Monday, October 15, 2012

29th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)


 Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?
Mk 10:35-45


v. 37. They answered him, “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”

The positions on either side of a ruler or host were the most honorable.

In your glory:
St Matthew, probably rightly, takes this to refer to the future messianic kingdom (Matt. 20:21). If so, and the story is authentic, it perhaps points to a time when the disciples were expecting the imminent arrival of the kingdom.

But the request could envisage equally thrones of judgment (cf. Matt. 19:28, Luke 22:30) or the glories of the messianic feast (14:25) and we cannot rule out the possibility that the disciples expected Jesus on his arrival at Jerusalem to inaugurate a temporary earthly paradise and that the reference is to this.

vv. 38 – 39. Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” They said to him, “We can.” 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.

As we have seen, there are a number of Old Testament passages which might have made the equation [cup and baptism = suffering] intelligible, and there is a second-century papyrus in which 'baptized' is used to mean 'overwhelmed with disasters'.

However, the Old Testament contains no really exact parallels, and the imagery here seems more likely to have originated with early Christians reflecting on Christ's life and death as a whole in the light of such sayings as 14:36 and Luke 12:50.  

In St Matthew's parallel version, 20:23, the reference to baptism is missing, and St Mark may have added it to his source to make the saying correspond more closely with the sacramental practice of the Church. The idea would be that, in the conditions of St Mark's day, to accept baptism and become a partaker of the eucharistic cup is to take a step which might well lead to martyrdom; let would-be converts count the cost!

As for the reason for the insertion of these verses into the original story, the usual assumption is that they were added at a time when the martyr deaths of the two apostles were giving rise to reflection in the Church. 'They were known to have been ambitious for high honor. Their wish is now fulfilled, but quite differently from the way they had intended ... and the actual terms of their request have been recast in such a way as to correspond with this fulfillment [i.e. they now ask only for pre-eminence in the next world]. The narrator, by making Jesus say you do not know what you are asking, means us to understand the apostles' request as an unconscious prophecy of their own death, but Jesus interpreted to them how it would be fulfilled' (J. Weiss).

This is a perfectly possible explanation, though it has to reckon with the difficulty that Christian tradition, while reporting the martyr death of James (Acts 12:2), ascribes to John a ripe old age and peaceful death at Ephesus. However, this tradition is not unanimous and may be inaccurate.

But the difficulty is avoided by the ingenious suggestion of Lohmeyer, who thinks that the verses were inserted in the course of controversies over the leadership of the early Church. In view of the way things had developed and of such a tradition as Matt. 16:18, it seemed impossible that James and John were meant to be the leaders. This passage was seen as evidence that this was in accordance with the will of Jesus. But though he had not been able to offer these two primacy in the Church, he had prophesied for them the honor of a martyr death very like his own. This interpretation is very much strengthened if we follow the MSS. which punctuate the end of v. 40 differently (allois instead of all'ois), so that it means: it has been prepared for others.

v. 45. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The Greek is a little stronger than R.S.V. suggests. The Son of man himself ... (who is by nature the greatest in the kingdom and therefore the example of what greatness in the kingdom implies).

A ransom:
The Greek word has a variety of meanings in the Greek Old Testament, among the most important: a monetary compensation paid for a crime (e.g. Num. 35:31-32), or for a life that would otherwise be forfeit (e.g. Exod. 21:30), the money paid for the release of a captive or slave (e.g. Lev. 25:51-52, Isa. 45:13), or the equivalent accepted instead of certain sacrifices (e.g. Num. 18:15).

The kindred verb and verbal noun (redeem, redemption) are used of God 'delivering' his people without any special emphasis on the idea of ransom in the narrow sense. In view of all that, it is probably wrong to press the word here as meaning more than 'means of deliverance' or 'redemption'.

For:
The Greek word (anti) normally means 'instead of'; 'in place of', and some commentators find that meaning here. The word 'suggests that in the act of deliverance "the many" not only benefit, but receive what they cannot effect'.

But there are passages where the word means no more than 'on behalf of' and it is doubtful how far we should press the more exact meaning.

Many:
A semitic use of the word which does riot necessarily envisage the exclusion of some.                

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