It was such a seemingly harmless request
of James and John. “Teacher,” they said,
“we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
We too have this way of going about our business. It is in fact the essence of much
Christianity. God is the god of doing
for us what we ask. Whether it be honor,
achievement, affection or some sort of toy, we expect God to give us something
so that we can have a good religion, a comfortable religion. The Christian world leans into stuff as much
as the sensible unbeliever. We have seen
it; much of the Christian world grabs and gathers just like all the good
neighbors who never open Bibles. When
Jesus asked the brothers if they could drink the cup He was drinking and be
baptized with His same baptism, James and John hardly blinked. “Of course they could”, they insisted. It turns out they were going to drink from
the same cup and be baptized with the same baptism but they were as dumb as
doorknobs when it came to realizing what that meant. And fortunately for us, so are we generally
when we enter into real discipleship.
This is when many good Christian people start to fade into the
shadows. They slip away into the
night. Are they willing to take
rejection, loss, painful ministries or isolation? Will they absorb as Christ did the damage brought
by world sin? A famous missionary once
wrote, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot
lose.” How many Christians believe
that? Is there much real sacrifice and
painful holiness in the Church or are most of our claims of following Christ
lip service. Many name Christ as a giver
of good things but stop short of taking up the cross. How many of us will drink the cup He drank
and not squirm out of His baptism? Will
you be His disciple and not a caricature of what one is? The call is clear. Come follow me! To do so means that you must take the path
through Gethsemane and into Golgotha before you will ever make much progress
with Christ as Lord.
