Read Mark 10:32-45 with your family. This is the third time Jesus tells his closest friends that he is going to die soon. And just like the last two times, the disciples don’t want to hear it and don’t understand what Jesus’ death means. In this story John and James go to Jesus privately and ask that they can sit on his left and right hands – the most important positions to a king or leader. They just don’t understand that Jesus is not going to be a king the way the world recognizes kings.

Again Jesus tries to explain to his friends what being a servant leader means, and he uses a new word to help them understand: Ransom. The way the Hebrew’s understood random with God is that God is making an exchange to get people free from the cultural ideas of power and greed, and bring them back into God’s world of equality. In that ransom exchange, people have to accept Jesus being offered as a replacement for their mistakes. If the people don’t accept it, the ransom doesn’t work.