Job 38:1-7 (34-41) or Isa. 53:4-12
Ps. 104:1-8, 25, 37b or Ps. 91:9-16
Heb. 5:1-10 • Mark 10:35-45

The account of the two disciples who want to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand is well known. When the other 10 hear of it, they are indignant, as one would expect — probably not for the brothers’ effrontery but because they hadn’t thought of asking first. Otherwise, perhaps, Jesus would not have provided the teaching that follows to all 12 of them. It is curious that Jesus’ rebuke is rather mild. He teaches about the true nature of godly service, and it is similar to what we read four weeks ago. But there is an element to Jesus’ teaching in this account that is often overlooked. When he asks James and John whether they can “drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized,” without any hesitation they answer, “We are able.”

Jesus assures James and John that they will indeed do so, without explaining what that will mean. It became clear later that it was a prediction of their future suffering for the gospel’s sake. James is the first among the disciples to suffer martyrdom. His brother John is, according to tradition, the only one who will not be martyred, but in his very long life he suffered persecution and experienced radical transformation. As is evident in the gospel that bears his name, he was changed from a “son of thunder” who asked Jesus if he should bring fire down from heaven upon an inhospitable Samaritan village into quite likely the finest theologian of all time.

The lesson from Isaiah describes woundedness, afflictions, and stripes suffered by one who is innocent, by which the guilty are healed. The psalm mentions stumbling stones, lions, adders, and other trouble, from which one is protected and delivered by God because “he had made the Lord God his refuge.” This theme of suffering by the innocent who is nonetheless delivered describes one facet of the “cup” that Jesus would drink.

The epistle text from Hebrews depicts Jesus as a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses, thereby giving us confidence to approach God despite our frailty. The disciples sought greatness from one who came down in humility, and they were right. Only their method and intentions were wrong. They learned later to find greatness by following the way that Jesus had blazed — a way of suffering for others to bring about the fruits of the gospel life.

Look It Up
In the middle of the lesson from Isaiah, it says that it was the will of the Lord to bruise his servant. What does that same passage promise to that servant who is bruised?

Think About It
Why does it feel good to help someone, even a stranger, at a cost to oneself?

Job 23:1-9, 16-17 or Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
Ps. 22:1-15 or Ps. 90:12-17
Heb. 4:12-16 • Mark 10:17-31

Jesus Christ is both priest and victim. He is truly divine and the true human being. He is from everlasting to everlasting, and he is a thin sliver of time. To see him, one has to see contrasts and intervening shades. So often in a Bible story, Jesus is both himself and one or more characters, the interchange of question and answer.

“As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him” (Mark 10:17). It is said that that the man “had many possessions.” Jesus, likewise, had many possessions, for he was filled with all the fullness of God and therefore lacked nothing. In the story, the man asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother” (Mark 10:19). The man, we learn, has kept these from his youth. Jesus has kept them from the timeless moment of eternity. Jesus is all wealth and he is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. The man fails, however, to mirror Jesus in the most important way. Jesus is poor. Following him requires poverty of spirit and detachment from the relative good of this world. “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven!”

Consider both the wealth and the poverty of Jesus. “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). Jesus has everything, and yet he gives it all to us through the power and ministration of his Spirit. “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13-15).

Jesus is all the wealth of divine life. The Spirit takes that treasure and gives it to us. So Jesus is stripped and naked, crucified and empty. Diminished to near nothingness, he passes through the eye of a needle into the kingdom of heaven of which he is the embodiment. And yet, giving all that he is and all that he has, the fount of divinity is not diminished. He is rich and he is poor.

What is it like to follow Jesus? At first we are rich with the clutter of our lives, until at last, by his command and grace, we leave it all aside. At the moment of faith and at the waters of baptism, we are stripped, buried, and marked with a cross. We seem to disappear. The life of Jesus, which is all that the Father has, pours out into the newly baptized. Is there a treasure greater than this? We are the poverty and wealth of Jesus. At first we are rich, at last we are poor. Being poor, we become rich with the abounding grace of God.

Look It Up
Read Hebrews 4:13-14.

Think About It
We are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one who sees and sympathizes, who gives grace and mercy in time of need.

Job 1:1; 2:1-10 or Gen. 2:18-24
Ps. 26 or Ps. 8
Heb. 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

Who will deliver us from this body of death? Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ who delivers us from the curse and sting of death, the trials of mortal existence, a sea of troubles, by hiding us in the sanctuary of his flesh. For the Word, he who is “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being,” became flesh (Heb. 1:3). He assumed forever our nature and flesh, and thus our deliverance will be, come what may, in the flesh. God will deliver us from this body of death by defeating death and thus restoring the body to an ordered and beautiful and exquisite existence. The body will then flow in the movement of grace without resistance, supple and free, light and nimble. Resurrected, it will still be a body, firm and sensory.

Behold what the Lord God has done. Having created the first human being from dirt and air, having given this person the power to name every living creature, God observes that the man is without a partner. Living and naming are not enough. The great physician goes to work, dripping the drug of sleep into the man. Then, opening his side, he pulls out a rib from which he forms a woman. The man sees that she “is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). They become one flesh; thus their differentiation returns to oneness. In this way they enter through their bodies into the mystery of communion.

Behold what Satan has done. Satan observes the body’s vulnerability. Satan speaks to the Lord: “Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 2:4-5). “So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (2:7). “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” Job asks (2:10), persisting in integrity.

Job is mythic patience for all of chapter one and chapter two, sitting in ashes, scraping himself with a potsherd, until, beginning in chapter three and continuing to the end of chapter 37, he says “Why?” and “How long?” and “If this is punishment, should it not fit the crime?” and “Why was I even born?” He feels this despair because wounds have been etched in his flesh. Job looks at himself and says, “This is my body, this is my broken body.” Then, the ending: “The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.” A riddle! Moral arguments fail! The just and righteous man suffers. Still, he is raised in the body.

What God has put together, let no one put asunder. “Let no one” is a jussive subjunctive, a real command acknowledging that “what God has put together” is continually threatened. Satan is going to and fro on the earth. Marriages that begin in love fail. So Jesus recalls the beginning of love, bodies made for union. This reminder will not itself save every marriage, but it will offer hope and strength to many in the time of trial. After addressing marriage, Jesus invites to himself “little children,” whom we may interpret as both the fruit of marriage and a title for the disciples themselves. Notice why people bring their children: “In order that he might touch them” (Mark 10:13). Touching them, Jesus thinks, “This is my body; for I created many worlds” (Heb. 1:2).

Look It Up
Read Psalm 26:12. Keep your feet securely on the ground.

Think About It
Not “This is my soul,” but “This is my body.”

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
or Num. 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Ps. 124 or Ps. 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Divine election presupposes an inescapable responsibility. A story is told. “This happened in the days of Ahasuerus, who ruled over one hundred twenty-seven provinces from India to Ethiopia” (Esther 1:1). Ahasuerus summoned Queen Vashti, “but Queen Vashti refused the king’s command” (1:12). Her refusal, if allowed, “would cause all women to look with contempt on their husbands” (1:17). Thus Vashti was never again to come before the king (1:19). Among the women in the king’s harem, a young virgin named Esther was brought before the king, and immediately “the king loved Esther more than all the other women” (2:17). The king did not know, however, that Esther and her cousin Mordecai, both of whom lived in the citadel of Susa, were descendants of those Jews whom King Nebuchadnezzar had carried away.

It came to pass that the king promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite to the highest position, and all the people “bowed down and did obeisance to Haman” but “Mordecai did not bow down or do obeisance” (3:2). Mordecai’s punishment would not be enough! Haman “thought it beneath him to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So, having been told who Mordecai’s people were, Haman plotted to destroy all the Jews” (3:6). With the king’s consent, an edict went forth to all the provinces, written in all the languages of the people, “giving orders to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children” (3:13). “When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went throughout the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry” (4:1).

Queen Esther, hearing that Mordecai wore sackcloth and cried before the king’s gate, sent royal garments to Mordecai. But Mordecai refused all consolation, and reported to Esther, through Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, all that had happened. Finally, in the midpoint of this tale, a fearful providence shone directly upon Queen Esther. “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this” (4:14). Finally, through the brave intervention of Queen Esther, “the Jews gained relief from their enemies” (9:22).

The queen’s question must give us pause, a query at the center of any responsibility, great or small. Perhaps we have been placed where we are placed for just such a time as this!

Occasionally the burden of authority is shared. “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel” (Num. 11:16). “Are any among you sick? They should call the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14). Even shared authority, however, will feel at times as if one is “salted with fire” (Mark 9:49). For there is no escaping the obligation to do what the occasion and providence require.

The call may be clear and welcome. It may be clear and fearful. It may not be clear at all, which is only to say that we are not always in a position to see and know with absolute certainty the moral and spiritual claims set upon us. Finally, we must trust that he who elects us calls us to an inescapable task.

Look It Up
Read Esther in a single sitting.

Think About It
Augustine: “What is man that thou art mindful of him? A mere particle of creation! And yet you call out to each, and give to each an irrevocable gift. Ours is to take it and live up to it, God being our helper. Providence has placed us.”

Prov. 31:10-31 or Wis. 1:16-2:1,12-22 or Jer. 11:18-20
Ps. 1 or Ps. 54
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37

Today’s readings from the Old Testament and their alternates testify to the diversity of wisdom in Scripture. Proverbs 31 and Psalm 1 describe the peace of soul that can result from a combination of obeying God and not eating any “bread of idleness.” However many Old Testament passages may cause 21st-century readers to worry about ancient cultures’ understanding of women, only a very determined hermeneutic of suspicion could perceive Proverbs 31 as anything other than a paean to a righteous wife.

Psalm 1 offers a recurring theme throughout wisdom literature: those who take counsel from God and his servants will find truth, while those who seek their wisdom from the ungodly will suffer folly.

But the alternate Old Testament readings show the other side of obedience: it often attracts the wrath of the ungodly. Those who reject God, or consider any thoughts of God simply delusional, can easily allow their hostile thoughts to become cruel actions. The prophets of old and the saints of today pose a threat to others. Ponder the basic facts of life in a fallen world: people make idols for themselves, whether of beauty, ideology, lust, power, wealth, or more unusual fixations. The mere presence of a godly person threatens those idols, because here is a fellow human being whose life contradicts all that the idolater has declared as central to a fulfilled life.

The result is an effort to destroy the threat. A guilt-ridden parishioner spreads a vile rumor about his rector; a gadfly journalist depicts Mother Teresa as a fraud; a bitter sociopath assassinates Martin Luther King Jr.; a mob of sinners (all of us, across time) calls for Jesus to be nailed to the cross.

This week’s New Testament readings point Christians toward the goal: wisdom and righteousness emerge if we resist our tendencies toward envy and ungodly ambition. Both the letter of James and the Gospel of Mark express astonishment that Christians would treat each other as competitors in a zero-sum game, as if any of us could gain the kingdom of God by dying with the most conquered territory or purloined objects of wealth.

There is no zero-sum economy in the kingdom of God. There are God’s good gifts, given through common grace and through the mysteries of God’s will, and there is our stewardship of the gifts that are all around us.

Without a childlike trust in God we have little hope of escaping the corrupting influence of this world’s shiny treasures. With that childlike trust, we can hold everything with an open hand, just as we are held in God’s hand, his wonders to perform.

Look It Up
Read Job 1 for a picture of a righteous man who suffers mightily but remains faithful.

Think About It
How many blessings do we take for granted amid the daily grind of life? Freedom, health, peace, wisdom. Do we convince ourselves that they are our birthrights or rewards for good behavior?