Knowing what to ask the Lord

 Matthew 20:17-28 ‘‘You do not know what you are asking.’

The Lord said, ‘You do not know what you are asking.’

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Jesus is very clear with the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

You do not know what you are asking.

For our spiritual growth… that is a really important point.

We can ask the Lord what we like, the desires of our hearts, but we also have to be aware that sometimes we do not know what we are asking.

Sometimes we ask for that which will add to our prestige in the world’s terms, and even in the eyes of the Church or fellow Christians, but if it is from our own vanity then it will not be heard, for we do not know what we are asking.

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Mothers are passionate intercessors for their children, and so they should be, but they have to know for what they are asking.

There is mother who indignantly visits her child’s school to protest at an perceived injustice against her child: he didn’t get 10 out of 10 - but it may just be because he just hadn’t worked hard enough.

We have to know what we are asking.

Less trivially, the Lord cannot fail to hear the heartfelt cry of the mother whose child has died or been killed: her cries echo that of Rachel weeping for her children, and is an act of intercession to God. (cf Jeremiah 31:15 and Matthew 2:18)

So the mother of the sons of Zebedee comes before the Lord and her posture is one of intercession, she kneels before him and makes her request.

And what is she asking?

James and John, her boys, had been on the mountain of Transfiguration.

Perhaps that’s where they got the idea of sitting one at Christ’s right hand and one at his left in the kingdom.

After all, that’s how they had seen Moses and Elijah on the holy mountain.

To be in proximity to such a vision of glory, the chance to sit at the top table of the kingdom is captivating and attractive, and what mother would not want her sons to have something of that?

She wants, like all mothers and fathers, the very best for her children; the problem is that she sees the highest good in terms of the rewards and prestige of the world.

And so much the better if that is reflected in heaven too.

So she does not know what she is asking, nor do her sons, and, so often, nor do we.

She hadn’t been listening to Jesus, and nor had her sons: do we?

She and they want glory on their terms, not Christ’s: what do you want?

Jesus describes what awaits him in Jerusalem, and it is not heading up a glorious new regime, having overcome the chief priests and scribes and the Gentile Romans, if that is what James and John thought was coming: rather it is the way of the cross.

Do you have any idea what it is to ‘drink of the cup that I am to drink?’(v22)

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There is another mother who is an intercessor, and a powerful one at that.

Forty days after the birth of her Son, the way of the cross was revealed to her: her Son would be the cause of the rising and falling of many in Israel, and a sign to be opposed: and a sword would pierce through her own soul too (Luke 2.34-35)

That she embraced, as she had in her fiat: ‘be it unto me according to thy word.’ (Luke 1.38)

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So, at the foot of the cross we find the Blessed Mother standing with the Beloved Disciple - one of them on the right and one on the left of Jesus, not in the way James and John pictured - as Mary’s Son drank the cup of suffering.

The radical openness of this Lady of Sorrows to the will of God enables her to be an intercessor for us, as surely as she always points us to Jesus and his purpose: ‘do whatever he tells you.’

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Two others were on the right and left of the cross of Jesus, two criminals, rightly condemned for their offences, as one of them confesses. (Luke 23.41)

The two criminals also hold up to us the question of how we will find a place in the kingdom, with our suffering offered up to be transformed by Christ.

Like one criminal, we can mock and deride, embittered that our efforts at earthly glory have failed, or, with the penitent thief, we can cast ourselves on the Lord’s mercy and cry, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ (Luke 23.39,42)

That’s someone who knew what he was asking for.

In the way of Jesus there is no short cut to the glory of the kingdom, but walking the way of the cross we find it to be none other than the way to that Kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,’ (Romans 4.17) and we hear his words, ‘truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’ (Luke 23.43)