Mark 10:36-38 - What do you want me to do for you?

10:36,37

Jesus asks them what they want and they say “Let one of us sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory”. Now given that Jesus has just been telling them about his forthcoming suffering, this is a strange thing to be asking. It implies that they hadn’t heard, and certainly hadn’t understood, what Jesus had been saying. It is possible that they had latched on to the term Son of Man in the Daniel 7:13 sense.

10:38

“You don’t know what you are asking”. To be at the right and left of Jesus “in His glory” would actually have meant to be in the crosses either side of Jesus. How was the cross “His glory”? Well the cross was the most significant event in human history. It is only through the cross that we can be right with God. Jesus then asks them if they can drink the cup that He is about to drink. Jesus’ words about baptism here are essentially an example of parallelism. We think of “baptism” in its Christian ritual sense, but it also just means “immersed”. Jesus was about to be “immersed” in suffering.