Jesus, if you don’t mind, we’d like to talk with you about what you just said and ask a favor.

Sure guys, what’s on your minds?

About your plans, when it all comes about, if the two of us could be seated next to you, one of your right and the other on your left?

You have no idea what you’re asking! (Deep breath here. Do these guys ever hear what I tell them? Or is it they refuse to hear it like I tell them?) You think you’re able to go through what I’m about to do, bitter and heart wrenching as it will be? Do you think you’re able to be lowered down as in a baptism into the pain and suffering I’m going to go through?

Yeah, we’re able.

Yes, you will, but as to who gets to sit next to me, that’s fully up to God.

Jesus was likely at the point of exasperation. Three times now he’d told his men what was coming. It wasn’t pretty. Betrayal, torture, death. But they talk like some event-planners of a picnic! By now he was sickened if not sick of their arrogance, bravado, opportunistic ambition. All they heard was a few bad days for him, and then honor, glory, position, sitting on a throne for them. Not a bad deal if you think about it.

You have to convert more than the world to change it.

In all, they were convinced Jesus was the Messiah, but he hadn’t yet convinced them of the Messiah he would be. Worse yet, the rest of the crew got themselves all into a hot mess about what James and John had asked of him, mostly because they hadn’t thought first to do it. Their childish bickering revealed their deepest flaws. Jesus knew he had more than one problem on his hands.

He sat them down one more time. Basically, he told them how the world is. It’s no spoiler alert that in two thousand years it hasn’t changed. Kings (presidents, prime ministers, princes, governors, mayors, council chairs) have political power. Tyrants (gang leaders, pimps, drug lords) have similar power if not dressed the same. Officials (CEOs, influencers, celebrities) have financial and social power. So that’s where it sits. The guy with the power is the one who makes it in this world, who has control of people with lesser or no power. Be like that, is the message and goal.

Now on one hand, you can’t blame J&J for what they did in asking for the best seats at the head table. Again, that’s how the world is and how it works. We’ve all been schooled in this and basically learned if you don’t try for this power and control, you’re a loser. Everyone has felt this and lived it.

Except…Here we go again. Jesus had told them before things like, “How do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?” and “Anyone who wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.” Now he was on that rant again. Jesus just wouldn’t let it go.

“But among you it should be different.” Italics added, this a personal pronoun, second person singular.  As in YOU, not the guy next to you or a generalization that enables one to leave it to the whole group. YOU should be different. Get your head around this. We don’t work like the rest of the world. We run in reverse, pull in the fully opposite direction, are viewed as atypical and distinctively poles apart from the rest.

Rethink This

“Whoever want to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all.” So radical when the rest of the world would quash and destroy who or whatever is on its path. Servant? Slave? That is, take care of those who dirty up the world with their violent greed and manipulation so they can declare themselves the winner?

Face it. Stars rise, and then burn themselves out. Money is king, but markets crash and bubbles eventually burst. Might is right, until something bigger comes along. Those at the top get there at the expense of the little guy, and the collateral damage isn’t pretty. Big or small though, Jesus is saying get down where help and hope is needed and start mopping up.

It’s dirty, sacrificial work, giving up the right for what we think we have to have for the sake of others in their need. It’s putting aside stupid pride so someone else can go ahead and before you. It’s stepping in with quiet support shunning the spotlight on how generous you are. It’s humility in its purest form, not being stepped on but stepping aside. It’s hanging in there when the outcome seems futile, of no use or no end in sight.

Jesus asked this of his disciples who were too blind as to realize where this was leading. Not long from that day, there would be two persons on his right and left, that is, two criminals sharing with him a convict’s execution. After that, these twelve would know what true greatness entails.

Outlier Leadership

Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, by the world’s estimation was a low achiever, sorry extremist, whose end of life was thought to be a pathetic whimper. However, for those who peer behind the curtains of the world’s phony stage, there is a cosmic paradox. Even as he serves and dies the death of a slave, Jesus breaks the boundaries of those who do whatever it takes to steal life from others, reversing what death does into what life can be.

By the third day, it would be clear how that reversal is accomplished.

“I came here not to be served but to serve others, and to give my life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:35-45