Today’s Gospel [Matthew 20: 20-28] and its tale of how the mother of James and John went to Jesus on their behalf, reminds me of the many times, during my years as a school teacher and principal, when a parent would come to me asking a special favor for their child. True, no one ever came to me demanding that their kid sit next to Jesus in his kingdom, but some of those special requests came close: a different, more popular science teacher; looking the other way after an outrageous offence; changing a grade for a better chance at a college admission. Being a parent myself I understood the impulse driving the desire for special treatment. But like all administrators everywhere, I always fell back on the tired bureaucrat’s response: “If I do it for you, I’ll have to do it for everybody.” They never found that any more convincing than I did.
Luckily for us, Jesus in today’s Gospel is more creative than I was. When the mother of James, the first martyr among the twelve apostles and the patron saint of this parish, makes her exceptionalistic request, Jesus does not fall back on school administrator excuses. Instead, he asks James and his brother John, “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They say they are. But with his surprising reply, Jesus stops them in their tracks:
“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.”
We need a little context here. Our gospel reading lopped off some introductory verses about Jesus deciding now to leave his home up north in Galilee and head straight south for Jerusalem. James, John, and his mother apparently think that the trip to the capital city will be a triumphant procession to glory, and they want to sit at the right and the left of Jesus so they can bask in all the applause. Jesus, however, knows that this journey is about something else: he is bringing his healing work and his message of love and justice to the heart of Israel’s life in what will become a direct confrontation with imperial power. This is not going to look or feel like the Tournament of Roses.
If you remember last week’s Gospel, we heard the story of Herod’s brutal execution of John the Baptist. In today’s reading from Acts, we hear the account of that same Herod ordering the murder of the apostle James by the sword. It turns out that Jesus was right: James did drink from the same cup as Jesus. When love comes up against power, power’s first response is always to murder love. It happened to Jesus. It happened to James. It has happened to saints and martyrs around the world and down through time. James learned the hard way that following Jesus is not dressing for success. It is standing for something that our power structures will always find threatening and will seek to destroy.
And that is why Jesus concludes today’s teaching with these words to James and John and their companions:
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.
Caesar and Herod operate on the power principle, but it won’t be that way in the community gathered around Jesus. The Son of Man “came not to be served but to serve”. It turns out that our special treatment isn’t special privilege. Our surprising reward is a call to service.
I have thought a lot about this Gospel and the story of James this week. Kathy and I are just returned from two weeks in the Midwest, spending time with family and friends. Because we were busy doing basic vacation things we didn’t have time to follow any of the political news stories that have rolled out over the summer. As I thought a lot about this Gospel and very little about social media or cable news, I began better to understand James, his mother, and myself. As this election year shows, we can all be caught up in the world’s constant struggle for power and prestige. But when we turn from the struggle and toward Jesus, we are drawn to a vision of something real and true. Life is not about the things we usually chase and value. Life is about the kind of love, justice, and compassion which Jesus both preaches and embodies.
It is easy upon hearing this Gospel to beat up on James, John, and their mother. What is harder is to look at them and see ourselves. We often value the reward more than the work that earns it. I remember hearing an interview with the late actress Carrie Fisher. She was talking about going to the gym. The reporter asked her if she liked exercise. “No,” she replied. “I like the feeling of having worked out.” That answer could serve as the motto for much of contemporary life. We want to get the result without having to pay the price of it.
Let’s remember, though, that the story of James the Great did not stop here. We wouldn’t be celebrating this apostle, and you wouldn’t have named your church after him, if he had just been a guy on an ego trip. Though we do not know a lot about his life after this and in the earliest Christian community, we do know that he died as Jesus did at the hands of state violence. He clearly took in the message that we hear Jesus giving to all the twelve:
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.
As Jesus has it, we his followers account to a higher set of standards. One of the things you learn studying church history is the way in which Christianity at its best has managed to be what we call today “countercultural”. Often we bless the culture we inhabit uncritically. But sometimes we rise above that. When he describes the common run of humanity, Jesus here uses the word ἐθνῶν which is variously translated “gentiles”, “nations”, “pagans”. Our culture values ego and rewards performance. Those gathered with and around Jesus nurture more interior virtues and bask not in his fame but in his presence. And we show that we value those things by living lives of service and, sometimes, real costly sacrifice. Just ask James.
When I look closely at James, John, and their mother I am looking in a mirror. As in Carrie Fisher’s example, I want the reputation of having done the thing rather than the doing of the thing itself. I want to be seen as loving, just, generous, and compassionate and am less interested in doing the actual work that earns the reputation. This doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It just means that I’m human.
But, luckily for me and I trust also for you, the story doesn’t stop there. God does not simply leave us to the mercy of the problems of human selfishness. For some mysterious reason that I cannot always understand, God has brought you and me into this community that we share with Jesus, with James and John, with all the saints and sinners who have shared this table with us over time, and today, here and now, with each other. Perhaps God’s greatest gift to us is that we are not left to face the dilemmas of being human on our own. We have been placed in and given a community in which to work it all out—a thing called the church which can be as frail and damaged as any human institution, but can also be the vehicle that brings us into deeper self-awareness and compassion.
Today is the Sunday on which St. James parish celebrates the life and witness of St. James the apostle and martyr. He is your patron saint for a good reason. James followed Jesus faithfully, but it took him a while to get what Jesus was really about. I’ve been doing this priestly church work for almost fifty years, and I’m still trying to get it. All of us, together, have been brought into this gracious space and have been given each other as companions to help us become the people God made us to be. It’s not always easy following Jesus. It’s often a bumpy road, and learning hard truths about yourself in community doesn’t always feel good. But over a lifetime walking this road with Jesus and each other leads us to a new and gracious place we wouldn’t have gotten to simply on our own. Over time—and sometimes against our wishes--God makes over us in the image of Jesus. We too become ones who came not to be served but to serve.
So come to the table now with Jesus, with James, with each other and give thanks for the God who sees us, knows us, loves us. God’s love calls us into new and blessed life in service of a world which still has things mostly upside down and usually backwards. It is only by following Jesus together that we discover, finally, who we really are. Amen.
