Third Sunday of Lent, 2024 - The Bottom Line of Discipleship

As I understand it, the central message of the gospel of Mark is about discipleship.

The gospel focuses on the first disciples, telling their story as they moved through a three-stage process of being blind, then seeing but not clearly, to finally seeing clearly. Their spiritual journey is reflected in the story of the healing of the blind man whose healing required a second touch (Mark 8:22-26). In the first half of the gospel, the disciples were blind. They did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah nor could they understand his teachings. (See Mark 4:13, 41; 6:52; 7:17-18; 8:14-21). Following the story of the blind man whose healing required a second touch, the disciples recognized Jesus as the Messiah (Mark 8:29). They were able to see, but not clearly. They continued to struggle with his teachings, particularly his teachings about the suffering and death he would experience in Jerusalem. They would not be able to see clearly until after his resurrection. (I developed this understanding of the gospel in my book Following Jesus: Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark.) The disciples’ story reflects the journey every disciple experiences—a journey of moving from thinking shaped by the world to thinking shaped by the character of God and the ways of God.

In the heart of the gospel, the gospel writer used three different teachings to present what is involved in being a follower of Jesus.

The foundational teaching—found in Mark 8:34-37—described discipleship as learning from Jesus a different way of thinking and living—follow me. This different way of thinking and living puts a disciple at odds with the way the world thinks and functions. Following the teachings of Jesus, the disciple lives as an insurrectionist against the ways of the world—take up their cross. In addition, following the ways Jesus taught leads a disciple to surrender the identity s/he created by following the way the world thinks and functions—deny themselves.

The second teaching—found in Mark 9:33-37—clarifies the foundational teaching by identifying a servant spirit as the heart of discipleship. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). To be a follower of Jesus is to live as a servant of others.

In the third teaching—Mark 10:32-45—the gospel writer clarified what it means to live out of a servant spirit. He refined his definition of discipleship to a single issue: how power is used.

The occasion of this teaching was a conflict among the disciples sparked by James and John. The two brothers had requested the right—as his cousins—to be Jesus’s two most trusted advisors when he established his kingdom. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37). Their crass attempt to be granted positions of power and the angry reaction by the other ten opened the door for Jesus to talk about how power is used in the kingdom.

Jesus began by describing how power is used “among the Gentiles” —that is, by those who do not know God or the ways of God. “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” (Mark 10:42). The way power is used in the world is over, down against, for personal benefit, at the other’s expense. In the world, those in positions of authority exercise power over those beneath them in the hierarchy—lord it over. They target those beneath them, using power down against them—tyrants over them. They are self-serving in how they use power. They use it for personal benefit at the expense of those they lord it over.

Jesus was adamant that the world’s way of using power was not to be how his followers used power. “It is not so among you” (Mark 10:43). Instead, his followers were to use power the way he used power—to serve. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:43-35).

To serve is to come alongside another as opposed to standing over them. It is to use power on the other’s behalf as oppose to using power down against them. It is to use power to address the other’s need as opposed to using power for personal benefit. All of this is done at personal cost for the follower of Jesus rather than at the expense of the other.

For the gospel writer, using power to serve was the bottom line of discipleship. All discipleship is ultimately evaluated by this bottom line: is power used to address the needs of others? Is power used to serve?

The story of the disciples as told in the gospel of Mark presents discipleship as learning from Jesus a different way of thinking and living—a way that is at odds with the way the world functions. A servant spirit is the heart of that different way of thinking and living. Its bottom line is using power to serve.