37/50: The Road to Liberation is Paved with Humility
Beyonce’s demanding lyrics insist on liberation and haunt the halls of privilege.
“I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride.”
Today’s gospel text is Mark 10:35-45 in which two brothers, James and John, are asking Jesus to sit next to him, so they can share his glory. Who knows why they wanted a place of honor? There was likely a noble motive in their request. We all have been star struck and wanted to be close to someone who we admire. We’ve all wanted to be the favorite. It’s one of the most deeply human emotions and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. To be the favorite is to feel seen and to feel special and to feel validated — whether you are a kindergartener and wanting to stand next to the teacher or a 50 year old mother who brags on how her daughter was recognized by a famous chef (yes, that would be me).
But Jesus tells them: “You do not know what you are asking… You will drink the cup I drink and receive the baptism I receive.”
Sometimes we are looking for a recognition and a brand of being special that we don’t want. The two people who ended up being on the right and left of Jesus were thieves hanging on either side of him on the cross. The glory James and John were after was the glory of a public torture and execution.
Jesus’ response can be seen as a threat or a take down or as an invitation or a promise: “You will be ready for this. You will gather the wisdom and courage to drink the cup that I drink.”
And then he says that the great will be servants and the first must be a slave of all. These loaded words have been often interpreted through the lens of privilege — mostly that we should be more humble, generous and not insist on our own rights. But that is a problem for those who aren’t on the top of social structures. For them, this text has been used to justify inequity, injustice and even abuse.
But Jesus doesn’t say we are a slave to the wishes and demands of others, but that we are a slave in the service of liberation. James Cone, the father of black liberation theology said, “To be a “slave of all” is to recognize that the struggle of liberation is for all. This recognition does not make one submissive to unjust powers, but humble before Jesus Christ who is the Lord of all. His presence in our midst requires that we subordinate our personal interests to the coming liberation for all.” James Cone, God of the Oppressed (New York: Orbis, 1997), 138–39.
Jesus didn’t give James and John what they wanted — he offered them a path of discipleship that required them to release everything for the sake of liberation. The path to liberation is paved with humility and realism that takes us beyond polarities of glory or humiliation and bring us into a continuum of growth in which our liberation is bound up with the liberation of all.