NOTES for Mar 10:32
The apostles' path after Christ was not easy. And 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 God's people had so long awaited.
But this Messiah acted in some completely mysterious and incomprehensible way. The apostles were people of their time; they expected from the Messiah the same thing that most of their contemporaries expected: He was to begin the messianic war against the Gentiles, 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. Something else horrified them: the fact that Jesus precisely was not going to do any of what they expected from Him. Moreover, He spoke with them more and more often about the death awaiting Him. And this was already completely incomprehensible.
Of course, in the prophetic books the image of the suffering Messiah is present, and everyone knew it perfectly. But this image was usually interpreted in the sense that the Messiah might have to suffer precisely during the messianic war, and the measure of His sufferings would depend on the sinfulness and uncleanness of those who were near Him. But no one thought or spoke about the Messiah's death. It was presumed that after all the sufferings the Messiah would eventually come out of the war victorious and at last become King of His Kingdom, which, however, was perceived as a completely earthly phenomenon.
If the Messiah died, it would be an utterly inconceivable cosmic catastrophe: then it would turn out that God's plan for the deliverance of the people and the building of God's Kingdom had collapsed. Yet Jesus, meanwhile, says again and again that He is going to Jerusalem not for victory and not for triumph, but for death. His disciples had reason to be horrified. But they still follow Him, because there is no other road left for them. They go into the unknown after the Teacher.