Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him. And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, March 14, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Jesus has just foretold his death for the third time. His disciples never seemed to get it (or they were just in denial) but James and John’s mom was ambitious for her sons. She knew exactly what Jesus was all about—or, at least, she thought she did. He was the messiah. One way or another, he was going to rule the world. So she wanted her sons to be at the epicenter of the new world order.
Obviously, in her own way, she was just as clueless as her sons. But you can’t blame her. This was the understanding of what the messiah was and would be in the culture of the time. It’s unfair to judge her misunderstanding, when everything Jesus did was new, counter-cultural, and counter-intuitive.
I wonder how often we misunderstand what Jesus is all about. Truly, there is a staggering amount of variety in the way people interpret who Jesus was and is, what Jesus did and does, and what it means to follow Jesus then and now. It’s so easy to interpret Jesus through our own socio-cultural lens and assume that’s the ‘correct’ way to go. And how many of us are so dead set on getting to heaven and being with Jesus forever that we completely miss his call to work for justice in the here and now? Just something worth thinking about.
Do I know Christians who have a fundamentally different understanding of Jesus than I do? How do I engage in Spirit-led discourse with them?
