Daily Bread

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favour of him. And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’ But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able.’ He said to them, ‘You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’

When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

Every parent should want the best for their child, and in this story, the mom of James and John approaches Jesus to ask that he show them favour.

There's a wonderful juxtaposition in this text. You have Jesus, sitting (throne-like?), and someone coming and kneeling before him as one does before royalty, asking that with his royal status he appoint positions next to him. Jesus then asked a strange question about whether the sons could drink from the same cup as him, which is an idiom for asking whether they were able to accept God's will for their lives, which they declared they were, but then Jesus turned things on their head and declared himself as not royalty but as a servant, and that his listeners should do and be the same.

Honour and status are never things we should seek for they are God's alone to bestow. Our culture is celebrity-oriented and ego-driven. We get an endorphin hit when we get a view, like, or share on our social media, and a whole multi-billion dollar industry has been built around our thirst for recognition. Social media, which started life as a positive method for us to connect and share, has become a self-perpetuating machine, all geared to make us want more hits on our content, which in turn keeps us and others on the platform with the single aim of parting us with our money. Cynical? Perhaps, but true. And even if we don't spend our money, how many hours have we given to doom-scrolling content?

It is not easy moving from an ego-centric worldview to an other-centric worldview, yet it is to the latter that Jesus has called us. We must make our lives less about ourselves and more about others; less about our own feelings but more about the feelings of others; less about our own needs but more about the needs of others; and less inward-looking and more outward-looking.

I'm not pointing the finger for I am the worst offender, and so, let's try for a single day to not use the word 'I' in a single sentence when talking to others. Catch yourself. See if you can do it — even just for the sake of the exercise. If you're like me, it's not as easy as it sounds.

Holy God
Help me be pure
and humble in heart,
remembering to put others
first before myself.
May I learn to be
a servant of all
and someone who honours
you and your status
as creator and saviour of all.