She answered him,
"Command that these two sons of mine sit,
one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom."
The ego, the part of us that is unable to recognize or understand what Jesus means to do for us by his Passion and death, will always try to scrape together for itself some sort of payment or a consolation prize for the difficulties it must endure.
Jesus said in reply,
"You do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?"
Because we misconstrue what Jesus wants to do in our hearts we also do not ask for the right things. If we can't have fancy robes or honorific titles maybe we can have positions of honor. Maybe we can see ourselves elevated over other disciples and legislate from that position how the others ought to live and conduct themselves. But authority, honor, and glory in the Kingdom are not what our egos misunderstand them to be. Jesus is glorified precisely in giving his life as a ransom for many. It this cup, not the one that the sons of Zebedee imagine they want, that Jesus desires to share.
My chalice you will indeed drink,
but to sit at my right and at my left,
this is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.
Fortunately, Jesus did not countenance their request by giving them the places right and left of his enthronement on the cross. The Father had other and different ways planned for the sons of Zebedee to share Christ's chalice. From this episode we learn the vanity of all of our attempts to control the future to ensure results we consider optimal. Even when our aspirations are partly spiritual we still find worldly ambition mixed it. It is only because the Father leads us even in spite of us not knowing what we ask, guiding us by hidden ways, that we may hope to eventual arrive at the places prepared for us in his Kingdom. But we can make things somewhat easier on ourselves by disabusing ourselves of false notions of the Kingdom. It is not merely a spiritual substitute for worldly benefits. It is something more sublime and beautiful than that. It is not reigning as prideful tyrants, but on a spiritual level. It is rather in giving ourselves in servant leadership that we most closely approach the Son of Man who "did not come to be served but to serve".
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