In such stupidity of mind. In such hopeless selfishness, combined with such hard-hearted presumptuousness. And then, that it should be John!
That it should be the disciple who had been chosen to such a coming sanctification and to such a coming service! That it should be John, who had been so loved, and so trusted, and so leaned upon, and so looked to! And at this time of day, that John should be so deep in this miserable plot.
Our Lord often spoke about a daily cross. Well, that was His cross that Monday, and a very bitter cross it was. More bitter to His heart by far than all the thorns and nails and spears of next Friday. What a cup of red wine that miserable mother and her two sons like her, made our Lord to drink that day! But your own baptism, also, will soon come. And mine is at the door. A little imagination, with a little heart added to it, would have saved Salome and her two sons from making this shameful petition.
Salome should have said to herself something like this. She should have said this, and should have dwelt on it, till it made her shameful petition to be impossible. She should have said: 'But Andrew, and Peter, and all the ten, have mothers like me.
All their mothers are just as ambitious for all their sons as I am for mine. And they will feel toward me and toward my sons just the same suspicion, and jealousy, and envy, and hatred, and ill-will, that I feel toward them. And what would I think of them if they took advantage of their friendship with Christ, as I am taking advantage of my friendship with Him, in order to get Him to favour them and their sons at our expense? And what would I think of Him if He was imposed upon, and prevailed upon, to overlook, and neglect, and injure my sons, at the shameful plot of some of their mothers?
Where had Salome lived all her days? What kind of a mother had she herself had? In what synagogue in all Israel had she worshipped God? Who had been her teachers in the things of God? What had she been thinking about all the time our Lord had been teaching and preaching in her hearing, as He did every day, about seeing with other people's eyes, and feeling with other people's hearts, and doing to other mothers and to their sons as she would have them do to her and to her sons?
How could she have lived in this world, and especially in the day and in the discipleship of Christ, and how could she have borne and brought up her sons to be His disciples, and still be capable of this disgraceful scheme? Had she possessed one atom of experience of the world, not to say of truth and wisdom and love, she could never have petitioned for a place of such offence and such danger for her two sons.
Even if Christ had asked it of her, she would have shrunk from exposing her two sons to the envy and the anger and the detraction of all the ten, and of many more besides.
Make them Thy true disciples even to death; but, I do beseech Thee, if it be Thy will, hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of men, and keep them secretly in Thy pavilion from the strife of tongues. But instead of that, this cruel woman to her own flesh and blood was for exposing her two sons to every possible shaft and spear of envy, and anger, and ill-will, and injury.
What power they will exercise! And how all Galilee will hear of it, and how they will all envy Salome! It was our Lord's continual way to make Scriptures out of His disciples, and to have those Scriptures written and preserved for our edification.
And He made this Scripture for us out of Salome and James and John and the ten; this solemn Scripture: "It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!
She would have been offence enough simply with her so-near relationship to Christ, and with her so-gifted and so-privileged sons.
But not content with that, she must needs take and lay both her sons as sheer rocks of offence right in the way of the headlong ten. And in both versions Jesus responds to their request by telling them that they would indeed drink the cup he was going to drink; that is, they would suffer for their obedience to God, too.
Remember, now, that it is Matthew and only Matthew who says that the mother of James and John was involved in this episode. It is Matthew and only Matthew who has their mother make the request and who has her hear the words that Jesus spoke to her sons about their coming inevitable sacrifice. When I noticed that detail this week it changed my entire attitude toward their mother.
Now, though, I see her standing at a distance from the cross watching Jesus die and I realize that I must number her among that group of women who loved Jesus enough to be there for him in his final hours. This column appeared previously on his blog. My story begins with the Synoptic Problem. Luke omits the story altogether. That brings me to the thing I noticed this week that I had never noticed before. But what dawned on me is nothing compared to what dawned on her. He looks older than he did that morning.
Old, and so, so tired. She tries looking around him, then over his shoulder, to catch a glimpse of her sons, but they are not there. Could any suffice? I imagine her, after a moment of stunned silence, walking right past him to flee the house, lest she take her anger out on her husband. Her hands press her hips as she looks up at the night sky; the wind brushes her cheek and she hates it for its futile attempt to comfort. She tries to breathe. Just breathe. It is unfathomable. All those years she sacrificed and loved and hurt, and now they are gone—just gone, and her future most likely gone with them.
I picture Zebedee sitting inside, his face leathered from sun and wind, staring down at his dirty, calloused hands, suddenly weary. When we see her next, circumstances have changed. She is on her knees before Christ, asking him to grant her boys seats to his left and to his right in his kingdom Mt Now she is the mother who wants the best for her sons and is bold enough to fight for it.
Perhaps, too, she wishes for reward, and who can blame her? But that she is bold enough to make this request points to a deep relationship with Christ. How did this happen? Did her confusion and curiosity, anger and desire, cause her to cover her head, take a bit of bread and leave her home to seek out this man who stole her sons away? What then did she witness? Did she know him instantly as her sons did? It must say something about her and her faith that she raised sons who might be chosen by Christ, sons capable of recognizing God when they saw him, letting nothing deter them from following him.
So many men might have paused—would have worried about their mother and father, about their own livelihood.
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