The Gospel for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt)

Vladyslav Nazarchuk

Among saints, perhaps few can compare—both in the wretchedness of their former lives, and in the exaltation they have achieved after their repentance—to St. Mary of Egypt, whose memory the Church celebrates on the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Regardless of how one’s sins may stack up against those of St. Mary, the memory of this great saint unfailingly gives consolation and hope that repentance, forgiveness of sin, and a pure life are always possible, while also warning about the bitter struggle that may be required to achieve them. In addition, the Fifth Sunday in Lent stands close to the end of Great Lent and the start of the great and horrific events of Holy Week. Thus, it can be expected that the Gospel reading assigned for that day, Mark 10:32–45, contains a special poignancy and depth of meaning suitable to the occasion.

Accordingly, this essay seeks to understand and interpret the meaning of Mark 10:32–45 in multiple contexts. After a summary of the Gospel passage, first the historical context will be taken into consideration, in relation to the messianic movements of late Second Temple Judaism and the biographies of the apostles St. James and St. John. Then, the Gospel passage will be analyzed in its literary context within the Gospel of Mark at large, as well as in its patristic context through the commentaries of St. Theophylact and St. Nikolaj of Ohrid. Lastly, the text will be understood in the context of its liturgical celebration. Hopefully at the end, the insights gained from these different contexts of interpretation will be united into a comprehensive whole, and work together to help reveal the theological depths of this Gospel reading.

Overview of the Gospel Reading

Mark 10:32–45 takes place as Jesus and his disciples are traveling from Galilee on the road to Jerusalem. The Gospel narrative recounts that Jesus courageously walks in front of his disciples, who are amazed at this, being themselves afraid of the Jewish authorities who are conspiring to stop Jesus’ ministry. Along the way, Jesus tells his apostles of what will happen to Him once they arrive in Jerusalem: He will be delivered over to the Jewish chief priests and scribes, condemned to death, and handed over to the Roman authorities, who, in turn, will mock, torture, and kill Him. However, Jesus also predicts His resurrection after three days.

Two of his apostles—James and John, the sons of Zebedee—then come up to Him, asking Him to grant them a favor. When Jesus asks what exactly they want from Him, James and John ask of Him to “grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”¹ Jesus, in return, asks them if they are able to “drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized,”² evidently referring to the suffering which He is about to endure, and about which He was speaking just before. Undeterred, James and John answer that they are able, upon which Jesus ominously prophesies to them that they will, in fact, suffer these things. However, Jesus says that the granting of places of honor is not up to Him, but “it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”³

The other ten apostles become indignant at James and John for seemingly trying to curry special favor with Jesus. Jesus, however, uses this opportunity to teach the apostles how they should behave as His followers in general. Contrasting the rulers of the Gentiles, whose greatness consists in exercising political authority over their subjects, Jesus instead encourages His disciples to seek humility, lowliness, and service, teaching that “whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.”⁴ While highlighting the salvific purpose of His imminent suffering, Jesus uses Himself as the prototype for how His disciples should act, saying that He “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”⁵ The combination of an outwardly peaceful moment of discussion on a journey, together with the deeply foreboding undertones of great future suffering, makes this Gospel scene appear particularly poignant.

Historical Context

One thing which is immediately striking in this Gospel passage is that James and John’s request for seats of honor in the glory of Christ comes immediately after Jesus’ foretelling of His particularly inglorious suffering and death. An impression arises that James and John either were not listening to Jesus’ words earlier, or did not take them completely to heart, still clinging in their minds to a different vision of how they expected Jesus to be as the Messiah. This worldly vision of Jesus as a glorious king and deliverer of the Jewish people from their temporal oppressors can be understood in light of the Jewish tradition of messianic movements in the form of popularly anointed kingship. Horsley identifies three main characteristics of such popular messianic movements.⁶ First, an individual is made king by popular anointing or election. Second, the king’s position depends on him maintaining a certain social policy; otherwise his kingship can be revoked by the people. Third, the election of the messianic king is usually a revolutionary action, leading to the overthrow of an established political order or foreign domination.

The Biblical origin of Jewish popular kingship lies in the stories of Saul and David, both of whom were elected kings by an assembly of the people of Israel, as a “means of mobilizing centralized political-military power against the foreign domination threatened by the Philistines.”⁷ This tradition remained in the popular memory of the Jewish people as a “little tradition”⁸ alongside the official Davidic monarchy and was reinforced by the written Biblical account, until reemerging at the death of Herod I in 4 BC. At this time, Israel formed part of the Roman Empire, and was governed by Herod I as a client king of Rome, who was then succeeded by his sons. Herod imposed heavy taxes on the people to fund a lavish Hellenistic-style monarchy;⁹ the Jewish peasantry was thus faced with a double burden of paying both tribute to Rome and priestly and temple dues.¹⁰ In general, the Roman Empire used military intervention to maintain law and order in its provinces, which was often heavy handed and bloody, and Herod in large part employed foreign mercenaries for his army rather than native Jewish recruits.¹¹ Thus, Jesus’ remark in the Gospel passage that “those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them”¹² was not some far-away reality, but the lived experience under Roman rule of the common Jewish people at that time. Further, the fact that the concept of “messiah” is not mentioned frequently in late Second Temple Jewish literature¹³ perhaps suggests that the common people at that time were more concerned with deliverance from their real-life economic and military oppression, rather than with a more metaphysical messiah who would grant spiritual salvation in a future life.

Accordingly, several popular messianic movements arose in 4 BC in armed rebellion to Herodian rule, headed by Judas in Galilee, Simon in Perea, and Athronges in Judea. All three movements shared certain characteristics: their leaders came from humble origins but were proclaimed “kings” by their followers; the followers were largely drawn from the peasantry; and the goal of the movements was not simply the overthrow of Roman domination, but the establishment of a more egalitarian social structure more generally. These movements succeeded in holding considerable territory for some time before being put down by the Roman army, and memory of them must still have been fresh during the time of Jesus’ ministry.¹⁴

A much more important messianic movement, after the death of Jesus, was that of Simon bar Giora, forming part of the First Jewish Revolt (AD 66–74). Simon gathered behind him a large peasant militia, and after being one of the leaders in the Jewish victory over the Romans at the Battle of Beth Horon (AD 66), systematically consolidated control over South Judea before moving on Jerusalem itself. There, he was recognized as king by many people, and maintained a rigorous social discipline while proclaiming “liberty for slaves and rewards for the free.” When the Romans recaptured Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in AD 70, Simon bar Giora surrendered in a symbolic manner, standing at the spot where the Temple had stood while dressed in a white tunic and a purple mantle—the attire of a king, similar to the clothes Jesus wore while being mocked by the Roman soldiers as “king of the Jews.”¹⁵

When Jesus’ mission is considered against this historical background of the political and economic conditions of the Jews at that time, and the several popular movements of liberation led by charismatic “messiahs” which these conditions generated, it is clear how easy it would have been to misinterpret Jesus in a similar way: as an earthly king, leading the Jews into deliverance from their oppressors. Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem would thus have seemed particularly symbolic, as if He were coming to take His rightful throne in the Holy City—much like Simon bar Giora would later do—and from there rule over all Israel. Therefore, in their request “to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory,” James and John likely imagined themselves sharing in Jesus’ earthly rule and occupying high governmental positions. Of course, the Zebedee brothers by this time had spent three years listening to Jesus’ teachings, so they would have known at least something of His divinity and the true nature of His mission on earth. Nevertheless, similar to many other of Jesus’ followers, it seems that James and John still had difficulty reconciling Jesus’ statements about His future suffering with their earthly preconceptions of how a messianic king should be. This confusion would explain why Jesus replies to James and John that “you do not know what you are asking,”¹⁶ and why His disciples, along with the crowds who welcomed His entry into Jerusalem, would abandon Him and scatter immediately upon His arrest and crucifixion—even after Jesus had told them multiple times that all this would happen.

Jesus’ prediction to James and John that “the cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized,” that is, that they will share in Jesus’ suffering, also becomes significant in light of what is known of the lives of James and John after the events of the Gospel. For James, Jesus’ prediction came true in a very literal manner, as James was martyred in AD 44 by Herod Agrippa I, king of Judea and grandson of Herod I. Much like Pontius Pilate allowed the crucifixion of Jesus to appease the Jewish crowd, James’ martyrdom was part of Herod’s campaign against the Church designed to gain the favor of Herod’s Jewish subjects.¹⁷ Eusebius, citing a tradition reported by Clement of Alexandria, records further details regarding James’ martyrdom, writing that the guard who brought James to court was converted to Christianity after hearing James’ testimony there. Then, “they were both taken away together, and on the way he asked James to forgive him. James thought for a moment; then he said, ‘I wish you peace,’ and kissed him. So both were beheaded at the same time.”¹⁸ Thus, much like Jesus forgave those who crucified Him while on the Cross, James also forgave, on the way to his martyrdom, the one who helped bring this martyrdom about.

John’s fate, however, was different. Church tradition holds that John lived to an old age, and died a natural death during the reign of Trajan (AD 98–117), rather than being martyred like James. Since Jesus’ words are explicitly addressed to both James and John in this passage, does this mean that Jesus’ prophecy here was partially incorrect? Some scholars, in fact, use Jesus’ prediction in Mark 10:39 to argue that John had died before the Gospel of Mark was written, and thus could not have been the author of the Gospel of John, or of any of the other Scriptural texts attributed to him.¹⁹ However, perhaps a better way to think about the issue is to understand the “cup” and “baptism” which Jesus mentions as suffering for His sake more broadly, rather than martyrdom specifically. Although John was not martyred for his faith, he nevertheless must have endured his own share of suffering, first as a leader in the persecuted Christian community at Jerusalem, and later in his exile to the island of Patmos during the reign of Domitian (AD 81–96). The fact that Jesus considered both James and John to have drank from the “cup” of His passion, even though their lives turned out quite differently from one another, suggests that each person has his own manner of struggle that he will need to endure as a follower of Christ, and that martyrdom is one, but not the only, path to salvation.

Literary Context

Within the synoptic Gospels as a whole, Mark 10:32–45 is closely paralleled by Matthew 20:17–28. These passages share much of the same wording, and both recount Jesus foretelling His suffering, the request of the sons of Zebedee, and Jesus’ teaching on humility. One difference, however, is that in the Gospel of Matthew, it is the mother of James and John, Salome, who asks Jesus for seats of honor for her sons. Accordingly, the request is presented in a seemingly more humble manner, with Salome “kneeling before him” as “she asked him for something”²⁰ (compared with the brothers boldly requesting Jesus “to do for us whatever we ask of you”).²¹ Further, Salome specifically asks Jesus to seat her sons “in your kingdom,”²² which perhaps give a more overtly spiritual meaning to the words—in association with the Kingdom of Heaven often preached by Jesus—than James and John’s request to merely be seated “in your glory.” Still, since Matthew writes that Salome came up to Jesus “with her sons,”²³ implying that they were still somewhat involved with their mother’s request, and since Jesus replies to James and John directly afterwards, there is little essential difference between the two versions of the events.

Both Mark’s and Matthew’s versions could be true. It is possible that Mark simply avoided the mention of Salome in following a general trend of ancient biographers, who would sometimes alter details if it helped them streamline the story and avoid including information that they believed was not relevant to the main topic. On the other hand, Collins notes that Matthew has a general tendency to idealize the disciples, and thus could have attributed the request to Salome to improve on the negative portrayal of James and John in the Gospel of Mark,²⁴ presenting the request as arising rather from a worried mother’s love. In either case, taking into account the more sympathetic version of events in the Gospel of Matthew can suggest a more positive interpretation of the disciples’ seemingly brazen request: rather than dismissing the sufferings foretold by Jesus just before, James and John are instead deeply troubled by them, and are simply seeking some kind of consolation in the certainty of future blessings.

Within the context of the Gospel of Mark itself, Mark 10:32–45 at first glance seems to occupy a place of transition, a comparatively uneventful journey between two places—Galilee and Jerusalem—where the “main action” really happens. However, the themes touched on in this discussion between Jesus and His apostles are actually central to Mark’s conception of his Gospel as a whole. To begin, Mark, in arranging his Gospel, is more concerned with making certain theological points than preserving a historically-accurate order of events. Mark 10:32–34 is actually the third in a series of Jesus’ predictions of His Passion, the others being 8:31–33 and 9:30–32. Each prediction follows the same pattern: Jesus predicts His Passion, one or more of the disciples fail to comprehend it, and Jesus gives a further teaching on what it means to be His follower. This block of three predictions is framed on both sides by accounts of Jesus healing a blind man (8:22–26 and 10:46–52), in an ancient literary device known as an inclusio, in which a refrain delimits a section within a longer text.²⁵ Immediately following this block begins the account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and thus of the events of His Passion at large.

Thus, the larger structure into which Mark 10:32–45 is placed reveals the most salient points of this Gospel passage. The inclusio of Jesus healing physical blindness points to the spiritual blindness of the disciples, who are blind because they cannot understand that Jesus’ Passion is an integral part of Him being Christ, despite Jesus repeatedly foretelling this suffering to them. When Jesus first teaches His coming Passion, “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him,”²⁶ and when Jesus speaks of it a second time, “they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.”²⁷ Now, James and John’s inopportune request, and the apostles’ arguing about who of them should be greatest, shows that they still do not understand the inevitability of Jesus’ suffering, and consequently what they should be imitating as His disciples. All of this builds into one of Mark’s main theses within his Gospel: that it is not possible to understand who Jesus really is without His death on the cross and His subsequent resurrection.²⁸ Only after these events is the full nature of Jesus revealed, that even a centurion can recognize the crucified Jesus as the Son of God.²⁹

Patristic Context

One Church Father who comments on this passage in the Gospel of Mark is St. Theophylact, Bishop of Ohrid (11^th–12^th c.). When discussing the request of James and John in Mark 10:35–39, St. Theophylact confirms that the brothers are looking for glory by Jesus’ side in a non-spiritual way: they believed that “His going up to Jerusalem meant that He was going to ascend the throne of an earthly kingdom, and that after He had become king He would suffer those things which He said He would suffer.”³⁰ Further, St. Theophylact underscores the foolishness of the request to “sit, one at your right hand and one at your left”: the divinity of Jesus is so transcendent, that even the angels would be unworthy of such an honor. St. Theophylact also clarifies the precise meaning of the “cup” and the “baptism” which Jesus uses as symbols of His passion. He writes that “a cup of wine is something a man gladly accepts,” much like Jesus voluntary undertook His passion, while “baptism is something which is done to cleanse sins,”³¹ which is exactly the purpose of Jesus’ suffering, to “give his life as a ransom for many” as He Himself later says. However, again demonstrating their dullness in understanding, James and John think Jesus is speaking of a literal cup of wine, and of the Jewish ritual washing before meals, which is why they accept them so readily.

St. Theophylact also sheds light on Jesus’ mysterious response that “to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant”—could this mean that God the Father has not given Jesus the authority to judge? On the contrary, St. Theophylact explains that Jesus is in fact demonstrating His impartiality as a just judge. Those “seats in the kingdom” are achieved only by those who struggle for them in the Christian contest, and cannot be won simply by asking for them as favors from Jesus, as James and John had tried to do.³² Thus, the other ten of Jesus’ apostles really had nothing to be indignant about at James and John.

Similar ideas are found in the commentary of another, more contemporary Bishop of Ohrid—St. Nikolaj Velimirović (1881–1956). In his Homilies, St. Nikolaj agrees with St. Theophylact’s assessment that James and John are thinking of earthly things when making their request. He writes that “they still thought as Jews, not as Christians: they still believed in an earthly kingdom for the Messiah, in His earthly victory over His enemies and in His worldly power and glory, like the power and glory wielded by David and Solomon.”³³ Further, he also views Jesus’ reply that the honor is not His to grant as an indication of His impartiality as judge. To this, St. Nikolaj adds that Jesus’ answer should be understood in a temporal way: while Jesus is still in His unglorified, lowly condition before His resurrection, He is focused on the coming task of His suffering and humiliation as man. Only after His resurrection will He take up His full, proper prerogatives as God.³⁴

However, St. Nikolaj understands this episode not just as yet another display of the foolishness of the apostles, but primarily in a therapeutic manner, in which Jesus continues to heal His apostles of the pride, self-love, and vainglory which plague the human race at large. Although the apostles had slowly been spiritually healing over the three years they had spent with Jesus, it seems that some imperfection still remained in James and John. Accordingly, St. Nikolaj writes that “His words on suffering and glorification exerted great pressure on the souls of these two, and from this pressure the last residual suppuration of pride was squeezed out of their souls.”³⁵ In contrast to St. Theophylact, St. Nikolaj sees in the quick reply of James and John that they are willing to partake in Jesus’ “cup” and “baptism” an instant repentance, in which “Christ’s terrible question about the cup and the baptism made a great impression on the brothers, like bitter medicine on a sick man, for they quickly came to themselves.”³⁶ While James and John were seeking to “leap over the suffering straight into the glory,”³⁷ Jesus reminds them that the latter cannot be achieved without the former, just as the glory of His own Resurrection would only be attained after His foretold Passion and death on the Cross.

Liturgical Context

As mentioned previously, Mark 10:32–45 forms the assigned Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, which is the last Sunday before Palm Sunday or the “Entrance of our Lord into Jerusalem.” Accordingly, it can be expected from the Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday in Lent to anticipate and prepare the Church for celebrating Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Mark 10:32–45 is more than sufficient to meet these expectations, both on a chronological level—the events of that passage take place when Jesus and His disciples are literally on the road to Jerusalem—and on a thematic level, since that passage contains Jesus’ exact prediction of the sufferings He will undergo once He reaches Jerusalem. Having heard the intimation of Jesus’ Passion during the Fifth Sunday in Lent, the Church will be better prepared to commemorate it during Holy Week, not forgetting these imminent sufferings even among the festivities of Palm Sunday.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent also celebrates the memory of St. Mary of Egypt, and thus contains a second Gospel reading for the saint, Luke 7:36–50. This passage in the Gospel of Luke recounts the story of a woman who, while Jesus dines at the house of a Pharisee, stands behind Jesus and, weeping, anoints His feet with ointment and wipes them with her hair. When Simon, the Pharisee, begins to think to himself that Jesus should reject this woman because “she is a sinner”³⁸ (perhaps, a prostitute), Jesus tells a parable which teaches that God forgives great sins, so that those to whom these sins are forgiven may love Him all the more. Finally, Jesus has mercy on the woman, saying that “her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much.”³⁹ Of course, the sinful woman here is a prototype of St. Mary herself, who also lived a life of great sin, but because of the contrition shown by her before the icon of the Mother of God, and later during her seventeen years of struggle with lust in the desert, was able to receive forgiveness and healing from God.

When these two Gospel passages are read one after another during the Divine Liturgy on Sunday, one can discover a diametric opposition between the behavior of James and John, and that of the sinful woman. James and John, along with Peter, occupied the highest places of honor among the apostles, while the woman was uninvited and a stranger. While James and John boldly came up to Jesus and asked him for favors for themselves, the woman says nothing, only kissing Jesus’ feet from behind with the deepest humility. Whereas James and John were seeking glory in an earthly kingdom, the sinful woman instead gave up a valuable earthly possession—an alabaster flask of ointment—to honor Jesus. While Jesus’ apostles worry about who is the greatest among them, the woman immediately becomes Jesus’ servant in anointing His feet. Finally, while Jesus replied to James and John that it was not up to Him to grant them seats by His side, Jesus accepts the repentance of the woman, telling her, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”⁴⁰ Amazingly, whatever Jesus rebukes the apostles for, the sinful woman does correctly.

Accordingly, the life of St. Mary of Egypt also provides an outstanding example of those lessons which Jesus tries to teach his disciples in Mark 10:32–45. While James and John, as St. Nikolaj notes, had tried to “leap over the suffering straight into the glory,” St. Mary instead accepted Jesus’ “cup” and “baptism” wholeheartedly in her ascetic struggles in the desert beyond the Jordan. In fact, the hymnography for St. Mary during this Sunday makes this connection explicit: “thou hast taken up the Cross and followed Christ.”⁴¹ For the first seventeen years of her life in the desert, St. Mary relates that “Darkness after darkness, misery after misery stood about me, a sinner,” and that “I suffered both from the summer heat, when the blazing heat fell upon me, and from the winter cold, when I shivered from the frost. Many times I fell down upon the earth, as though dead.”⁴² However, without this suffering St. Mary could not have “attained such glory, blessed Mother, as to walk upon the surface of the waters, and in thy prayers to God thou wast raised up from the earth.”⁴³ In fact, when the hymnography of the feast praises “what honor she enjoys in heaven, and what boldness she has gained in the presence of the Master,”⁴⁴ it seems that St. Mary has achieved precisely that right to sit by Jesus in His glory which was sought by James and John in their request. Lastly, whereas the disciples did not understand Jesus’ words about His future Passion and the purpose of His mission, St. Mary, through her humility, was given the grace of spiritual understanding, being able to quote the Scriptures without having ever read them.

Conclusion

Gathering together insights drawn from the historical, literary, patristic, and liturgical modes of interpretation of the several pieces making up Mark 10:32–45, what emerges most strongly is a contrast of opposites—earthly and heavenly, glory and suffering, pride and humility—as well as a parallelism between the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus and the lives of each of His followers. Throughout his Gospel, St. Mark seeks to show that Jesus’ Passion is integral to understanding who He is, and that Jesus’ glory upon His Resurrection can only have been attained through the suffering of His Passion. Thus, no one could truly know Jesus before these events occurred, which is why His disciples continuously fail to comprehend Jesus’ prediction of His suffering, both in this passage and in the previous chapters of the Gospel of Mark. The request of James and John reveals that, being unable to understand why a triumphant Messiah would undergo suffering and humiliation, the apostles still see Jesus as an earthly king, and expect through Him to attain earthly glory themselves. This is confirmed by the moderate successes of several popular messianic movements in late Second Temple Judaism, as well as by the commentaries of St. Theophylact and St. Nikolaj of Ohrid on this Gospel passage.

Jesus, however, in his response to the apostles paints a radically different picture of what it means to be His disciple. A true Christian must before all else seek to be humble, lowly, and a servant, and be ready to share in the suffering which Jesus endured in His Passion—however that might look like for each individual. As both St. Theophylact and St. Nikolaj note, this is the only way to attain real, heavenly glory, as Jesus is impartial in His judgment and cannot be swayed by the asking of easy favors as James and John had tried to do. Luckily, many saintly examples are found in the celebrations of the Fifth Sunday in Lent to help reinforce Jesus’ teaching in this regard, including the martyrdom of St. James, the exile of St. John, and the contrition shown by the sinful woman in the Gospel of Luke. Finally, St. Mary of Egypt herself provides an example of tremendous suffering undergone for the sake of Christ, but also of the incomparable glory that is won thereby.