Human tendency makes
one seek shortcuts to attain prominence. This is true of the situation we are
about to see in Mark 10:32-40. Here the Lord was just telling His disciples about
His impending suffering, death and resurrection. Yet they were so out of focus.
They wanted to be in positions of glamor without having to pay the cost.
In verse 35,
The Zebedee brothers, James and John, approached Jesus and demanded that the
Lord should place them in prominent positions, one on His right and one on His
left, in His glory. Notice how they approached the Lord. It was not a request. They
did not give the Lord any option. They weren’t saying “Lord, will you please grant
us the privilege of sitting at your right and left in Your glorious Kingdom?” but
“Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask.”
Matthew 20:20-28,
tell us that it was their mother who came asking this from the Lord on their
behalf. So are these Scriptures contradictory? Of course not! And it’s easy to
explain. The idea of the whole move came from the two sons but they got their
mother to approach the Lord on their behalf, so that it wouldn’t look bad on
them. But Mark went directly to the source of the whole move. It was the two
who wanted the positions and Mark identified them straight away. To be sure what
they had sought for was not unreasonable. Why? In Matthew 19:28, the Lord promised
them that they would be sitting on 12 thrones to judge the 12 tribes of Israel.
What they were eyeing were legitimate.
These brothers were
in essence saying to the Lord they wanted prominence, proximity and power. The
way the Lord responded to them tells us that He was not angry with them. Furthermore,
there is nothing wrong with the desire to be near the Lord. The problem was in
the way they went about it. They were trying to take a shortcut to it. They had
not calculated the cost involved to get there. So the Lord did not actually
rebuke them, He merely asked them some soul searching questions. He asked if they
could bear the cup that He was going to drink and would they be baptized with
the baptism that he was about to be baptized with. Of course, we know that the
Lord was referring to the experience of His impending suffering and death. The
pair of brothers, with their mistaken zeal, responded thoughtlessly and replied,
“We are able.”
The Lord told
them that they would certainly go through what He would soon be going through. This
was borne out in their lives. James was martyred early. This is recorded in
Acts 12:2. And John died old. He was exiled, imprisoned, suffered and then martyred.
Jesus told them that to attain what they desired was not for Him to determine.
It was for those who quest for that desire, to put in the effort to press toward
that prize. The Lord was suggesting to them, and us as well, that anyone can be
there. It would take desire, time, effort and discipline and a willingness to allow
Him to work through us. There’s simply no shortcut. In other words, what counts
is not just the desire, but the right actions that must accompany the desire,
to collaborate with God.
We all want to
be close to the Lord and be effective in the ministry entrusted to us. There’s simply
no shortcut to attain these desires. They must come through the willingness to exercise
hard and tough disciplines. Remember that anything of virtue comes with effort.
It calls for willingness to die to the self and a willingness to pay the cost. To
act on them is necessary, even if we don’t have the natural inclination.
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