Gospel: Matthew 20: 20-28
The Sons of Zebedee in today's Gospel portion represent the dominant strain of Christianity since this conversation took place. It is the constant striving for position, status, power, influence, and wealth. It is the endless bickering over control and who is greatest in the kingdom. It is seeing the kingdom of God entirely in worldly terms and not in any sense in which Jesus intended the term to mean. It is intra-religious cell division.
This dominant strain runs counter to the authentic message of Jesus given here about service and humbling of self. Each of the Synoptic Gospels begins Jesus' public ministry with his encounter with Satan in the devil wherein Jesus rejects all the temptations to power, influence, status, and wealth. Instead, Jesus relies entirely on God for his support, a posture he adopts throughout his public ministry and up to his last breath on earth.
The quest for thrones and wealth always comes at the expense of so many other people who are used and abused so that a few can gain such things. It is an inherently unethical road in life, which is why Jesus rejects it and urges his followers not to adopt it. Our neglect of this lesson comes at our own peril and that of others, not to mention being the single greatest contributor to the decline of religion in general. The only authentic path of religion is that of the desert, of renunciation and dependence.
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