciples – then and now – do to?  But the story that follows must be understood its context.

“They were on the way, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went ahead of them. They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.” (Mk 10:32)

I notice that they are said to be going up to Jerusalem, a standard phrase used even today to refer to the city on a hill, as well as its stature as the Holy City to which pilgrims ascend from all directions.  Going up to Jerusalem is a joyful thing.  The pilgrim sings: “I rejoiced when I heard then say, let us go to God’s house!” (Ps. 122:1).  But as Jesus strides ahead, those who follow are astonished, afraid.  So, they have understood something.  Jesus confirms this unspecified inkling of theirs with a third prediction of his suffering, death and resurrection.
We, too, can be discouraged by the uphill nature of our journey.  Something in us wants and expects life to be smooth, easy, undemanding.  I remember each summer in high school I worked in an ice-cream factory in a village two miles away from ours.  The terrain was demanding: our village was shaped like a funnel, so my daily bike-ride to work began with an uphill trek.  I would be struggling along, pedalling madly and sweating buckets, with the bus rolling effortlessly past me.  Then there was a plateau and a nice downhill ride, followed by another hill on the way into the next village.  The way home was reversed, beginning and ending with a downhill stretch, but with a killer of a hill in the middle.  It would take weeks for me to build up the strength to make it all the way without having to get off and push.  So, if you’ve heard an old-timer try to impress you by saying their walk to and from school was “uphill both ways,” in this case it was literally true!  It takes a firm resolve to commit to an uphill struggle, not only a sense of the goal to be reached (my weekly paycheck or the reward of a life well-lived), but also of the value of the process in shaping us (my developing physical fitness or being formed by life into the likeness of Christ).

“You do not know what you are asking.” (Mk 10:38)

The story moves seamlessly into James and John’s request.  They approach Jesus with a blank check for him to sign.  “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you” (Mk 10:35).  Perhaps something has been understood here too: that this one has power to grant what is asked.  Jesus’ question is only reasonable: “What is it you want me to do for you?” (Mk 10:36), but I find in it more than a lawyer’s prudence.  The question is asked openly, with genuine interest.  It is a question Jesus asks each of us.  “What is it you want me to do for you?”  Ask and you will receive.  Please ask – I am so ready to give you what you need.  Come on – ask, I dare you!

James and John ask for a share in his glory, and a public share at that – seats of highest honor at the right and the left of the Master.  Yes, they have understood something of who it is they are talking with.  And on some level, what they want is right and good – to be as close as possible to Jesus.  He tests their resolve: “Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mk 10:38).  “We can,” they say, and perhaps we are tempted to chuckle at their naivety.  But then, haven’t we also asked for a place of intimacy with Christ, haven’t we also pledged to follow him wherever he goes?  I can’t help thinking that Jesus is glad to be asked such a thing, his heart warmed by their hopeful assertion that they can walk with him the way of his passion, even though he needs to tell them that their desire for primacy and glory must be purified.

“The rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt.  But it shall not be so among you.” (Mk 10:42-3)

This teaching of Jesus reminds me of another text in which the gospel is crystallized into a powerful word of salvation.  The great Christological hymn contained in the Paul’s letter to the Philippians contains some of the same vocabulary and makes the same point.  In both texts we hear of humility, servitude and death being the way to exaltation, lordship and glory.  In both, there is a shocking expression of the willing abasement of Christ.

I have been joining the sisters in formation for a weekly zoom class with Fr Tom Stegman, SJ on the letters of St Paul.  When commenting on this passage from the letter to the Philippians, he emphasized that the text: “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped” (Phil 2:5-6) is more accurately rendered: “Christ Jesus, who, because he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.”  This is an important difference.  Rather than: “In spite of being in the form of God, he did not grasp at equality with God” Paul is saying: “Exactly because he was in the form of God, he acted in accord with God’s nature by not grasping at equality with God.”  God, by nature, does not grasp into his status or privileges, but empties himself, taking on the form of a slave, that is: human nature, and chooses to drink this cup of mortality to the dregs.

A few years ago, Dom Thomas Davis of Vina gave us a retreat in which he emphasized the abasement of Christ.  Our life, he said, leads us into a profound experience of the abasement of Christ.  This is how we fall in love with the God who emptied himself, who laid down his life, who became a ransom for all.  We promise to follow him to the end.  We think we know what we’re in for.  We don’t understand.  When it starts to happen, to us or to someone we know, we are astonished, afraid.  We may seek to deny it or avoid it in every way possible.  We want a pass through the abasement to the glory.  But this way, this laborious climb to Jerusalem is offered to us as a way of intimacy with Christ, a way of being formed into his likeness.  “We share now by patience in the passion of Christ, that we may also deserve to be sharers in his kingdom” (RB Prol. 50).

As Paul makes clear, and St Bernard underlines in his own words, it is not the suffering itself that is to be desired for its own sake, any more than the glory to be grasped after, but it is the mind of the one who suffered and was glorified.  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5).  “For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).  “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (Phil 2:3-4).  The fruitfulness of a life laid down in ransom lies in the gift of life to others, to those we have never met, and to those with whom we share our days.  Jesus invites us back to the source of our life and the life of the world.  Let us give delight to his heart, and to the hearts of others, but our embrace of his way of willing abasement.