Isaiah 53:10-11
Psalms 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22
Hebrews 4:14-16
Mark 10:35-45 or 10:42-45
Simone Weil, that strange yet beautiful soul, once wrote that genuine love of neighbor meant being able to ask the question, “What are you going through?” What she meant was that neighborly love demands sympathy and empathy. It demands that a person cares, beyond the self, for the other.
“What are you going through?” Real love asks such questions; that was her point. There is no such thing as love otherwise.
Which, if true, is tough to think about. Especially given the behavior of James and John in this passage from Mark’s Gospel. Such a question – What are you going through? – even the inkling of the question, seems light years away from the minds and hearts of these sons of thunder. I’ve always considered this one of the coldest moments in all the gospels.
Step back and note the context. Just moments before, in a moment of vulnerable prophecy, Jesus dares to open himself to his disciples, his friends. “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,” Jesus tells them. He tells them that he, the “Son of man,” will be condemned, mocked, spit upon, scourged, and killed (Mark 10:33-34). I’ve always imagined Jesus saying this not with calm, cool clarity – like he’s reading an agenda or an itinerary – but with the sort of tender apprehension of a person who in hard times seeks the solace of friends. I imagine Jesus’ voice a bit timorous as he risks sharing this prophecy with those he thought cared for him. It is a poignant moment.
Which is why I think it so cold, so lacking in empathy, that in almost the same breath James and John say to Jesus, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask you…Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at you left, in your glory” (Mark 10:35-37). It’s shocking, really. It’s as if they don’t even hear him.
Jesus had just confided in them about his impending suffering and death. But what is on the minds of James and John? What is making them so emotionally deaf to the words of Jesus? It’s their own pathetically imagined glory.
Matthew, I’ve long wondered, was perhaps so embarrassed by the question that the way he tells the story, it’s their mother who makes the awkward request (Matthew 20:20-21). But it doesn't matter. Whoever asked the question, it was a cruel moment. And it’s a haunting reminder to me of just how cold my soul can get sometimes, how sometimes I can get so self-infatuated that I forget the One who suffered for me, died for me, with an often-unrequited love. It reminds me of the cruelty of selfishness.
So, what are we supposed to do with that? First, I think it’s helpful to remember how God is not like us; at least, he is not like us when we are being self-centered. Or, to put it better: we are not like God – not at all – when we’re being selfish. In this, as Isaiah said, his ways are certainly not our ways (Isaiah 55:8).
Rather, God is compassionate. He is the “servant” Isaiah hoped would bear the guilt of others in suffering (Isaiah 53:11). As the author of Hebrews put it, he is a priest who can sympathize with our weakness (Hebrews 4:15). That’s what Jesus shows us – the beautiful condescension, the compassion, the philanthropy of God. He shows us in himself – because, of course, he is one with the Father – that God doesn’t do to us what James and John did to him. Because God cares; his desire includes us.
Which means, in the end, that if the Christian life is a matter of conforming ourselves to Christ, if holiness is a matter of union with Jesus, then a measure of such conformity and union should be our capacity for sympathy. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar” is how John put it (1 John 4:20).
Or, as we began – but now knowing where such love comes from – it’s as Simone Weil said. To love means to be able to ask your neighbor what he or she is going through. And then it means to listen and to care.
(Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books.)
