NOTES for Mar 10:32
The apostles' path after Christ was not easy. Not because they knew what awaited Him and them ahead, but precisely because they did not know. Of course, after Peter's confession none of them doubted that Jesus was the very Messiah promised by God, whom the people of God had awaited so much.
But this Messiah was acting in a completely mysterious and incomprehensible way. The apostles were people of their time; from the Messiah they expected the same thing most of their contemporaries expected: He was to begin the messianic war against the pagans, and therefore against Rome, win this war, restore, in fact create anew, a strong Jewish state founded on the laws of the Torah, and become king of this state.
If Jesus had acted this way, or at least intended to act this way, everything would have been clear to the apostles. Of course, the messianic uprising and the war that would inevitably follow it could not fail to frighten them. But the apostles were ready for this; the prospect of war as such would hardly have horrified them. What horrified them was something else: Jesus was precisely not going to do any of what they expected from Him. Moreover, He more and more often began speaking with them about the death awaiting Him. And this was now completely incomprehensible.
Of course, the prophetic books contain the image of the suffering Messiah, and everyone knew this image perfectly well. But it was usually interpreted in the sense that the Messiah might have to suffer precisely during the messianic war, and that the measure of His sufferings would depend on the sinfulness and impurity of those who would be near Him. But no one thought or spoke of the Messiah's death. It was assumed that after all the sufferings the Messiah would finally emerge from the war victorious and at last become King of His Kingdom, which, however, was perceived as a wholly earthly phenomenon.
If the Messiah died, it would be an utterly unthinkable cosmic catastrophe: for then it would turn out that God's plan for the deliverance of the people and the building of God's Kingdom had collapsed. And Jesus, meanwhile, again and again says that He is going to Jerusalem not for victory and not for triumph, but for death. His disciples had reason to be horrified. Yet they still go after Him, for there is no other road left for them. They go into the unknown after the Teacher.