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29th Sunday B October 20, 2024
Diane DeDominics • October 23, 2024
29th Sunday B
October 20, 2024
Today we meet James and john asking Jesus for a place of honor in his kingdom. Yet where is their ambitious mother? In this story told in Matthew it is the mother who requests the place of honor for her son’s. Matthew has worked to clean up the image of James and John. Yet it is the ambitious boys who ask for the place of honor. Mark is telling the unvarnished version of the story. Mark gives us the truly human story of the event.
They miss the point the cup that needs to be drunk is the cup of suffering and the baptism is a baptism of passion and death. To follow Jesus means a willingness to pick up one’s cross and follow him.
Jesus tells the brothers “There will be no crown without a cross.”
An aspect of the cross is that it is thrust upon us, we don’t request it. The cross is about being out of control. James and John assume that Jesus is the one in control of his destiny. They haven’t learned, yet, what is means to be a disciple. Like Jesus the disciple is a servant. The disciple serves God the father. The disciple doesn’t have the power to choose who will sit on the left or right in the kingdom of God.
I am reminded of the child who goes to Mom with a request and when she says no the child goes to Dad. If they present a united front, both parents say no. Neither has the ability to say yes independent of the other. Jesus can’t make a decision apart from his father and the spirit. The decision comes from the trinity.
The words of the letter to the Hebrews speaks about the role of Jesus in salvation history.
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in the "City of the Hills"
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