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
to be mocked and scourged and crucified,
and he will be raised on the third day.
When Jesus told them the plan it was admittedly a lot to take in. This wasn't quite the conquering and victorious Messiah they thought they had been promised. There were echoes of Isaiah's suffering servant to be sure, but much less of the Son of David who would rule over the house of David forever. Rome was the pressing problem and it seemed that Jesus was planning to be defeated specifically by the Romans, enduring their dreaded sentence of crucifixion. He would be raised on the third day. But what did that mean? They had no context. If he was going to conquer why not just conquer? Yet, to their credit, they did not abandon him just because they did not understand him, or because his plan wasn't the plan they would have made or that they would prefer.
Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons
and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something.
As the cross began to cast its shadow over Jesus and his disciples the disciples were tempted to see what they could still get from Jesus for themselves, to see what they could salvage from the plan of a great, possibly anointed individual, who nevertheless seemed to them giving in to easily, to be throwing the game.
“Command that these two sons of mine sit,
one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.”
The plan of the mother of the sons of Zebedee seemed prudent from a human point of view. Just in case something problematic did happen to Jesus then the sons of Zebedee would at least be situated to keep things running in his absence. All that they had experienced so far would not be for naught. But they still misunderstood the sort of Kingdom Jesus came to inaugurate.
Jesus said in reply,
“You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”
They said to him, “We can.”
To truly share in the Kingdom as leaders would require more than appointment to the office because it was not an earthly kingdom. The chalice they would need to drink was not whatever they imagined it to be, but rather the one about which Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, the cross itself. There was no path to victory that did not pass through death. No one would reign in the true and fully legitimate spiritual sense without first sharing in the cross of Jesus.
My chalice you will indeed drink
The sons of Zebedee bit off more than they could chew at that moment, but it was not entirely to the bad. Their mixed motives were still enough to keep them on track with Jesus, to keep them near him and listening to his direction, so that they themselves could witness the way taken by the Master, and come to understand that they too must pass that way. If our flesh fully understood what was involved in a commitment to Jesus we would probably never get our response off the ground. But it is mercifully revealed gradually as we are renewed within and able to recognize the greater though perhaps more distant good as better than the immediate preoccupations of the flesh. Jesus leads us along by motivations that begin as less than perfect, purifying us as we go. But Lent is a reminder for us that our destiny too must include the way of the cross.
When the ten heard this,
they became indignant at the two brothers.
The spiritual life isn't a competition, except insofar as it is a competition to see who can be the most humble and to dedicate herself the most to service of others. Yet we insist on comparing ourselves to our brothers and sisters and trying to claw for the blessings we imagine to be ours. The shift needs to begin from what we can do for ourselves to what we can do for the Church and the world. This may not mean abandoning our dreams of sitting at the right and left of Jesus entirely. But it will mean reimagining them to be like his own dream, "the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many".
Remember that I stood before you
to speak in their behalf,
to turn away your wrath from them.
Jeremiah was a prelude and a foreshadowing of Jesus himself, with a heart that was for his people even when by rights he might have put himself first, who spoke on their behalf even when they tried to take his life. As he was a prelude, let us be echoes, not insisting on ourselves as first, not lording it over the competition, but, accepting the chalice, and using whatever we have been given for those around us.
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