Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent

Lectionary: 232

"Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”
They said to him, “We can.”
He replied,
“My chalice you will indeed drink,
but to sit at my right and at my left,
this is not mine to give
but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”


As we approach Holy Week we hear Jesus' ominous prophecy about "the exodus he will undergo in Jerusalem." But during this second week of Lent the Church directs our attention to our own understanding of and attitudes about discipleship. 
Saint Mark was the genius who tied the stories together, the story of Jesus' prediction of his suffering and his teaching about discipleship. Saints Matthew and Luke followed his example when they accepted his short text and appended more material. We know nothing about the suffering and death of Jesus if we are not willing to pay the cost of discipleship. 
In today's gospel Jesus challenges his feckless disciples, the sons of Zebedee, "Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?" 
Of course, they insist they can. What are they thinking? Very likely they are eager to undertake a struggle against earthly powers. They're are ready for what, centuries later, would be called a revolution. They want to upend the order of things, to overturn the rulers of Rome and Jerusalem and establish a kingdom more to their liking. They suppose they can be Jesus' lieutenants, sitting at his right and left. 
Of course the congregation who hears this gospel already knows that Jesus will be crucified between two nameless criminals. The sons of Zebedee and their ambitious mother have already dismissed, or totally ignored, his words:

“Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests
and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death,
and hand him over to the Gentiles
to be mocked and scourged and crucified,
and he will be raised on the third day.”

How can anyone suppose he is a disciple if he dismisses Jesus' shocking prediction? But we do it all the time. 

To follow Jesus we should begin with the assumption that we don't know where this adventure will end. Whatever we suppose, we can assume it's wrong. No one knows the future and the one who thinks he knows is the biggest fool of all. 

This is at least part of the reason we daily ask God to lead us not into temptation. We pray that we will not be asked to pay too high a price, that the chalice of which we drink will not be as bloody as that of Jesus. Natural flesh trembles at the thought of death; few can imagine themselves dead, or the world going on without them. 

Sometimes I meet patients in the hospital who are prepared to die. Something in their body or mind or heart has said, "It's coming to an end." They have heard that quiet word and surrendered to it. More than a few Veterans have said, "I've had a good life. I am grateful to God for the time I've had." or words to that effect. 

The summer before my Dad died in December 1980, he told my brother he would not see another summer. No one knew he had cancer at the time; the symptoms would not appear for another several months. Sometimes some people know in advance. 

After recognizing the foolishness of Zebedee's sons we can admire their willingness. They don't quite understand what he says to them, nor do they comprehend the Spirit that has drawn them to the Messiah, but it is the right Spirit. 

As we approach the altar daily and weekly, to drink from his chalice and eat his flesh, we pray that his Spirit will prepare us for whatever may come. 

Toward the end of his life, Saint Francis of Assisi grew very confident of his vow of obedience and he advised us: 

Holy obedience confounds all bodily and fleshly desires and keeps the body mortified to the obedience of the spirit and to the obedience of one’s brother and makes a man subject to all the men of this world and not to men alone, but also to all beasts and wild animals, so that they may do with him whatsoever they will, in so far as it may be granted to them from above by the Lord.

Hopefully, this Season of Lent teaches us that same willing obedience.