James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, will you do us a favor?”

Jesus asked them what they wanted, and they answered, “When you come into your glory, please let one of us sit at your right side and the other at your left.”

Jesus told them, “You don’t really know what you’re asking! Are you able to drink from the cup that I must soon drink from or be baptized as I must be baptized?”

“Yes, we are!” James and John answered.

Then Jesus replied, “You certainly will drink from the cup from which I must drink. And you will be baptized just as I must! But it isn’t for me to say who will sit at my right side and at my left. That is for God to decide.”

When the ten other disciples heard this, they were angry with James and John. But Jesus called the disciples together and said:

You know that those foreigners who call themselves kings like to order their people around. And their great leaders have full power over the people they rule. But don’t act like them. If you want to be great, you must be the servant of all the others. And if you want to be first, you must be everyone’s slave. The Son of Man did not come to be a slave master, but a slave who will give his life to rescue many people. (Mark 10:35-45)

The path to true leadership is not where most expect to find it. Jesus challenged his disciple’s notions about the order of things.

The people of Jesus’ day expected the Messiah to overthrow the Roman government and re-establish the Davidic monarchy, making Israel the center of a new empire. Thus, the disciples jockeyed for position in the future government and two of them, the brothers James and John, attempted to get the plum posts.

Jesus gave them a job interview, but then pointed out that he wasn’t the one to make the final decision on positions in the coming kingdom. When the other disciples found out what the brothers had done, they were furious. Jesus then used the situation to explain how much they had all misunderstood about the nature of what Jesus was doing on Earth.

His explanation that humility was the path to greatness, and that even Jesus had come to serve, rather than be boss, startled his disciples. The implications of Jesus’ words challenged their notions of how husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves, and governors and governed, related to one another.

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