Be Yourself!

Be Yourself reflections will continue to look as different aspects of Mark 10:35-45.


The writer and flamboyant personality, Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying, "Be yourself, even one else is taken!"

Be yourself, well who else would you be?  Who else are you trying to be?  We can diminish the God called self we were created to be and try to be someone else.

James and John in the Gospel passage from Mark 10-35-45 are trying to be something that they are not. Their misunderstanding seems almost tragically comical that Jesus' life is about power and recognition.  They ask that one of them may sit at Jesus' right hand and the other on  his left when he comes into his glory.  Their request follows Jesus' third teaching that his servant life will end by death on a cross.  And, as any reader/listener of Mark would know, the ones on Jesus' left and right at the crucifixion were criminals.

Jesus gives them another way into his teaching. Clearly they are not fully understanding the life that will come through Jesus death or that they as disciples will share that life with others.  So, he asks them, can you drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism with which is I baptized?  The cup is the covenant of forgiveness created Jesus's death and resurrection. The baptism is the covenant sealed when a disciple promises to follow Jesus in The Way of life he taught.

Jesus challenges them to be themselves in both the God called life that they experience in Jesus and in the community they will help teach and nurture.  For in the Christian life, Be yourself has both dimensions: individual and community.  The Cup, the covenant of forgiveness is for all; The Baptism, shaping ones life in the covenant of Jesus' new life is for all. Neither can be fully lived alone nor without a community.

Reflect day on the two covenants you live within: forgiveness and new life. What dimensions are individual and what dimensions are found in your life with your faith community.