NOTES for Mar 10:32-45

The question of primacy periodically came up in the disciples' conversations among themselves, coming up again and again. They undoubtedly still imagined the Kingdom as entirely earthly, and in every earthly state, even one established by God, there is a king and there are those close to him. They naturally saw their Teacher as the King, since they had no doubt about His messiahship, but who would be among those close to Him? All twelve, that is clear, but someone would turn out to be among the closest; someone would sit at the King's right hand, and someone at His left.

That is how it had been in every age and in every state, and the apostles simply could not yet imagine the Kingdom in any other way. These conversations are especially remarkable against the background of Jesus' account of the sufferings and death awaiting Him. The disciples seem not to notice the Teacher's words, although in reality they simply do not hear Him, as a person often does not hear what does not fit into his consciousness. Jesus again and again tries to explain to them that in the Kingdom, which entered the world together with Him, everything is not as it is in the earthly kingdoms of the fallen world.

He says directly to the disciples: in the fallen world rulers strive for power above all, and for power not so much over bodies as over the souls of those whom they want to rule. Power in the fallen world is a way to take other people for oneself, their lives, their souls, so that afterward they belong to the ruler, and he can dispose of them at his own discretion, just as anyone is free to dispose of himself, his own soul, and his own life. The Kingdom is arranged differently; there the question of power, or rather of what there corresponds to the concept of power in the earthly sense, is the question of service.

To the extent that a person is ready to be the slave of all, to that extent he has power, in the special sense of the word, the sense in which it is applicable to the relations of the Kingdom. This is about slavery in the patriarchal form in which it existed among the Jews, when a slave was effectively a member of the household, but without rights. A slave claimed nothing in the house, but he lived in it and used everything in the house that the other members of the household used. In some cases he could even inherit from the master of the house.

A household slave worked as slaves always worked, without counting the cost and without demanding payment. In return he received as much as he needed, since he had no fixed wages. This is the position toward others that is adequate from the standpoint of the relations that bind the inhabitants of the Kingdom to one another. In the fallen world, of course, nothing like this can exist, but Jesus orients the disciples precisely toward the relations of the Kingdom, at least when it comes to their relations with Him and with one another.