“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man
will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death
and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him,
spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death,
but after three days he will rise.”
The cross is often the point where we turn back, stumble, or look for alternatives. We're usually OK with following Jesus when he is teaching, when he is working mighty deeds and making his Father known. When we're called to enter into his self-sacrificial love we don't necessarily turn back, but even when we continue to follow him there is often an inward and self-protective turn. Before we encounter the cross we follow Jesus for his own sake. At the cross we bargain and try to make it pay off for ourselves.
They answered him,
“Grant that in your glory
we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”
The irony is that the cross will pay off for us, but in a way that is beyond what we can imagine or hope. The fruit of the cross for us will be more and not less than anything with which we try to justify it to our flesh beforehand. However we justify it to ourselves the most important thing is that we keep moving forward.
Jesus said to them, “The chalice that I drink, you will drink,
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
The motivations that help us along the way may be partial, but as long as we do not turn aside from following Jesus those motivations themselves can be transformed by the journey. James and John would have to learn that in the kingdom of Jesus the thrones would be quite different from the ones they imagined. There was still some desire for power and pride that they would need to relinquish on the way to those thrones. But simply by not giving up on Jesus and by persevering in following him they would learn to relinquish them.
For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.
The path to glory and fulfillment and the path of humble service and love are the same path. Jesus demonstrated how these two paths are not in opposition. In him we saw, in the flesh, God who is totally content in himself, to whom the universe can offer nothing, whose very existence is a joyous exchange of love. Yet this very same one, this glorious one, chose to become the servant of all so that the love between the persons of the Trinity could overflow into the world. Only in Jesus can this apparent dichotomy of humility and glory make sense to us. Only in him can we see how to follow both paths at once. He can use even imperfect motivations if we pursue him because he himself is the one who can purify them.
Hear the prayer of your servants,
for you are ever gracious to your people;
and lead us in the way of justice.
Thus it will be known to the very ends of the earth
that you are the eternal God.
No comments:
Post a Comment