Asking too much and too little

Today's blog goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. Happily, clowns are closer to God than clever people. This was originally published on 25 July 2023.  

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Today's gospel (Matthew 20: 17-28) is one of those gospels that give us a strong personal flavour of the characters involved, and perhaps of the assumptions they were accustomed to make around Jesus. 

Why didn't James and John get their father to approach Jesus to ask Him for the two top jobs in his kingdom? If Israel is such a patriarchy, what on earth is going on here? It says something intriguing about the nuances in the system, or perhaps about her closeness to Jesus, that their mother, not their father, approaches Jesus with this request. If the reason for their father not making the request is that he does not approve of Jesus, it is all the more wonder that both his children and his wife are so closely aligned with Him. Perhaps this complexity should warn us also not to judge things simplistically by their appearances. Israeli women were powerful; just powerful in a different way to their menfolk. Their children were Jews by the maternal line.  

So much for the assumptions of the time. This gospel tells us something also about the assumptions we are capable of making when we pray.   

On the one hand, the mother of James and John is asking too much. How is it remotely possible to ask too much of our infinitely bountiful God? We ask too much when we imagine that our riches are His riches, or that our idea of generosity is His. 'Too much' is a measure of the things of this world - created things - for one can never have too much of God. The request made to Jesus assumes that the glory of His kingdom is like the glory of a human kingdom, i.e. that it translates into power, renown and influence. 

Like the apostles, we ask too much when we fixate on what we believe we need, while failing to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. For if we sought those things first, our own understanding of what to ask for would be transformed. We would see that God does not want us to have things like a sugar daddy would, but simply - unfathomably - to have Him. In which condition we lay our hands on the earth and revel in its delights only insofar as they reflect the One we love and what He calls us to be. Everything then can be held literally in prayer because everything draws the praise of His glory from our hearts. In this sense, the tragedy of this ill-advised request by the mother of James and John is what it tells us about their failure to see things as Jesus saw them.

And yet at the same time, because they do not have the measure of all things, i.e. God's measure, they ask too little of what they really need: His love and friendship. Let me illustrate my point with a little imagination ...

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The same gospel scene unfolds afresh but somewhat differently. Rather than asking their own mother to approach Jesus, James and John have had the solid notion that the quickest route to glory in Jesus' kingdom is to ask His mother Mary to negotiate for them. The conversation goes like this.

James and John speak discreetly to Mary: We were thinking of asking Jesus something ... well...(they look at each other and back at Mary) ... you know... 

Mary smiles at them: Oh yes, what were you thinking of asking him? 

Suddenly, some distance away there is a rude eruption of laughter among the other apostles. James and John look around at Peter (who has just told another fisherman's joke and is braying like a donkey).

They look back at Mary, raise their eyebrows, and rolls their eyes. 

Surely, their meaning is obvious... to them at least...

Mary (smiling again): Oh, I see. Well, I will do my best.

Mary sidles over to where Jesus is sitting slightly apart, tired after a long day but now resting.  His face lights up as she approaches and offers him a cup of water.

Mary: It's James and John ... (Jesus, who knows what she is going to say, begins to grin widely). 

Mary continues: They wanted me to ask about their position in your kingdom, but ... well ... Let me put it like this. Can you just help them to say 'yes' to the Father every moment of their lives? Can you just ask them to say 'thank you' to the Father every moment of their lives?

Jesus: Like you, mother?

Mary smiles: I'm very fond of them. Do I ask too much?

Jesus looks into the distance: It is the only thing that is not too much. But then anything else would be too little. 

Mary: I'm not sure they'll understand.

Jesus (looking back at Mary): They will one day.

Mary returns to James and John who look hopefully at her. 

James and John: So, what did he say?

Mary replies (looking over at Jesus): He said anything else would be too little. 

James and John look at each other excitedly and return to making plans ... for a future that will be beyond anything they asked for or ever imagined.