26 May 26 | We Have Left Everything
Peter asked what they were getting for giving everything up and Jesus answered honestly.
The Gospel: Mark 10:28-31
²⁸ Peter began to say to him, "We have given up everything and followed you." ²⁹ Jesus said, "Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel ³⁰ who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come. ³¹ But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first."
Today’s Focus
Peter asks what the disciples receive for their sacrifice and Jesus promises a hundredfold return of community and belonging in the present age alongside persecutions, closing with the kingdom reversal that reorders first and last by different metrics entirely.
In the Margins
Peter’s statement is honest and a little raw. We have given up everything and followed you. There is no question mark but the question underneath is clear. What do we get for this? Jesus does not treat the question as unworthy. He answers it directly, generously, and with one complication.
The promise is expansive. No one who has given up house, family, or land for Jesus and the Gospel will fail to receive a hundredfold return in the present age. The community formed around Jesus becomes the family that replaces what was left behind. Brothers, sisters, mothers, children, land, the entire social and economic network the ancient world depended on, all of it returned multiplied in the new community. The early Church described in Acts lived in a way that made this materially real. What was surrendered individually was received back communally.
But Jesus adds a word that tends to get skipped over. With persecutions. The hundredfold return does not come without them. They are part of the same promise, not a footnote but an ingredient. The life of the community formed around Jesus will include both the abundance of belonging and the cost of belonging to the one the world rejected. These arrive together.
The closing reversal completes the picture. Many who are first will be last and the last will be first. The rich young man who just walked away sad had everything the world measured as first. The disciples who left their fishing nets had nothing the world counted as significant. The reversal is not a punishment of the successful. It is the disclosure that the metrics the world uses to determine first and last do not correspond to the metrics of the kingdom.
Peter’s question is one most of us have asked in quieter moments. What do we actually receive for this? The answer Jesus gives is not nothing. It is not a spiritualized non-answer that avoids the present-tense question. It is a concrete promise of community and belonging that exceeds what was given up, held honestly alongside the acknowledgment that the path carries hardship. The kingdom does not promise comfort. It promises the hundredfold within a life that takes the same shape as the life of the one who established it.
Reflection Question
Are you holding something back from Jesus because you are not sure the return is worth the cost, and what would it mean to trust the hundredfold promise enough to open your hand?