Not Slaves But Friends

I told you I’d probably find myself drawn back to the Pope’s Verona address. Something he says there causes me to revisit this post about the meaning of the passage in Mark 10, often referred to as “the ambition of James & John.” I’d said there that I’m never comfortable with the usual things that are said about the passage –as if the whole thing were nothing more than Christ’s rebuking uppity boys—and cited with approval a discussion of magnanimity. But now I’d like to take it from another angle.

We have assigned seats at our dinner table, but when we go out to eat, my kids tussle to sit next to me (except for the eldest, who insists on being next to Dad, and unless a Celebrity such as Grandma or Beloved Uncle comes along, in which case Mom & Dad are forgotten). This may not be the most appropriate expression of their love, but I would no more rebuke it than the man in the moon, because I recognize it for what it is –affection. They want to be close to me. By the same token (and I’m getting this idea from Mr. W.), is it probable that faced with two disciples who express their desire to be close to him, Jesus’ response would be a rebuke? The other disciples’ response isn’t indignation over James and John’s “ambition,” but a protest, “we love him just as much and want to be just as close!”

I think that reading of the passage sheds much more light on what follows –Christ’s discourse about how the

rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great one make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you.

This is the beginning of Christ’s radical teaching that the relation between God and man is not a master-slave relationship, but a love relationship. This teaching of Christ’s culminates in his saying at the Last Supper

I call you no longer slaves [our translations typically say “servants,” but the Gk is “slaves”] but friends

–and then he goes and proves the friendship with his life.

This reflection is prompted by B-16’s teaching at Verona –after a beautiful defense of reason and truth—that man is more than reason and intellect. He has a craving to be loved –and yet evil in the world makes it difficult for us to believe in love.

Here, much more than any human reason, the upsetting novelty of Biblical revelation comes to our aid: the Creator of Heaven and earth, the one God who is the source of every being, the sole Creator Logos, this creative reason knows how to love man personally, or rather, loves him passionately and wants to be loved in his turn. This creative reason, who at the same time loves, therefore gives life to a history of love with Israel, his people, and in this affair, in the face of the betrayal of the people, his love shows itself rich in inexhaustible fidelity and mercy. It is a love that forgives beyond all limits.
In Jesus Christ such an attitude reaches an extreme, unheard-of and dramatic level: in him, in fact, God makes himself one of us, our brother in humanity, and what is more, sacrifices his life for us.

This is the radical teaching of Christ –that we can be friends of God. To understand this is to see simultaneously why Christianity can never truly be at peace with Islam, because Mohammed’s project is precisely to undo this Christian revolution –- to assert you are not God’s friend but his slave and it's a blasphemy to think otherwise.