Last week, I mentioned the proximity of blessing and temptation in the Bible; the fraught nature of humanity as the site of the Incarnation, and therefore also the site of ultimate danger. In looking at this, I mentioned something of the structure of St Peter’s confession of faith, the episode of St Peter understanding Jesus as the Christ. How when Jesus blessed him for this, Jesus immediately went on to explain what being the Christ meant, in terms of the Passion and the Cross. Peter then tried to stop him, tried to take control of the situation precisely to deny the Cross, whereupon Jesus called him Satan, saying Peter’s ways were man’s ways and not God’s.
We find a similar set of circumstances today if we hear the gospel in its context. Last week, if you remember, Jesus told his disciples that it was impossible for a rich person to enter the kingdom. St Peter asked what about us who have left everything to follow you. Jesus then replied by blessing their poverty accepted for the sake of him and his gospel. The bit we miss between last Sunday’s readings and today’s is Jesus again contextualising the blessing with another prophecy about his Passion and Cross.
Today then, instead of St Peter trying to deny the Cross, we find James and John trying to ignore this prophecy, trying to skip past it to the finish line. They want the thrones without the battle, the glory without the struggle. Perhaps in this reaction we can see another form of the same spiritual temptation, slightly different in action to Peter’s attempt at magical control of life, but similar in the desire to avoid or minimise the Cross.
I think we see this form of the temptation around us a lot. A temptation either to talk down the stakes of eternal life, by denying the drama of truth or the consequences of free will. Or perhaps a temptation to relativise religions or downplay certain teachings of the Church, as though they were optional extras.
While all this sounds inoffensive at the time – people trying to be nice, pretending that we all mean the same thing, when we pay closer attention to the underlying meaning of such conversations, we can realise that the comfort they provide is that of anaesthetic: a gradual numbing to life, that robs it of its holiness, its danger, its life. Somehow all these things go hand in hand.
But perhaps a better way to think through this temptation is to reflect on the nature of James and John’s request. Let’s say they get the thrones. What then? Is that the end? If they are going to rule, how are they going to rule? If this is the next stage of life, then what does this life mean? This temptation to skip to the end somehow has the effect of making the end utterly different to everything that leads up to it, thereby rendering all that went before kind of rubbish. It demeans reality. Demeans the here and now. Demeans the very life that Jesus came to redeem, to save, to reveal as holy. This life. Our life. Life.
However, before we look at the nature of Jesus’ response to the brothers’ request, I would like to share a conversation that I had with a very close friend.
I think I have mentioned before that some of my deepest graces have come in conversations with new parents, especially mothers. One of my closest friends told me that she had wondered throughout her life whether she would ever experience unconditional love. At the time, I did not know whether she was talking about receiving it or giving it. And as the conversation developed, the ambiguity did not resolve itself. She spoke of her family. She spoke of getting married. She spoke honestly about having expectations, just as people had of her. How she wasn’t sure how all this tallied with unconditional love.
But then she spoke of having her first baby, and being knocked out for a few months following this. Not really knowing which way was up. But then she said, after a few months, when she had kind of come to, she realised that she could experience unconditional love simply by choosing to love that way. Live that way. With all that went into it.
It was one of the most beautiful moments I have shared with a friend. This powerful insight that she could share in this awesome mystery by being invited to give it, give unconditional love. Somehow she knew that a doorway to life had opened before her and it was up to her to walk through. And this was no fictional life: she knew it would be the Cross, and she knew it was real life. The end goal was one with the path.
Perhaps this is what Jesus is doing in today’s gospel. Saying to the brothers: stop thinking about the next life. Think about this life. Stop skipping the Cross, embrace it. Because this is eternal life. Live out Christ’s baptism. Drink from the same chalice. Share the life of Christ. There is no other throne. There is no end other than this, an end that is continuous with the path, an end that opens up. An end that has C.S. Lewis wrote in The Last Battle, goes further up and further in. This life as the beginning of a conversation, a dance, a party that has no ending. But one of ultimate seriousness and only therefore ultimate joy.
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