The gospel reading for the fourth Sunday of Lent, taken from St. Mark’s gospel, as all the Sunday lenten gospel readings are, ends with Jesus announcing to his disciples that he has to be delivered into the hands of men and be killed and rise again on the third day. So the gospel reading of the fourth Sunday of Lent ended with these words:

They went on from there and passed through Galilee, and he would not have anyone know it, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”

And then there’s one more sentence. It said:

But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him.

So at the very end of the gospel reading on the fourth Sunday of Lent, you had that announcement, for the first time during Lent in the Sunday gospels, of the approaching rejection, betrayal, and execution, crucifixion of Christ, and his resurrection on the third day.

Now on the fifth Sunday of Lent, the gospel reading, also taken from St. Mark, begins that way. On the fifth Sunday of Lent, it starts with the words:

And they were on the road going up to Jerusalem. And Jesus was walking ahead of them, and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.

And then it continues:

And taking the Twelve apart again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit upon him and scourge him and kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

Now, this fifth Sunday of Lent, we are going up with Jesus to Jerusalem. We are now focusing all our attention on him. We are going to go up with him, go with him through these last days, the last encounters with the leaders of the people. This speaking and the teaching about the last days and the end of the ages and his own crucifixion and death and destruction of Jerusalem and the second coming of the Lord. And then we will go with him into what we call the Last Supper, that final meal with his disciples. And we will hear that very lengthy last discourse from St. John’s gospel that he speaks to them, about his relationship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit and us and humanity and the world. So now we’re going to go with him. That’s what’s happening now, and it will continue through this week and then the Passion Week, right up to the great Festival of the Pascha, the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

Now, in this gospel on this Sunday with this beginning with these words, we have to note that it says that when they were on the way, when they were going to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them—it’s interesting that he’s walking ahead of them and they’re following him. That’s a very nice image, because in the Middle East when a shepherd is leading his sheep, he doesn’t push them or prod them or beat them; he walks ahead of them. And they know his voice, and they hear his bell, and they know his smell, and they follow him freely. They follow him freely. So when you hear these words, you picture the Twelve as the flock following their Shepherd freely, following after him along the way.

And then it says that they were amazed, and that those who followed were afraid. When we hear these words, we have to apply them to our self. We have to ask our self: Are we amazed? Are we afraid? And we should beg God. We should beg God with every ounce of spiritual energy that we have, that we would be amazed and that we would be afraid. Because we’ve heard this so many times; we’ve become used to it. We all know the story of Christ, his crucifixion. We’ve known it from childhood; we’re used to it. Some old people, like I, have celebrated this so many times in our life, and it could almost become like we kind of take it for granted. We say, “Oh, yeah. We know that. Ho-hum,” or whatever. It reminds me of something I read somewhere of C.S. Lewis, the famous, wonderful Christian teacher from England, who said about believers that they become so complacent that they become what he called “cozy in Zion.” They go to church for rest and relaxation and refreshment and renewal, and it’s all centered on themselves, but they’ve lost the sense of awe, of wonder, of amazement, of fear, of what is actually happening.

So we should pray to God: O God, please, let us strike us of what is really happening here! The Son of God, borne from the Father from all eternity, the One by whom, through whom, for whom, in whom, toward whom all things are made, the One in whom all things hold together, the One who was born of a Virgin on the earth as a real human being in order to be our Savior and Redeemer, that he is with us. God is with us! The Son of God is in human flesh, walking the earth, and walking the earth on the road to Jerusalem, where he will be thrown out of the city and put outside the camp and ridiculed and mocked and spit upon and beaten. O Lord, please never let us grow used to this! Let us never take it for granted. Let us always be amazed and always be afraid.

It’s very interesting that a German scholar named Rudolf Otto many years ago, he wrote a book called Das Heilige in German, a book about how people speak, how they confess, how they avow their experiences when they’ve had an experience that they really believe was with the divine, with the holy, with the numinous. And it can be an experience of God himself, or something of God, or something even remarkably, uncannily true and beautiful and glorious. It could be like a work of art or a piece of music, or it might be even something in nature: beautiful flowers or a sunset or something. And he records how every time, everywhere, without exception, when human beings have this experience, their reaction is to be amazed, to be amazed and to be afraid. He called it mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Fascinans because it’s amazing, it’s awe-inspiring, it’s attractive: it draws you; you don’t want to leave it. But at the same time it’s terrifying. It’s awesome. You feel that when it happens you’re a creature, and, even worse, you feel that you’re a sinner and that you’re unworthy of it.

Here we can say and we have to say that if people speak about God and they claim to have some experiences of God or of the things of God, and these two elements are not there, we can be virtually certain that they don’t have it, that it’s not true, that they’re in delusion in some way, or in imagination, because when that experience is there, it’s always amazing and terrifying. And we could also say if it’s only amazing, if it’s only beautiful, drawing, marvelous, like a “Smile, God loves you” face on a bumper sticker, then it’s not real either; it’s not real either. There’s got to be this dimension of fear, of awesomeness, of majesty, of conviction, and of almost a feeling even of somehow being condemned by it in some sense because of our creatureliness and our sinfulness. But on the other hand, we have to say as well, if it’s only a sense of our lowliness, our nothingness, our sinfulness, and there isn’t this sense of joy and wonder and beauty and fascination and being drawn, then it’s not real either. It can’t be one or the other, and it certainly can’t be neither; it’s got to be both.

And this is what we see in the gospel today when these apostles are going up with Jesus to Jerusalem. And they have that amazement, they have that fear, because they have also heard that Jesus says to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles, and they will mock him and spit upon him and scourge him and kill him, and after three days, he will rise.”

Then the gospel reading continues. It says that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, “Master, Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And Jesus said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And then they respond, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” It’s interesting, by the way, that in St. Matthew’s gospel— This event is recorded there and in Luke as well. In Matthew’s gospel it’s not James and John who ask; it’s their mother. It says, “The mother of Zebedee’s children, of James and John,” whom in St. John’s gospel Jesus called the “sons of thunder.” It’s the mother of the sons of thunder who comes to the Lord and says, “Master, Teacher, can you do this for my boys? Would you do this for my sons?” But here in Mark it’s James and John themselves. It’s a different tradition, a different version of the story.

But here we must hear these words our self, because we often go to God and say to him and to Christ our Lord, “We want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” So the question for us is: What do we ask? What do we ask? And, sadly, we ask very often things that the Lord told us not even to ask for. We ask for earthly things, we ask for carnal things, we ask for temporal things, where Jesus himself said, “Don’t seek these things.” He said, “Seek the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things will be yours as well.” So we first ask our self: What do we ask?

Then we hope that we would ask what James and John asked. The Lord told us to ask for that. He said, “Seek the kingdom of God and its righteousness.” So James and John do ask him for that.  They say— “What do want me to do for you?” Jesus asks, and they answer, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” What they’re asking is: “You are the Messiah; let us reign with you. Let us be with you when you triumph. Let us be with you when the victory is yours. Let us be with you when you are given from God your Father the kingdom that has no end.” So that’s what they ask, and that’s what we should ask, too.

But then Jesus answers, “You do not know what you are asking. You do not know what you’re asking. So if you’re asking that, do you really know what you’re asking?” And then he explains. He says, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? Or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And 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.”

Now what’s that all about? The symbolism of drinking the cup is suffering. To drink the cup, to drink it to the dregs, means to suffer. Jesus uses that in the Gethsemane garden, in Mark’s gospel particularly, when he prays, “Abba, Father”—it’s the one time in the gospels he calls, “Abba,” Aramaic word for father—“Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.” So that cup symbolizes the suffering. And the baptism means death. It means death. “To be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized,” that means to die with him. And we know that for Christians, to be baptized means to die with him, to be buried with him in baptism, so that we can be raised with him into newness of life and into everlasting life, divine life.

So what Jesus is saying to them, “You do not know what you’re asking,” he said, “because what you’re really asking is to suffer with me and to die with me,” and that’s what he says. “Are you able to suffer with me? Are you able—and willing—to die with me?” And then they said to him, “We are able.” And of course, we know, he’s saying that to us. He’s saying that to us every day of our life. “Can you suffer with me? Can you die with me?” And we can’t help but remember that early Christian hymn in 2 Timothy, where it says, “If we have died with him, we shall live with him. If we have patiently endured suffering together with him, so then we will reign with him. But if we deny him, he denies us, and if we are faithless, he remains faithful, because he cannot deny himself.”

So we must suffer with him; we must die with him. There’s no other way to enter glory. None. This is it; this is the Gospel. And so they say, “We are able,” and let’s pray to God for the grace to say, “We, too, Lord are able. We are able.”

And then Jesus continues and says, “The cup that I drink, you will drink, and the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” So he said, “You will suffer with me, James and John, and you will die with me.” And they did.

But then he continues! “But to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” Now what does that mean? That means, I believe, that Jesus can’t just give it out to whomever he wants to. He just doesn’t decide and give it to whom he wants to. He said, “This is given by God the Father for those for whom it is prepared.” And whom is it prepared for? It’s prepared for everyone who suffers with him and dies with him. That’s the condition. So we may not sit on his right hand or on his left, and of course in the parable of the judgment, we hope we’re all sitting on the right! But in any case, it depends on us. God gives it to those who suffer with him and die with him. These are they who enter into his glory, who sit with him enthroned in his kingdom.

Then the gospel continues. When the ten, the other ten of the twelve apostles, the disciples who become the twelve apostles, when they hear that, it says they began to be indignant at James and John. And then Jesus calls them and says to them, “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them, but it shall not be so among you.” So he says, “Among you, my disciples, the leaders, the Twelve, and all, especially leaders—bishops, priests, abbots—it shall not be so among you. There shall be no lording it over, no acting in some kind of exercising authority in some domineering way.” He said, “It shall not be so among you,” and then he continues. “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” And then the gospel ends: “And the Son of Man also came, not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

And we should know that expression, “for many,” it’s actually an idiom in Aramaic meaning “for all, the multitude.” So for example at the Supper when he says, “This is my Body, broken; this is my Blood, spilled—for you and for many,” it doesn’t mean for many more others but it really literally means for the multitude: for you and for the multitude. And that is an Orthodox dogma, that Jesus on the cross ransoms everybody; he heals everybody. He forgives everybody; he shows mercy on everybody. He raises everyone from the dead, whether they want it or not, know it or not, like it or not—that’s the Gospel, that’s the fact. And then the judgment is: Do we really accept it? And then of course, the proof of our acceptance is: Do we suffer with him? And do we die with him? Or at least do we want to and repent over the fact that we, all too often, don’t?

But here we have this teaching of Jesus that you find in so many different ways in the Gospel. “Whoever would be great among you must be the servant; whoever would be first must be slave, bonded slave, of all.” Diakonos and doulos. Diakonos, servant; doulos, bonded slave. And that’s our situation, together with Jesus, because he is the Suffering Servant of God; he is the bonded Slave who has nothing and is given over unto death in order to redeem the world and raise the dead into everlasting glory and to bring God’s kingdom.

And so this is the teaching. And we know how the Lord said that in many different ways. He said— And this is the paradox. We like to say that Orthodoxy is paradoxy. The Gospel is paradoxical. The Lord teaches: You want to be first? Be last. You want to be greatest? Be least. You want to reign? Then be a slave. And he continues: Do you want to be fulfilled? Then empty yourself. Do you want to affirm yourself? Then deny yourself for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of truth and beauty, for God. Do you want to be rich? Then become poor; become poor with Jesus who was poor. Do you want to be wise? Then, according to this world, become a fool; be a fool in the eyes of this world. Do you want to be strong? Well, then be weak, because as St. Paul said, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” And of course, the teaching we have today: Do you want to sit in glory? Then suffer. Do you want to live forever with God in glory? Then die the shameful death with me. For the Son of Man also came, not to be served but to serve and to give his life as the ransom for many.

This is what we hear on the fifth Sunday of the Great Lenten season. Our focus is on the Lord, going up to Jerusalem. We’re going with him, amazed and afraid, and we’re going with him wanting to enter his glory, and we are told that we can enter and we will, if we suffer with him and die with him. We will enter, we will reign, if we’re not like the Gentiles and the pagans, because among us, among Christians, it should not be so, but those of us who would be the greatest must become the servant of all, and those who are willing and wanting to be first with Christ, the firstborn of the dead and the firstfruits in all things, we have to make our self the lowly, last bonded slave of everyone and everything.

And through this, together with our Lord and Master, who was rejected, mocked, spit upon, beaten, crucified, reviled, rejected, killed, we will then enter into his glory, the glory of the risen and victorious Christ, the King of glory.