The Cup and the Seats

Jesus has just told the disciples, for the third time and in the most detail yet, that he is going to Jerusalem to be mocked, flogged and killed. The next thing that happens is that James and John come to him with a request. They want to sit at his right and left in his glory.

It is hard to read this without wincing. Two men he loves have heard him describe his death and responded by asking about seating. Jesus does not explode. He asks whether they can drink the cup he drinks and be baptized with his baptism. They say they can. He tells them they will, which is true, and it is not what they meant.

The cup, in the Old Testament, is often a picture of suffering and judgment. Jesus is saying that the way to glory runs through suffering, and that they will get the suffering. The seats, he adds, are not his to give. They belong to those for whom they have been prepared.

When the other ten find out, they are angry, and Jesus has to teach all twelve. The Gentile rulers dominate. It shall not be so among you. Whoever wants to be great must be a servant; whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. Then the great sentence about the Son of Man who came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The one idea is that Jesus reframes greatness by pointing to himself. He does not deny that some will be great. He redefines greatness as service, and he grounds the definition in the cross. If the one who is truly first chose the lowest place, then the lowest place is where the first are found.

The turn toward life is not to stop wanting significance. Jesus does not ask that. It is to notice where your requests for significance are aimed. Are they aimed at seats, at being seen and ranked and rewarded? Or at the cup, at the hidden costly serving that no one measures? The cross says which one Jesus is watching.

James did drink the cup; he was the first of the Twelve to be executed. John drank it more slowly, in exile and old age. Both learned what they asked for. And both, in the end, were glad.