Advent Advent III.iv

I love the Jesus Disciple stories in the New Testament. Lest anyone think they are not qualified for the Kingdom, they need only look at the morons Jesus chose to be his closest friends to see that the Kingdom of Heaven is made up of jackasses and idiots.

In this passage in Matthew, the two Zebedee boys ask their Mom to ask Jesus if they can be super important in Heaven. And their Mom does it! They've been hanging out with Jesus for a while now - we're almost at the end of the book - and probably Jesus not-unreasonably expects that they should be getting it by now. When he's asked, he turns to these two and says, "Can you drink the cup I'm going to drink?" and they're all like, "Yeah, we totally can." And Jesus is like, "Oh right. Yeah. You will. But the point is, shouldn't you know by now that the Kingdom of God doesn't reward and recognize the way it's done here on earth? And didn't I just say, like a story and a half ago that you're supposed to leave your parents behind?"

I made that last part up. But surely Jesus is irked that they got their mom to ask. I digress....

The ones who have heard it most often, lived beside it most closely, seen it lived out most intimately still misunderstand and still ask stupid questions. Or get their mom to (I can't get over this!). What hope do we have, thousands of years later, in a completely different culture, speaking an entirely differently language, to get this right? We rely on these guys' best memories of what was said. It's ludicrous.

And yet.

Thousands of years later, our world still goes bonkers trying to figure out how to celebrate Jesus showing up. Like the disciples, we're getting it horribly wrong. And like the disciples, we make up the Kingdom. Jesus chooses people like us, over and over and over again.

Imagine that.

Matthew 20:17-28

New International Version (NIV)

Jesus Predicts His Death a Third Time

¹⁷ Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, ¹⁸ “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death ¹⁹ and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”

A Mother’s Request

²⁰ Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him.
²¹ “What is it you want?” he asked.
She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”
²² “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”
“We can,” they answered.
²³ Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”
²⁴ When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. ²⁵ Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. ²⁶ Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ²⁷ and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— ²⁸ just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”