Reflection on Mark 10:35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you? And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be babptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"

When my daughter, Sudie, was two, she caught her father and me in an embrace, forced herself between us, and, clutching my legs, looked up at her dad and announced, “My mommy. You go away.” It is a precious, funny memory to be sure and also a reminder that, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes in Gift From the Sea, we all long to be someone’s one and only. On some level, we all long to retreat behind the nursery door to be nursed, worshipped, and adored by the mother center of our universe.
Though what we recognize as our center shifts many times over the years – from mother, to lover, to vocation, to family, to God – the feeling that connection to it brings to us is constant. When we are there, holding the right hand or the left, or even the hem of a robe, all is right with the world. And while we may be happy to serve, we are also happy to lord it over anyone who tries to come between us and our love.
As any parent of more than one child knows, however, it is not possible for the center to grant a place at the right hand or the left, at least not without terrible consequences. Yahweh learned about these in the Cain and Abel saga. No, the center must stand as center for all. God’s power and love cannot be apportioned through some elaborate organizational chart. And I think that perhaps this is what Jesus is trying to say to James and John and the ten. Though the power that flows through him is God’s, it does so because Jesus knows how to connect. The disciples, James and John, and the rest of us, will have to plug in ourselves. We cannot drink Jesus’ cup and we cannot be baptized with Jesus’ baptism and we cannot carry Jesus’ cross any more than we can suck at our mother’s breast forever. We must find the center for ourselves and through ourselves.