What a pushy mother

I have been settling in to our new home in the Highlands. It certainly is a beautiful place. Even in the harsh wind and rain it is beautiful. One of the best vistas is one that is from the local Free Church building. We have been there only twice but it is a lovely church. I have been thinking about the first time we went. The teaching there was on a passage from Mark chapter 10. The passage where Jesus predicts his death for the 3rd time and where James and John ask for the places at Christ’s right hand in heaven. This triggered off a few things in my head and I thought I would write them down. What follows is an outline of the notes I took during the talk and a few thoughts of my own. The passage talks about how Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. Here he knows that he is going to die. He will be handed over and he will be killed. He isn’t scared. The disciples are not pulling him towards Jerusalem, he is leading the way. What makes this difficult for Jesus is that he also knows who will betray him. He knows that one of the twelve men who have been so devoted to him and his constant companions for nearly three years will sell him out. In his knowledge of the events to come, we see that he knows why. This is the ultimate service he does for his friends. He has eaten with them, he has saved their lives in storms. He has shown them miracles and he has taught them wonderful lessons. He will shortly wash their feet, the ultimate in humility. Yet, beyond all of this is the heart of the servant. Here is the suffering servant going willingly to his gruesome death. This path that Jesus is treading is a servant path. The Christian life is said to be one where we must follow Jesus. We should follow him in the path that he has trodden. I don’t know about you but this is something that scares me. I don’t want to go to Jerusalem and be betrayed. I don’t want to be forsaken by God and my friends. Thankfully, that won’t happen. I don’t have to be crucified, Jesus has done that for me. However, we are sometimes called to walk a long and dangerous path. Jesus never promises that the Christian life will be easy. It will always be difficult but the journey is worth the effort. The passage we read was taken from the Gospel of St. Mark. This is a breathless gospel. Taking us from one miracle to another, from one teaching to another. It is almost as if a child is telling a story (and here I do not want to denigrate the sublime writing of St Mark) about an exciting day ‘And then we… then we… then this happened… then we did … and then … and then … straight after…’. Straight after Jesus has predicted his death and shown the way to go, James and John come to him asking him to give them special places in Heaven. One to sit at his right and one to sit at his left. These are the honoured places. Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t start out by saying no. He asks if they are prepared to do what he must do. Can they drink from the cup he drinks from? This is a reference to drinking the punishment of God. They would have known this. They would have had their minds and hearts drawn to Isaiah 53 and particularly to verse 10 where we see what the servant must go through. Likewise with baptism. Jesus may be referring to the death and resurrection aspects of baptism here. Can the sons of thunder honestly say they are prepared to go through what Jesus must? Sometimes, reading the Bible is a difficult thing. We cannot hear the tone nor see the face that those who are speaking would have had. I imagine that when he speaks to them again, Jesus is using a gentle tone and a face filled with compassion and concern. He knows what suffering these two will undergo and he knows how wonderfully they will serve God and others. He doesn’t want to disappoint them but he has an obligation to say that their request is invalid. He knows that nobody but God the father knows who will be sitting in those places. After all, it may be those two, we will find out one day. Why did they do it? This is something that is easy to spot. They did it because they are human. They wanted something from Jesus. They knew that he was a servant, they just wanted him to serve them in some way. Even when the other disciples get annoyed, one suspects it is because they asked first not that they asked at all. How often have we, even in our saved state, asked Christ to do this or that for us? Making those little bargains with God is sometimes all that our prayer life comes to I find. Christ’s teaching on this is revolutionary. Truly he turns everything around. The world in First Century Palestine was the same as it is now. The world judges success by what you have and what you get. Those at the top of society are the most successful. Society is a perfect model of the theory of survival of the fittest. The rich, the powerful, the famous and the talented are those most lauded by society. Christ takes this and says that is not what God wants. It is not, never has been and never will be the plan for mankind. He says that it is in serving others that greatness is bestowed. Stopping down to help the poor, the weak, the injured and the lonely is what is needed. James and John may indeed one day be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven but not before the become the least among the disciples. I remember spending some time in Israel after University working for a church charity. I had such a great time and such wonderful fellowship and teaching. However, there was one person there who rubbed me up the wrong way. Her name was Hannah. She was from South Africa and considerably older than me. Her ideas were different from mine in several ways but we argued over healing. A silly thing to argue over but we did. It was my turn one morning to lead the morning devotions and God put it in my mind to apologise and to seek forgiveness. I shouldn’t consider myself greater than her He told me and thankfully I listened. A few days later it was her turn to lead the devotions and as we were approaching Easter she led us through the passage where Christ washes the feet of the disciple. Despite having had a difficult time with me and despite it being difficult for her to kneel on the floor, she came and washed my feet. Never had I seen such humility and servanthood. That day, I understood what it meant to Jesus to be able to do this for his friends. So, James and John have to learn this lesson like the rest of us. If you have read more of my blog, you will know how much I love John as a model for living. I think it is safe to say that John learned this lesson well. As I was thinking about this, I had a thought that I knew this story in a different version. I thought that it was their mother who asked for this favour. I was correct, there is that version elsewhere in the Bible. It comes from Matthew 20:20-21. Here, the mother of James and John kneels before Christ and asks for her sons. She is a remarkable woman who is mentioned elsewhere in Matthew’s gospel. She is one of the few who is at the cross as Christ dies. Only a little while after this very request, she witnesses first hand what the cup of suffering her sons will go through is. Here is a remarkable character. If only we knew a little bit more about her we may be able to understand why she made this request. Come with me to the scene at the foot of the cross. Who was there? Mark records it thus ‘Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses, and Salome’ (Mark 15:40). Matthew says this; ‘Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee’ (Matthew 27:55-56). Now, it is not too much of a leap to assume that Salome is the mother of the sons of James and John the sons of Zebedee. Matthew is probably just giving her a title to help believers identify her. Luke doesn’t name names (unusually for him but there you go) but John does. John says ‘Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene’ (John 19:25). John may have introduced two new women here but I don’t think so. I think that ‘his mother’s sister’ was Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee. Jesus and John were cousins. This helps explain why Jesus was asked by the mother of James and John for this special favour. They were related. This may be speculation but it adds another dimension to the story. Jesus doesn’t act in the way of kings of this world. For them, family was all important. Christ is a different sort of king. His is a meritocracy. People must earn their places in it and they must do so in a very different way. All in all, this is a most inspiring passage from the gospel for me. It contains many things that I have done. I have been selfish, I have assumed that Jesus was there to serve me in his capacity as a spiritual tool box and I have got angry because others asked for things before I did. It also contains things I want to do. I want to be the servant of others. I want to be like Christ and I want to follow his path. I know it is a difficult path and one which I may stumble on but as I said right at the start, Christ is leading. The light of the world is in front of me, it shouldn’t be that hard to see the path …