Daily Devotional • November 28
A Reading from Matthew 20:17-28
17 While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, 18 ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; 19then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.’
20 Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favour of him. 21 And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’ 22 But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able.’ 23 He said to them, ‘You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’
24 When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. 25 But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 26 It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; 28 just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’
Meditation
James and John are trying to position themselves to be the influencers of their day. They are looking to be in the place of the greatest authority and honor—the two over and above the other ten. Their shameless vying for affirmation has much the same effect on the other disciples as internet influencers have over their followers today. The other ten are envious. So says St. Chrysostom who writes that when Jesus draws all twelve of his disciples together to give them a good dressing down, he “removes the envy of the one and the arrogance of the other.”
James and John were wrong, but so were the other ten who were angry with them. This is because the reason they were angry was that they also desired to be in a place of honor and authority. James and John just beat them to the punch and called shotgun before the others got the chance. Pride and envy are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.
How much time do we waste peering into other people’s lives online, being angry and envying what they have? Professional status, possessions, a seemingly carefree lifestyle? What makes them so special? Don’t we deserve to be in their place so much more than they do? But that place is an illusion. At the end of the day, what we’re seeing only exists in pixels and ones and zeros. This supposed throne of glory that we see on our computer screens does not actually exist. It is only a cheap throne for tyrants and small men.
It seems that now—especially now, we need Jesus to call us all together—the prideful and the envious alike—and tell us to collectively get our heads screwed back on straight. We are Christians. We are not better than anyone else, but we are better than this.
Sarah Cornwell lives in Wheaton, IL with her husband, James, and their seven children.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida
The Diocese of Rokon – Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan
This ministry of The Living Church Foundation is made possible in part by a special bequest from the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer.
