Do you really know what you're asking for?

Matthew 20:17-28

          Reb Tevye said that it is no curse to be poor but that it's no honor either. I also think he said something like, 'if money is a curse, God, please curse me and let me never recover!''  So many times in life we ask for things that we really have no idea what we may be really asking for. Certainly Zebedee's wife had no idea what she was asking for her son's in todays passage.

            Asking for things without realizing what we are really asking for is something that we start doing as children and fail to realize even as adults.  A young child asks for a 'real army tank' for Christmas. In a obscure Christmas song, a child asks for a Hippopotamus. The parents are left to explain why neither is very practical and simply dangerous - perhaps at any age. Yet as we get older we ask for perhaps equally as silly things. I know I have.  We ask for money, to win Lotto. Perhaps we've asked for unlimited, uninhibited sex on demand. I can only imagine the number who may have gotten their wish only to succumb to AIDS. One could ask Christian Onassis what it's like to have unlimited wealth, it didn't seem to make her any happier.

            It seems if we ask for anything, a good thing to ask for might be wisdom. Then we might realize how blessed we already are and feel content and happy.  Or perhaps a good prayer ( for anything ) might be to pray for what we want but let His will be done. We fail to see so much, we are so limited  and God is all knowing and wise.

            Do we really know what we are asking for?

While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.’

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favour of him. And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’ But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able.’ He said to them, ‘You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’

When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’