Feast of Saint James, Apostle
Remember that old saying, born of frustration: “If it’s not one thing, it’s another!”
A friend’s kids turned that into a way to tease her: “If it’s not one thing,” they quipped, “it’s your mother.”
Today we meet the mother of James and John, the world's first well known helicopter parent, mama bear extraordinaire. Fierce Mrs. Zebedee was like the parent who cheers too loudly at her child’s soccer goal and grows defensive if the teacher calls to complain that junior’s been unruly in class.
As for dad, old Zeb must have stood thunderstruck as his boys left the family business, choosing an uncertain future with the Fisher of Men over the inheritance he’d planned for them. “Zebedee and Sons Fishery” is now a pipe dream thanks to an itinerant preacher from the Galilee. Can you hear this rough hewed fisherman bellow, “Kids today!”
The Ten resented Mama Z’s effrontery in pushing for thrones for her boys alongside Jesus. But the only throne from which Jesus would reign, as he had just reminded them, was the wood of the cross.
Nonetheless, she hung in there all the way to Jerusalem. Like the rest of us she learned as she went. “Many women who had come from Galilee with Jesus to care for him were watching from a distance. Among these were the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee” (Matthew 27:15).
And Jimmy & Johnny, too, would eventually come along.
They earned the name Jesus gave them, “Sons of Thunder,” being prone to rashness when responding to perceived slights. “Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead, who entered a Samaritan village, to make preparations. But the people did not receive him. And when James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven and consume them?’” (Luke 9:54)
The disciples, like us, wanted to know their standing relative to one another. Christians still maneuver for position and influence. And for ‘ol Zeb’s boys greatness was measured by an overconfidence you’d naturally expect from guys whose idea of handling opposition was to burn them to a crisp.
Like Ma Zebedee and sons, we don’t always get it right the first time. We make mistakes. But the important thing is that we stay the course with Jesus and learn along the way. Christianity is a religion, after all, of limitless second chances.
Somewhere between her power ploy and Passover, she became little, like the child the Lord presents in their midst. Children were considered useless because they wouldn't learn Torah until age twelve. A child was powerless in the Roman Empire as fathers could wield the power of life or death over them.
Mrs. Z is numbered among the women who walked Calvary’s hill and witnessed “from a distance” true self-emptying love. She was present as the bloodied Word Made Flesh was stripped of his flesh, heard the hammering of the executioners, and was startled by his blood curdling scream from the cross as he gave up his spirit.
J & J eventually drank the cup Jesus offered them, too. Although, unlike their mother, they fled in fear from that wine press of a place called Gethsemane, eventually the thunderous two found their way.
Perhaps they were emboldened by the example of their stalwart mother. She remained unswerving to the bitter end---up to and including right before sunrise of that first day of the week when she found that the stone had been already rolled away.
-Timothy J. Cronin