Feast of St.James, Apostle

What do you wish? Command that these sons of mine sit, one at your right hand and the other at your left in your Kingdom.  What do you wish?  The word wish is used four times in today’s Gospel.  We don’t usually think of wishing as a very productive way to use our time. Wishing seems to imply that what we would like is not really possible – and we know it.  There are no steps we can take to make them real.  It reflects an imaginative and even creative vision of what transport us to a new level of reality.

What do you wish?  That is why the intervention of the mother of James and John can seem so bold and even enviable.  She was ready to move from the wish to the reality by approaching Jesus.  Instead of standing in the shadows and wringing her hands, she addressed the one with authority to make things happen.  An example of chutzpah.  So what if it created tension with the other ten apostles whose indignation was as much as sign of having been bested and out-smarted?  They (and we) are patrons of a philosophy of power and influence that rests on an implicit hierarchy in which the top rules the lower echelons.  We are constantly informed of our place and of how to keep it.  We are afflicted, and afflict back.  Persecuted, and take revenge.  Struck down, and strike back.  No one is allowed to cut in line, forget their place – nor ours.  Our place assures us of who we are in relation to others.  Our wishes are very alive, but they become easily attached to idols close at hand.  Idols which support our hierarchies, our places, our entitlements.  We are even capable of turning God into an idol who defends our philosophy of power and influence.

And in this power system, do we have a place for Jesus?   Can we recognize him in the places he wishes to be?  If anyone wishes to be great.  What place is there for that?  In service, self-displacement, availability, making space and place for others?  Jesus knows himself as one who gives his life as a ransom for many.  Those ransomed have been freed.  Freed from a philosophy of power, influence, violence.  Perhaps Jesus wishes us to be free to be servants of all.  We need enough boldness and chutzpah to act on it.