How many of you like to drink rich wine? Hmm…a majority of hands. How many of you like to eat grapes? Hmm…most everyone. If you had the choice to drink a glass of rich wine or to eat a handful of grapes, which would you do? The “wines” have it!
Do we realize that wine is like grapes risen from the dead? As we know, grapes must be crushed and “squeezed to death” before they can advance into wine.
What about life? What is more valuable our natural life on earth, which comes to an end, or eternal life that never dies? Jesus offers us eternal life, but at a price. We must be willing to have our “grape lives” crushed, if the “wine life” of eternity can be born in us.
In our first reading today, the sufferings of Jesus are foretold (Isaiah 53:10-11).
“The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity. If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life…Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days; through his suffering, my servant shall justify many and their guilt he shall bear.”
The prophet tells us that the Messiah would have to be crushed, like grapes, as an offering for sin. This would result in his living a “long life” through his descendants. Affliction and suffering would bring him “fullness of days”—eternal life. And because Jesus was willing to be crushed justification would come to many.
Moving to the gospel passage we listen to James and John asking for privileged seats when Jesus entered glory (Matthew 10:35-45).
“James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ He replied, ‘What do you wish me to do for you?’ They answered him, ‘Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.’ Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?’”
James and John wanted to share in Jesus’ glory. Who wouldn’t. What they did not realized was that they would have to pay the same price for it that Jesus was about to do. Were they willing to drink the cup of suffering? We think of baptism as immersion in water. In Jesus time this word was also used to describe the pickling process. When cucumbers were “baptized” in vinegar and spices for a period of time, they were transformed into pickles; the cucumbers died, the pickles were born. Jesus was about to be pickled, not in vinegar, but in severe and intense suffering. By asking for a high place in the Kingdom, did these apostles know that they, like Jesus, would have to be baptized with suffering?
Jesus explained that the crushing begins now.
“…whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Putting oneself at the bottom of the ladder and acting as a slave to others was the way they were to begin to drink the cup that Jesus was about to drink. Were they willing to be last for the sake of Jesus? Were they willing to be ransom for others? We know that a ransom is a great price, usually of money, that is given to free a hostage. The ultimate ransom is to trade places with a hostage so that the captured person might be set fre
Jesus deepen our love for you so we will have the courage to drink the cup of suffering that you give to us each day, a sip at a time.
