[Jer. 18:18-20; Mt. 20:17-28]
Grace to you who are one in Christ. Amen.
Is it wrong to be ambitious?
Not if ambition means that you want to achieve certain goals in life, travel to certain places, meet certain people, experience certain things. There’s nothing wrong with having expectations and working towards bettering yourself.
But if we’re talking about cutthroat, ruthless ambition, then it’s a whole different situation. That type of ambition usually involves betraying others, furthering yourself over and against other people; that’s a type of ambition where people stab each other in the back.
Who of you hearing about the mother of John and James petitioning Jesus to appoint her sons to a favoured position, to grant them a promotion was thinking ‘mummy’s boys, having their mother request for special treatment on their behalf’?! They’re the Sons of Zebedee, aka the Sons of Thunder, and they’re having their mother negotiating with the boss. That can’t have been good for their street cred.
And when word gets round in the group, the other disciples hold it against them, they were angry. Such ambition potentially could have broken up the group completely, in circumstances when Jesus predicts there are hard times, dangerous times ahead.
James and John will indeed drink the cup, they’re told, but Jesus isn’t making them any promises. Jesus is unwilling to affirm their ambitions nor those of their mother -who it seems has disappeared from the scene. They claim they’re willing to undergo everything that Jesus has described to them, betrayal, a mock trial, torture, execution, death and the grave. ‘Its not up to me, Jesus replies, ‘Take it up with my Father.’ He’s almost shrugging his shoulders at their eagerness and pushiness.
What James and John fail to realise is that it’s not about braving pain and death and then resurrecting, a hero’s glorious demise if you will, spectacularly going down in battle. It’s about serving. The brothers failed to see that Jesus wasn’t going to go through all this for his own prestige. It’s about serving others.
With one sentence, Jesus quashes any ambitions that might tear apart the group. ‘You want to be great,’ he tells them, ‘first you need to be small, begin small, look at the needs of others before you want your own needs met, your own ambitions fulfilled, before any delusions of grandeur about seats of honour in the Kingdom.’
We’re not alone on this planet, there are about 7,5 billion people who live here, whom we share this space with. There is no room for egotism and selfishness, or at least, there shouldn’t be.
Did Jesus go into the wilderness to become a better, stronger, more self-confident person?
The Scriptures tell us he went there to be tempted. Jesus went into the wilderness to be faced with cutthroat, ruthless ambition. And afterwards, he didn’t return in triumph, telling grand tales about how he victoriously vanquished the devil, regaling people with exciting stories, adding more and more exciting details each time, having crowds hanging on his every word; when Jesus came out of the wilderness, after successfully having warded off Satan, he starts teaching and healing. He only takes centre stage in relation to the lives and concerns and hopes of others. Grace in this instance doesn’t only mean having mercy on others, it also means gracefully letting others take centre stage.
The Cross is where the cutthroat, ruthless ambitions of the world were fragmented and reassembled as a ministry in the most unexpected places, to the most unexpected people.
Jesus told his disciples that the Son of Man had come to serve, and that he was going to lay down his life for many, to be a ransom for many, for us too, and after he had explained that to them, in the next passage in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus went to Jericho and healed two blind men...