What a difference it makes how we answer the same question! On their journey to Jerusalem, Jesus asks the squabbling disciples, "What do you want me to do for you?" They answer him, "Grant us to sit on your right and left hand" (Mark 10:36-37). A few days later, Jesus is accosted with the shouts of the discriminated against, disenfranchised blind beggar, Bartimaeus. "What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asks him, and he replies, "Teacher, let me see again" (Mark 10:51).
Jesus cannot answer the request of the disciples, because they are seeking self-aggrandizement and the power that goes with it. Jesus can help Bartimaeus, on the other hand, because he understands the true nature of his condition: He is blind.
One of the "last" has become "first," and those who might reasonably have thought themselves first—we who "have left everything and followed"—have become "last." The writer to the Hebrews draws a distinction between those called to high office in the church who are subject to weakness, and the Lord, who has real "power to save those who come to God through him who is absolute, since he lives forever to intercede for them" (Hebrews 7:25).
In a world whose values are almost permanently topsy-turvy, people with integrity, uncontaminated by the self-seeking of the world, are usually the disregarded, the discriminated against. To choose to live life in the way of God, despite the worst the systems can throw at us, requires opened eyes. It calls for us to move beyond the simplistic condemnation and blaming of God that so often mark discipleship under pressure. Like Job we need to confess that we have so often been those "who misrepresented your intentions with ignorant words" (Job 42:3), and recognize with the psalmist that "though hardships without number beset the upright, the Lord God rescues...from them all" (Psalm 34:19).
Reflection and Action
If Jesus were to ask, "What do you want me to do for you?" how would you answer? How have you "misrepresented God’s intentions with ignorant words"? Where have you discovered God rescuing from hardships?
Reproduced with the kind permission of Sojourners: www.sojo.net
