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Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost — October 20, 2024

In Mark 10:35-45, Jesus flips the script on power and status, calling us to serve, not seek seats of glory. How can we resist today’s systems of domination? Teri McDowell Ott reflects on Jesus’ radical call to community and humility.

A graphic with a picture of Teri McDowell Ott behind a lectern in a church and the words "Looking into the Lectionary."

Mark 10:35-45
Year B

Years ago, I fought for a seat next to famed Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor.

At a small conference where she was the keynote speaker, a group of us hatched a plan to eat lunch with Barbara — a women-only table. The flaw in our plan: no one told the men, eager to sit with Barbara as well. We women went through the buffet line, trailing Barbara carefully, staying close so we wouldn’t lose her, as our pack leader guarded six seats around one round table. But as soon as Barbara set her tray down, two men swooped in. “May we join you?” Barbara, of course, said yes, while the rest of us exchanged eyes full of daggers, resenting these men for intruding on “our” seats.

I’m embarrassed by this memory now, the seating game we adults play that harkens back to the school cafeteria, the place we all learned the rules. Where you sit and with whom matters.

James and John should have been embarrassed, too. Their ambition got the best of them as they ask Jesus for special seats next to him in glory. Matthew and Luke rework this story from Mark, perhaps attempting to make these disciples look better. In Matthew’s version, the mother of James and John requests the honor on behalf of her sons (Matthew 20:20). Luke avoids specifics, boiling the story down to a “dispute” among the disciples (Luke 22:24). No matter the version, these disciples should know better, and Jesus says as much. “You do not know what you are asking” (Mark 10:38). Jesus isn’t interested in who is great and who will be glorified. He wants to know who will serve humbly, and who will sacrifice for the good of God’s people.

This passage in Mark reminds us of Jesus’ purpose: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45). Beyond personal sacrifice and humility, Jesus preaches a gospel that counters the “rulers” who “lord over” others and the “great ones” who act as “tyrants.” In his book Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Walter Wink writes about this young carpenter from Galilee who “revealed to the world God’s domination-free order of nonviolent love.” This wasn’t a new message, according to Wink. Jesus, a Jew, follows this thread from portions of the Hebrew Bible that support a society built on values of partnership and cooperation, not dominance and violent coercion. Wink writes:

In [Jesus’] extraordinary concern for the outcasts and marginalized, in his wholly unconventional treatment of women (speaking to them in public, touching them, eating with them, even with harlots, above all, teaching them), in the seriousness with which he took children, in his rejection of the dogma that high-ranking men are the favorites of God, in his subversive proclamation of a new order in which domination would give way to compassion and communion, Jesus overturned the most rigidly upheld mores of his time.

His time — and ours.

What Wink names the “Domination System,” the shaping of society by the competitive struggle for power, remains actively in play today. Evidence of this “Domination System” can not only be seen in the wars currently raging around the world, violent grabs for power and land, but also in our personal interactions. In this day of polarizing politics, we can’t even listen to differing views because we’re too busy trying to “win” the argument and dominate our opponent.

Mark 10:35-45 reminds us of the alternative Jesus offers. Jesus, who deliberately chose not to fight violence with violence, who went to the cross praying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing,” calls us to actively resist any human ordering that pits some over and above others. We are to resist greed, power grabs, and all forms of violence (physical, spiritual, psychological). We are to sit with Jesus at the table full of outcasts and loners, and work with him to build communities of belonging; a world where we don’t need to fight for seats of glory because everyone’s welcome at God’s table.

Questions for reflection

  1. What thoughts, ideas, images or feelings arose as you read this passage?
  2. Recall a time you entered a crowded room and needed to find a seat. What did this moment feel like? Where did you want to sit? With whom? Where did you end up sitting and why? Where would Jesus choose to sit?
  3. What examples of what Wink calls the “Domination System” can you identify in your community, in our nation, in our world?

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