by Mark Stenberg
Gospel Reading: Mark 10:35-45
For Sunday, October 21, 2012: Year B—Ordinary 29
So very often the hard questions come easy. But this text has so much beauty and subversive grace, so much mind-bending theology of the cross about it all. So much to sit back and receive. And so little to question.
- James and John so painfully missing the point about everything Jesus has ever said to them.
- the magical thinking of the buffoonish brothers "promise you'll do whatever we ask, before we ask it."
- the ominous foreshadowing about the violent end that many of the disciples will meet.
- the ridiculous jealousy and rivalry of the other 10 disciples.
- the dark Markan irony and its kickass visual-spatial imagery (in case you don't get it, James and John think they are asking to rule in power with Jesus but they are really asking to hang on the crosses that flank his right and left sides when Jesus enters "his glory").
- Mark's defiant dig at the Roman Empire "among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants."
- the simple but visionary ethic that Jesus' sets in opposition to Roman power and might: "whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all."
How about the "R" Word?
It's temping to make the hardest question about the last line: "The Son of Man came to...give his life as a ransom for many." The ransom language has so stunted our imagination regarding the atonement. But that would be a question that is more about the later tradition and not inherent in this text. You can't swing a dead cat without finding a competent Mark scholar who will unpack this and draw out the clear the distinction between Jesus' meaning and the later wranglin' over the atonement by the church Fathers.
Slavery: Rhetoric and Reality
Instead, however, I'm going with this: Are we really called to be servants and slaves?
These words come as a rhetorical shock, jolting us toward another Gestalt, as Mark is want to do. But what happens when a powerful rhetorical move becomes a justification for human wickedness? And so, given all that is clear and true about this text, for me, today, the question that comes closest to provoking rich dialectic banter has to do with slavery.
Jesus teaches: "whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all." You could argue that the horrifying justification of slavery in Christian history has more to do with misinterpretation and later tradition than the text itself. I mean, it's hard to read Jesus' teachings in Mark and come away with an outright justification for slavery. But couldn't the gospel of Mark have been just a tiny bit more explicit about the issue of slavery?
The Hardest Question
Why doesn't Jesus explicitly condemn and denounce the practice of slavery in the gospel of Mark?
Mark Stenberg is a trained academic theologian who got side-tracked planting churches. He started House of Mercy House of Mercy, with co-pastors Debbie Blue and Russell Rathbun in 1996 and ten years later he left that call to launch Mercy Seat Lutheran Church along with his current colleague, Kae Evensen. Mark holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University where he studied philosophy with the likes of Jürgen Habermas. He is also an adjunct professor at Luther Seminary, teaching in homiletics and in the D.Min. program. Mark lost his spouse to cancer in March of 2007 but is profoundly grateful for every moment he gets to spend with his amazing children, Angela and Mateo.
