Command that these two sons of mine sit,
one at your right and the other at your left, in your Kingdom.
What they desired was not all bad. They wanted to sit on his right and left, to be near him, not entirely different from the way John reclined upon the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper. Yet they did ask it in a way that indicated they desired not only proximity to Jesus but also Kingdom authority. Still, even this was not without merit. Jesus had sent them out for missionary work giving them his own authority. He promised that they would one day sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. But we can see from the response of the ten that their request also contained a jockeying for position and a desire for prestige. It wasn't just that they desired to be great in the Kingdom of God. It was possible to have an entirely holy desire for greatness of that sort. Rather, they desired their greatness, not relative to the Kingdom only, but to their fellow men. There was the impression that if their request was granted they would lord it over the others and make their authority over them felt. On the one hand, the core of their desire was for something good. On the other, it would need to be purified before they would be allowed to receive it, in order that they might make good use of it.
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."
Authority in the Kingdom was closely tied to one's ability to drink the chalice. Jesus himself used his authority in many ways, but he chiefly used it in order to drink the chalice of suffering for the salvation of the world. He never used his authority to assert his superiority for the sake of massaging his own ego. He was indifferent to the prestige that his disciples still desired and sought. Had they been given authority at that moment they would have used in ways that were abusive of the freedom and dignity of others in order to satisfy their whims. But Jesus expressed his own authority from the cross in order to enhance the freedom and dignity of humanity that had been tarnished and tainted by original sin.
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.
All of our motivations about the Kingdom are probably tainted to some degree, partly good, but partly selfish. There are many ways we may hope to correct this corruption within us. But the most effective would seem to be to embrace the chalice of Jesus. When we take up our crosses and follow him for his sake and for that of our neighbor we will necessarily be purified of our selfishness. The path of the cross does not reward selfish desires and forces us to come to terms with what we value and what we truly want. It sounds dark and difficult, and no doubt it is, but not so much as it sounds. For the path of Kingdom greatness does include the core of our original desire, which was the truest part of what motivated us from the beginning. Being near to Jesus, living in his Kingdom, and using his own authority to spread his love to the world is really worth it. But we often only learn and come to believe this through the experience of sharing in his cross.
Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served
but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Our egos may try to insist that the path of service is degrading rather than rewarding, that it cannot lead to true greatness. But the lie to this is given by the way that Jesus himself lived and gave us his life as an example. If the greatest one to ever lived came to serve others, how much more ought we do the same? If his greatness was undiminished by giving his life for others, but rather accentuated and revealed, so too will our own some day, even to ourselves, to the degree that we can really believe it and live it with zeal.
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