GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 10:39
We Are Able
There is a story in which someone asked an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—known for its can-do, will-do spirit—if the Corps could build a ladder to the moon. “Sure,” he said. “Might take a while, but we can do it.” There is another story about a man who took his computer to a shop and asked the technician if he could repair it. “Sure,” the technician said. “Just leave it with me.” The next day, the customer went back to the shop to pick up his computer. Its case was open, with parts scattered across the counter. “I don’t know how they ever got all these parts in that case,” the technician said.
Mark records an incident in which two of Jesus’ disciples requested the honor of sitting beside him in his glory. Jesus responded by asking if they could drink the cup he was going to drink and be baptized with the baptism with which he was going to be baptized. “But they said to him, ‘We are able.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘The cup which I drink you will drink and the baptism with which I am baptized, you shall be baptized.’” (Mark 10:38)
Before this conversation, Jesus told the disciples that upon reaching Jerusalem, he would be arrested, ridiculed, beaten, and killed. It was a somber warning. Commentators are divided over whether James and John clearly understood Jesus’ meaning when he used these two Jewish metaphors—the cup and baptism. It was a common practice for a host at banquets to pass the cup to all his guests, and the word “baptism” (βαπτίζω, baptizo) meant to immerse or submerge. Nevertheless, they confidently answered, “We are able.”
Jesus told these two disciples—and, by extension, all who would follow him—that without partaking of the cup and undergoing baptism—that is, a willingness to “pay the price”—there could be no crown, no place beside the resurrected Savior.
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