Main news for 21 April 2025

The apostles still had a poor idea of what the Kingdom that their Teacher brought into the world was, if they asked Him questions about who would occupy the places of honor beside Him in that Kingdom. For them, it was apparently a reality of our world, though an unusual one. Perhaps they thought the matter concerned an earthly state that, however, would be full of God's signs and wonders performed by their Teacher, who at last, with God's help, would take the place that belonged to Him. And the question about the cup and the washing, or "baptism," they most likely understood to mean that before the triumph all of them would face a long struggle, and each would receive no small share of suffering, which in general fit the messianic ideas accepted at the time.

Jesus, however, accepts their readiness, telling them that they will have to drink one cup with Him and be washed with one washing with Him, without going into details and without trying to explain anything to them. As can be seen, He understood that at that moment any explanations were useless: the disciples would not have understood Him anyway, just as they had not understood Him up to that point.

But Jesus tells His disciples right away that in His Kingdom everything is not as it is in earthly kingdoms, evidently so that they would have no illusions about this from the very beginning. As can be seen, He regards the inner readiness not to rule but to serve as the spiritual foundation without which there can be no question of life in the Kingdom. The details of the Kingdom's structure, however, He evidently considers less important: if the disciples do not understand them now, they will understand later, having acquired the corresponding spiritual experience. Thus the Savior Himself sets the priorities where spiritual life is concerned: first comes what is necessary in order to enter the Kingdom, and only afterward, as spiritual experience is accumulated, everything else.

How much Christ's disciples understood His words about the Cross will forever remain a mystery for us. It is quite possible that some hope still glimmered in them that the Teacher was speaking in parables and that His prediction would not be fulfilled literally. Perhaps this explains the striking contrast between Christ's words about death and resurrection and the request of the sons of Zebedee. After all, only if one expected Christ to reign in glory could one ask Him for high places beside Him. "You do not know what you are asking" - these words of Christ emphasize the depth of human misunderstanding of God's plan. All the more inappropriate and presumptuous are the words of the sons of Zebedee that they can drink Christ's cup and be baptized with His baptism.

Two most important things stand out in Christ's answer. First, He says: "You will drink the cup that I drink." For a human being it would be natural to rebuke the brothers for exalting themselves: who among people can do this? But the Lord says: you will. His following words, that whoever wants to be first among His disciples must be slave of all, put everything in its place. The chief gift of Christ to His disciples is not nearness to the throne, but precisely His cup, the possibility of following Him along His way of the Cross. Therefore He tells the sons of Zebedee that "high position" must not be their goal. He opens to them the possibility of gaining nearness to God without acquiring any outward greatness. This is an exceptionally important revelation, one that applies to any of His disciples.

The question of primacy periodically came up in the disciples' conversations among themselves, coming up again and again. They undoubtedly still imagined the Kingdom as entirely earthly, and in every earthly state, even one established by God, there is a king and there are those close to him. They naturally saw their Teacher as the King, since they had no doubt about His messiahship, but who would be among those close to Him? All twelve, that is clear, but someone would turn out to be among the closest; someone would sit at the King's right hand, and someone at His left.

That is how it had been in every age and in every state, and the apostles simply could not yet imagine the Kingdom in any other way. These conversations are especially remarkable against the background of Jesus' account of the sufferings and death awaiting Him. The disciples seem not to notice the Teacher's words, although in reality they simply do not hear Him, as a person often does not hear what does not fit into his consciousness. Jesus again and again tries to explain to them that in the Kingdom, which entered the world together with Him, everything is not as it is in the earthly kingdoms of the fallen world.

He says directly to the disciples: in the fallen world rulers strive for power above all, and for power not so much over bodies as over the souls of those whom they want to rule. Power in the fallen world is a way to take other people for oneself, their lives, their souls, so that afterward they belong to the ruler, and he can dispose of them at his own discretion, just as anyone is free to dispose of himself, his own soul, and his own life. The Kingdom is arranged differently; there the question of power, or rather of what there corresponds to the concept of power in the earthly sense, is the question of service.

To the extent that a person is ready to be the slave of all, to that extent he has power, in the special sense of the word, the sense in which it is applicable to the relations of the Kingdom. This is about slavery in the patriarchal form in which it existed among the Jews, when a slave was effectively a member of the household, but without rights. A slave claimed nothing in the house, but he lived in it and used everything in the house that the other members of the household used. In some cases he could even inherit from the master of the house.

A household slave worked as slaves always worked, without counting the cost and without demanding payment. In return he received as much as he needed, since he had no fixed wages. This is the position toward others that is adequate from the standpoint of the relations that bind the inhabitants of the Kingdom to one another. In the fallen world, of course, nothing like this can exist, but Jesus orients the disciples precisely toward the relations of the Kingdom, at least when it comes to their relations with Him and with one another.