A reading from the holy gospel according to Matthew. The mother of Zebedee's sons came up to Jesus accompanied by her boys to do Jesus' homage, but actually to ask a favor of him. Jesus said, what is it you want? The mother replied, promise me that these sons of mine will sit one at your right hand and the other at your left in your kingdom. Jesus in reply said, you do not know what you are asking.
Can you drink of the cup I am to drink of? The boys answered, we can. Jesus said to them, from the cup I drink of, you also shall drink. But sitting at my right hand or my left is not mine to give. That is for those for whom it has been reserved by my father.
Now the other 10 disciples, on hearing this, became indignant at the two brothers. Then Jesus called them all together and said to them all, you know how those who exercise authority among the Gentiles lord it over them? Their great ones make their importance felt. Now it cannot be like that with you. Anyone among you who aspires to greatness must serve the rest.
And whoever wants to rank first among you must serve the needs of all. Such is the case with the son of man who has come not to be served by others, but to serve, to give his own very life as a ransom for the many. And this is the gospel of the lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
This incident from our lord's life is such a human document. It it reflects the thoughtfulness, the prudence, the farsightedness of a scheming mother, of a calculating mother who wants the best for her boys. Notice the boys, James and John, do not come themselves. It's the mother who's doing all this scheming or planning. Now there's nothing wrong with that.
What is terribly wrong here is the misconception of Christ's kingdom. Now this is a little difficult, I think, for some of us to grasp, but we've we certainly must have a clear perception of this if we are understanding the least the life of Christ and above all, his disciples. What did they think of Jesus? It is not until after the resurrection. It is not until after the appearances of our lord to them.
And most especially, it is not until after Pentecost when the holy spirit comes down upon the apostles that you have with this core, with this handful of picked men, this elite, that among them you have a clear understanding of the kingdom of god and who Jesus was. You'll say, how could this be? They were so closely associated with Jesus for three years, more or less. They saw what he did. They heard what he said.
They were with him constantly. How was it they missed that clear perception of what it was all about? Well, let's not try to figure out the whys of it. Let us simply face the fact they missed the boat. They missed it.
Now keep this in mind. Also, when we become harsh with the pharisees, when we be become harsh with some of what we call Christ's enemies, if these chosen disciples, this elite corps of his handpicked men notice Christ picked them. They didn't choose him. He chose them. Keep all of this in your mind and how far off the beam they were and continued to be until after the resurrection.
So if that was the way it was with this chosen group, this cherished, this well instructed, tiny little handful of men, how can we be too severe on those who were on the periphery and who were men of dedicated allegiance and loyalty to what they called the law? As indeed they were. Keep that in mind too. You're not dealing with a bunch of evil criminal men. And yet Christ had nothing for but scorn for the scribes and the pharisees and the leaders of the people.
Now he doesn't express that kind of scorn here. He doesn't seem to address his remarks so much to the mother as to the general group. Now it's not hard at all to bring this right down to our own doorstep. It is not hard at all. Let me tell you, it is my firm conviction that it is difficult today to keep an inner awareness, a consciousness of the kingdom of God.
What is it? For the last twenty years, we have been so bombarded with what we call social responsibilities, with our commitment to community, with social action, with uplifting these those who are supposed to be uplifted and need uplifting. We have been so bombarded. I use that word. That that means that you are being shot at even by a planned bombardment and assault, that we, in many instances, have gotten away from our perception of the kingdom of god.
This is what our holy father is trying to restore. He is trying to give back a correct perspective of what the kingdom of god is. Because unless we have that clearly in mind, we're gonna make the same mistake as the mother of the sons of Zebedee. We are bound to. There was nothing wrong in what this good lady did.
There is nothing wrong in ambition of its own self. There is nothing wrong in wanting to improve one's situation and one's state in life. There's nothing wrong about these things at all. It only becomes wrong when we make the mistake of what kingdom we're dealing with. Now it's not by a mistake, of course, it's not by a mere accident that we have this reading of Paul's second letter to the Corinthians.
You see, this aspect of the kingdom of God has been downplayed. We have even tried to eliminate the idea of sacrifice in the mass, to bring it back to what they like to call some kind of a benevolent meeting of the brethren, of the community, in a nice convivial atmosphere. There's nothing wrong with this at all. But you see the you see what the emphasis is here, getting away from the cross and forgetting Jesus Christ the savior. Savior of what?
What did he come to save us from? So it's this perspective, it's this awareness that our holy father has, and he and he's not being universally accepted either, even by the brethren within the church. But he is trying to restore this equilibrium. It is not to reject the idea that humanity should not seek to improve its status in this world and to use the things of this life. What is the book of Genesis?
The very first part. God created the world. He found it was good. Then what did God do with his world? He gave it over to men.
And he said, now you run the show. It's up to you to use the things I have given you for the benefit of all. Absolutely right. It's right there in the very first book of Genesis in the earliest chapters of that book. But the question is, who is to do it?
What is to be done? And above all, under what ultimate goal? Under what ultimate goal? Where do these things all fall into place? Now it's so easy, it is so easy to be so involved in cutting down trees or in planting trees or in looking at the individual tree that we lose sight of the forest entirely.
I I don't know whether this is a good comparison, but in certain instances, the one of the the biggest case I know of is is the Cathedral Of Sharpton. Long before even by driving by car, long before you get into the city, you see this cathedral without there it is, plain. You can see it very very easily. Then you get into the city and you can't find it because you're so close to it. You can lose your way and be almost there.
I never will forget when I was in Heidelberg, I was trying to find the university. So I gave up trying see, had an idea what a university ought to look like and it wasn't a big place, and I was wandering around trying to find the university. So finally, in my best I stopped and was and in my best German asked a passerby, where is the University of Heidelberg? He said, you're leaning against You see, it's a matter of recognition. It's a matter of knowing where we are.
It's a matter of knowing where we're going and what we want. And there's still a further question, not merely of what we want in the existential order, but what we should want. There is an enormous difference between the two. And so when we read this very human story of the mother of the sons of Zebedee, and it is it's a good decent story. There's nothing wrong about it.
It's so down to earth, but it's our earth. And what this good lady did, the mistake she made, we can make, and we have to fight against making it. And once again I say, we have the wisdom and the knowledge of hindsight. We know as they did not know. So what do we do with it?
What do we do about it? Let us pray that we follow Saint Paul and realize where our strength is even as we acknowledge our weaknesses. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit.