Feast of St. James the Greater (Santiago) July 25, 2025
Today’s psalm is anchored in a particular moment of Israelite history. In 539 BC, King Cyrus of Persia conquered the Neo-Babylonian empire and issued a decree that permitted, even encouraged the people exiled to Babylon to return to Judea and govern themselves, subject to the rule of Persia. It was the fulfilment of almost half a century of Israelite dreams. The Jews rightly saw that as the work of the Lord, and they waxed eloquent in this new psalm, dreaming of even greater times to come, when the fertility of the soil would enable farm workers to go out with seed corn and sow it, and see such growth that they could almost harvest the crops immediately.
That positive eschatology permeated the early Church in ways that St. Paul exhibits as he writes to the charismatic church of Corinth. He says, “we are always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.” Paul was so fundamentally changed in attitude when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus, appeared to him as a divine being but telling him that he was persecuting Him when Paul imprisoned and killed Christians, that everything turned upside down. Now Paul saw his own injuries at the hands of Jews and Romans as links to the passion of Christ. He wrote “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” What that means is that Paul felt himself to be always on the verge of transition into a resurrected state. “The one who raised the Lord Jesus [the Father] will raise us also with Jesus and place us with you in his presence.” Every risk Paul took for his churches was worth taking, because even in torture and death, he felt like he could not lose.
That attitude was way beyond the one exhibited by James and John and their mother in today’s Gospel from Matthew’s pen. She asked that her two sons sit on the right and left of Christ in His kingdom. Jesus replied that she had no idea what she was asking. He asked the two men, “do you know what you are asking? Can you drink of the chalice I will drink?” Jesus heard them say something flippant like “sure, Master,” knowing that James and John had no idea what the elevation of Jesus to kingship would involve. He was raised at Passover on the rude throne of a cross, a wooden execution device. On His right and left were two thieves. The Roman procurator acknowledged His kingship on a hastily written scroll above Christ’s head: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. That was all to be in the future. The lesson Jesus wanted to teach James and John, to prepare them for the tortuous road ahead of them, turned the notion of leadership on its head. They would be leaders who could not expect to “lord it over” their congregations. No, they would be servants, even slaves of those they led. Why? Because that’s what Jesus, their Master, did. We must expect daily to serve others and do so happily even to death. Jesus will provide the grace to enable our service.
