It cannot have connoted the idea of subservience or inferiority to Mark, for the word for “wait on” (Gk. diakonein) is the same word used for the angels’ “attending” Jesus during the temptation (1:13). It is, moreover, the same word translated “to serve” in 10:45, where Jesus declares that the Son of Man comes “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
