Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptised with?’ (Mark 10: 38) … an icon of Christ in an antique shop in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)Patrick Comerford
Next Sunday, 17 October 2021, is the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XX), with the Liturgical Provisions for Proper 24.
The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland are:
The Continuous readings: Job 38: 1-7 [34-41]; Psalm 104: 1-10, 26, 37c; Hebrews 5: 1-10; Mark 10: 35-45.
The Paired readings: Isaiah 53: 4-12; Psalm 91: 9-16; Hebrews 5: 1-10; Mark 10: 35-45.
There is a link to the readings HERE.
Introducing the readings
We all come to God with our own bundle of questions, and the answers sometimes take us aback not only in content but also in form and experience.
Job has had deep and searching questions. But when the response comes Job’s experience is very unlike that of Elijah who finds the Lord is not in the wind, in the earthquake, or in the fire, but in the ‘still small voice’ (I Kings 19: 11-13).
Job answers God out of the whirlwind, and poses very real questions to God. Where Job hears the voice of God has many resonances with the presence of God found in the Psalm.
In the paired first reading, the Suffering Servant’s silence in the face of humiliation is a profound response to suffering in the world.
In the paired psalm, God responds to the faith and trust of his servant with profound promises of protection.
In the Epistle reading, we are reminded that the saving presence of God can be found too in suffering and sacrifice … God who responds gently to the ignorant and wayward through the suffering and sacrifice of Christ who is the great high priest.
Do we understand the place of suffering and challenge in discipleship? Certainly James and John show little understanding of the demands of discipleship that lay before them as they come to Christ with their own questions and expectations. But, once again, when we those questions we receive answers we may not expect.
Being a disciple, and being a serving Church, calls us to put aside our egos, demands and expectations, and look instead to the need of those the Church is sent to serve.
Job 38: 1-7 (34-41):
Job has complained of God’s indifference and injustice to him. He has asked why his misfortune happened. He has pleaded that God hear him and answer him. Now God, appearing in a whirlwind, answers Job by asking him a series of rhetorical questions.
● Who are you to doubt, in your ignorance, the sum total of my plans and works? (verse 2-3).
● Were you present at creation? (verses 4-5)
● Do you know your way around God’s creation? (verses 5-7)
● Would you know how to operate it? (verses 34-35)
● Would creation and creatures obey your commands? (verses 34-38) Even if you gave the right orders, would they be carried out?
● Are you capable of caring for and providing for the animals and the birds as the creator does? (verses 39-41)
At first, Job and his friends thought they understood the world. Now Job is about to realises that he does not understand at all, and his complaint against God is about to evaporate.
Isaiah 53: 4-12:
This reading is the concluding portion of the fourth of the four Servant Songs in Isaiah (Isaiah 52: 13 to 53: 12). The other three Servant Songs are: Isaiah 42: 1-4; Isaiah 49: 1-6; and Isaiah 50: 4-11. This fourth poem is interpreted as a description of the purpose of God’s people, the covenant community.
Unlike Jeremiah or Job, the Suffering Servant here suffers silently. He is unjustly condemned, executed, and ignominiously buried.
But verses 10-12 see in the suffering of the Servant the manifestation of God’s judgment and mercy, and the Servant brings blessing to many.
Psalm 104: 1-10, 26, 37c:
The former Chief Rabbi, the late Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, says the along with Genesis 1 and Job 38-41, Psalm 104 is ‘one of the supreme celebrations of creation’ in the Hebrew Bible.
He identifies a profound difference between thesereligious texts and scientific cosmologies: ‘They speak in poetry, not prose; they express wonder rather than casulal explanation; and they testify to the goodness of the world and its creator rather than to blind, indifferent forces.’
The creation account in Psalm 104 is consistent with that of Genesis 1, though it is structured differently because the Psalmist wishes to emphasise the beauty and grandeur of creation rather thanthe order in which it emerged.
Psalm 104 is a hymn of praise to God the creator, creator of the heavens and the earth (verses 5-9). God is wrapped in light, the waters above (the skies) are his heavenly dwelling and the rains, the winds and the fire (thunder and lightning) are his messengers and servants, so that we depend on God for our very existence.
What emerges above all is signalled by the beginning and the end: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul’ (verses 1 and 35). Despite the vastness of the universe and the infinity of its Creator, God is close, he hears prayer, he attends to the human voice. This is the song of one at home in the world, awed by its beauty, trusting in the graciousness of the existence of God.
Note: The Church of Ireland Lectionary and Diary give this reading as Psalm 104: 1-10, 26, 37c. But many lectionaries on lecterns in parish churches will give this reading as Psalm 104: 1-9, 25, 37b. This is because the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer in the Church of Ireland are not the NRSV or NRSVA translations, and the numbering is different in many places for the verses. The parallel verses in the NRSV and NRSVA for this reading are: Psalm 104: 1-9, 24, 35b.
This means care and attention are needed when copying and pasting for service sheets, and care in deciding whether to follow the Psalm in the Lectionary, in Bibles or in the Book of Common Prayer.
Psalm 91: 9-16:
Psam 91 is known as the Psalm of Blessing. It is a prayer for protection from danger and harm, and uses many images for God's protection.
The speaker in the first half (verses 1-8) is human; the speaker in the second half is God himself (verses 9-16).
The speaker says those who trust in God, God is shelter and shadow (verse 1), refuge and stronghold (verse 2). He protects us beneath his wings and encircles us like a shield (verse 4). When we are in distress God is with us (5-8), when we are in danger, we are not alone (verses 5-8).
In this reading, God responds to the faith and trust of the psalmist with promises of protection, salvation, deliverance, honour and long life.
‘Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was … designated by God a high priest’ (Hebrews 5: 5, 10) … an icon from Mount Athos of Christ as the King of Kings and Great High Priest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)Hebrews 5: 1-10:
In the verses immediately before this reading, the author of this epistle tells us: ‘Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need’ (Hebrews 4: 14-16).
Christ comes into the world as the King of Kings and as the Great High Priest.
But he comes not as the sort of king that we would expect a king to be, nor as a great high priest full of pomp and self-importance.
The author writes as though the Temple sacrifices still exists. People have a high priest to lead the worship of God on their behalf, especially offering gifts and sacrifices for sins. He did not appoint himself, but was appointed by God, as Aaron was.
A high priest could steer a right path between pure emotion and lack of feeling, was able to deal gently with those who sinned because he himself sinned in the same way and shared the same weaknesses, and so needed to make sacrifice for his own sins too.
Christ was also appointed by God – at his baptism, when God said: ‘You are my Son …’ (Hebrews 5: 5; see Psalm 2:7; Luke 3: 22).
Verse 6 also quotes the Psalms: ‘The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek’ (see Psalm 110: 4).
Melchizedek was the Canaanite priest who brought bread and wine to Abram, and blessed him. Christ is like a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (verse 10) because of his suffering, death and resurrection. His sacrifice is perfect and complete and he is an eternal priest, offering salvation forever to all who are obedient and faithful.
Mark 10: 35-45:
Earlier in this Gospel (Mark 9: 33-34), the disciples argued about which of them is the greatest. Now two members of the inner circle ask a favour of Jesus: they seek positions of special dignity at the heavenly banquet at the end of time (verse 37).
Unlike some other Gospel accounts, Saint Mark dismisses the idea that these Sons of Thunder needed their mother’s help to ask for a special place for them. According to Saint Mark, these two go straight to Jesus themselves. They have a special request, a special demand, a special favour to ask for.
They want one to sit at his right hand, and the other at his left.
In the Gospel reading (Mark 10: 35-45), I can identify with James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Whenever I read this Gospel story, I think back to my childhood days. I remember all those preparations for football matches, as we lined up to pick sides. And how we all wanted to be among the first to be picked for a team.
Everyone wanted to be picked first, everyone wanted to line up there beside one of the two captains, no-one wanted to be picked last, even when there were enough places for everyone to get a game.
I can still see them: 9- or 10-year-old boys, jumping up and down on the grass, waving our hands or pointing at our chests, and pleading: ‘Me, me, please pick me, I’m your friend.’
‘Me, me, please pick me.’
And then when we were picked how we wanted the glory. Slow at passing the ball, in case I might not score the goal. Better to lose that ball in a tackle than to pass it to someone else and risk that someone else scoring the opening goal or, worse still, the winning goal.
And that is who James and John remind me of: wanting to be picked first, wanting to be the first to line up beside the team captain, being glory seekers rather than team players.
No wonder the other ten were upset when they heard this. But they were upset, not because they wanted to take on the servant model of priesthood and ministry. They were upset not because James and John had not yet grasped the point of it all. They were upset because they might have been counted out, because they might have missed out being on the first team, on the first XI.
And their upset actually turns to anger.
Did James and John think that opting to follow Jesus, becoming disciples, was a good career move?
And what did James and John want in reality?
They wanted that one would sit on Christ’s right hand and the other on his left.
Now, even that might not have been too bad an ambition. The man who stood at the right hand of the Emperor in the Byzantine court was the Emperor’s voice. What he said was the emperor’s word. And so, in the creed, when we declare our belief that Christ sits at the right hand of the Father, we mean not that there is some heavenly couch on which all three are seated, comfy and cosy, as if waiting to watch their favourite television sit-com.
When we say that Christ ‘is seated at the right hand of the Father,’ we mean that Christ is the Word of God. In some way, I suppose, this is what Andrei Rublev was trying to convey in his icon of the Visitation of Abraham, his icon of the Holy Trinity.
In that icon, the Father and the Spirit are seated to the right and left of the Son. Indeed, in that icon, Christ is wearing not the elaborate high-priestly stole of a bishop, but the simple stole of a deacon at the table.
For James and John to want to be seated at the right and left of Christ in his glory – not when they were sitting down to a snack, or travelling on the bus, or even at the Last Supper, but in his glory (see verse 37) – they were was expressing an ambition to take the place of, to replace God.
But to be like God means to take on Christ’s humility, as we are reminded in the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews.
We are made in the image and likeness of God, and then God asks us, invites us to return to that image and likeness when Christ comes in our image and likeness – not as a Byzantine emperor or Roman tyrant, but just as one of us.
Wanting to be first, wanting to be noticed by those with power and privilege, is not a model for discipleship or for ministry.
In a sermon almost 400 years ago on Whit Sunday 1622, the Caroline Divine Lancelot Andrewes says all three orders of ministry – bishop, priest and deacon – depend on the one ministry of service, diakonia, through which they truly become a ‘ministry or service; and that on foot, and through the dust; for so is the nature of the word.’
In his epistles, a word that Saint Paul uses for ministry is διακονία (diakonía), the ministry of the διάκονος (diákonos), the one who serves like those who wait on tables, the ministry of those who help meet the needs of and remind us of those who are neglected and needy by either collecting or distributing charity and making sure they are fed.
The word liturgy (λειτουργία, leitourgía) is the work for and of the people. But, in its truest sense, this is not the work of nice people, good people, people like us, but in its crudest use in Greek the work of the many, the service of riff-raff, even the beggars.
I was reminded in Crete a few years ago that The Beggars’ Opera translates into Greek as Η λαϊκή όπερα (laikí ópera). The true laity are the needy with outstretched arms.
The liturgy of the Church only becomes a true service when we also serve the oppressed, when we become God’s ears that hear the cry of the poor, and act on that, when through the Church Christ hears that cry of the bruised and broken.
Deacons are to encourage all – including archbishops, bishops, priests and laity – to take stock again, to move from merely acting out the liturgy to making the Church a sacrament, a taste, a sign, a token of the promise of, a thirsting for the Kingdom of God.
To do this great task, as the ambitious pair in this Gospel reading, James and John, are reminded that they must first be deacons, servants and slaves. We could translate the Greek original of verse 43 (ἀλλ' ὃς ἂν θέλῃ μέγας γενέσθαι ἐν ὑμῖν, ἔσται ὑμῶν διάκονος) as: ‘and whoever wishes to become great among you must be your deacon.’
To be a great Church we must be a Servant Church, a deacon Church, ‘For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for [the] many’ (Mark 10: 45).
All of us in the Church as disciples are called first and foremost to serve. And when we serve the people, when in obedience we meet them in their suffering, then we can hear their cries and their prayers and truly serve them in the services of the Church and in the Divine Liturgy (see Hebrews 5: 1-10).
Christ asks us that in this Gospel reading. Are we willing to drink the cup that he drinks, or to be baptised with his baptism (see verses 38 and 40)?
Of course James and John were. See how this hot-headed pair, the sons of Zebedee, went on to serve the community of the baptised and the community that shared in the one bread and the one cup, the community that is the Church, the community that in baptism and in the shared meal is the Body of Christ.
Saint James – not James the Brother of the Lord, whom we remember on the following Saturday (23 October 2021), but James the Great – was executed by the sword and became one of the first Christian martyrs (see Acts 12: 1-12).
Saint John too lived a life of service to the Church: he was exiled on Patmos, and although he died in old age in Ephesus, there were numerous attempts to make him a martyr. And, of course, he gave his name to in the Johannine writings in the New Testament.
Martyrdom comes in many forms. In essence, the word martyr means witness. But the first step in martyrdom is dying to self, to self-ambition, to self-seeking, to self-serving. Our lives must be lives that are testimony tor witness o your most cherished beliefs, testimony to Christ himself.
‘For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many’ (Mark 10: 45).
Mark 10: 35-45 (NRSVA):
35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ 36 And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ 37 And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ 38 But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ 39 They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’
41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’
Liturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour: Green (Ordinary Time, Year B)
The Collect:
Almighty God, whose Holy Spirit equips your Church with a rich variety of gifts:
Grant us so to use them that, living the gospel of Christ
and eager to do your will,
we may share with the whole creation in the joys of eternal life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect of the Word:
God of unchangeable power,
when the heaven and earth were made,
the morning stars sang together
and the host of heaven shouted for joy:
open our eyes to the wonders of creation
and teach us to use all things for good,
to the honour of your glorious name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
God our Father,
whose Son, the light unfailing,
has come from heaven to deliver the world
from the darkness of ignorance:
Let these holy mysteries open the eyes of our understanding
that we may know the way of life, and walk in it without stumbling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Suggested Hymns:
Job 38: 1-7 (34-41):
581, I, the Lord of sea and sky
29, Lord of beauty, thine the splendour
174, O little town of Bethlehem
34, O worship the King all-glorious above
369, Songs of praise the angels sang
35, The spacious firmament on high
Psalm 104: 1-10, 26, 37c:
250, All hail the power of Jesus’ name
6, Immortal, invisible, God only wise
34, O worship the King all-glorious above
35, The spacious firmament on high
Isaiah 53: 4-12:
215, Ah, holy Jesu, how hast thou offended
404, Broken for me, broken for you
259, Christ triumphant, ever reigning
219, From heav’n you came, helpless babe
268, Hail, thou once-despisèd Jesus
417, He gave his life in selfless love
671, Jesus, thy blood and righteousness
273, Led like a lamb to the slaughter
231, My song is love unknown (verses 1-3, 7)
673, O Christ, our hope, our hearts’ desire
234, O Love divine, what hast thou done?
235, O sacred head, surrounded
239, See, Christ was wounded for our sake
20, The King of love my shepherd is
Psalm 91: 9-16:
66, Before the ending of the day
322, I bind unto myself today (verses 1, 6, 8-9; verses 1, 2, 8 and 9 available on Recorded Church Music)
553, Jesu, lover of my soul
366, Praise, my soul, the King of heaven
595, Safe in the shadow of the Lord
372, Through all the changing scenes of life
Hebrews 5: 1-10:
259, Christ triumphant, ever reigning
226, It is a thing most wonderful
652, Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us
227, Meekness and majesty
177, Once in royal David’s city
291, Where high the heavenly temple stands
Mark 10: 35-45:
684, All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine
517, Brother, sister, let me serve you
294, Come down, O Love divine
319, Father, of heaven, whose love divine
219, From heav’n you came, helpless babe
417, He gave his life in selfless love
523, Help us to help each other, Lord
419, I am not worthy, holy Lord
495, Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love
96, Jesus is Lord! Creation’s voice proclaims it
589, Lord, speak to me that I may speak
231, My song is love unknown
135, O come, O come, Emmanuel
214, O Love how deep, how broad, how high
366, Praise, my soul, the King of heaven
244, There is a green hill far away
247, When I survey the wondrous cross
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
The hymn suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)
Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.
Updated and corrected: 16 October 2021 (Collect and Post-Communion Prayer corrected)
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