They Replied, "We Are Able"

They Replied, ‘We Are Able’ Comparative commentary by Martin Warner Cite Share Show Bible Passage Each of these images should disturb us. They touch on issues of reputation, ambition, and vocation. The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, present the request from James and John in different terms. Mark, generally thought to be the earliest of the Gospels, has the brothers approach Jesus themselves (Mark 10:32–45). This tells us something of the psychology of their nickname, ‘sons of thunder’. It suggests a pair of brothers in the fishing trade who were familiar with survival in a tough, competitive market. This degree of worldly ambition was perhaps an embarrassment in the post-resurrection leadership of the Church. So, Matthew seems to soften the story to protect their reputation. He claims that it is their mother who demands from Jesus special treatment for her boys (Matthew 20:20–28). Quinten Massys might have that in mind as he depicts Mary Salome, the wife of Zebedee, looking proudly away from the rest of the family. The highly conjectural set of family relations that Massys depicts does more than provide a domestic setting for the early formation of James and John. This intergenerational group of relatives prompts attention to the positive qualities of childlikeness and the requirements of care for the vulnerable. While calling his disciples to be ‘like little children’ (Matthew 18:3), Jesus also calls them to take on a solemn duty of care for such ‘little ones’, making clear that it is one of the most serious of their forms of service to others (v.6). Massys presents a clearly demarcated zone of safety for the children, which the women control. Churches, along with many other public institutions, are today facing challenges about their protection of the young, and confronting failures in how well they have ensured it. Perhaps Mary Salome’s boldness in approaching Jesus with a request others might have been embarrassed by has something valuable to offer the contemporary Church. Courageously, she asks questions that others suppress. Vocational demands are placed before us even more starkly in Luke’s Gospel, which in its account of the Last Supper includes Jesus’s teaching about greatness and service. ‘I am among you as one who serves’, he says, in the context of serving at the table of his final Passover meal (Luke 22:24–27). In this way, Luke imaginatively plays on a phrase in Mark and Matthew, when Jesus interrogates the Zebedee brothers, asking if they can drink from the same cup that he will drink from. Luke defines that cup as the fruit of the vine that will be the blood of the new covenant (Luke 22:20). The watchful, silent James the Great who sits at the pillar welcoming pilgrims to Catedral Basílica de Santiago de Compostela, and to a foretaste of the feast of the kingdom of God, is himself a witness to the power of the blood of the new covenant. In Jerusalem, the Armenian Church continues to celebrate the sacraments of the new covenant on the site (now incorporated in their Cathedral of the ‘St Jameses’) where, by tradition, James was beheaded by King Herod (probably Herod Agrippa I). As a Church and as a people, the Armenians have, like James, known terrible persecution. Those training for ordination in their seminary in the holy city know that the cost of martyrdom is a living reality in their vocation. The serenity of the statue of James at Compostela draws from the silent music of the Portico of Glory. This granite depiction of heaven, at the centre of which his Lord shows the signs of his passion, is replete with musicians and their instruments. The songs of praise and victory, which John the Seer—traditionally believed to be the very same John who was James’s brother—so vividly records for us (Revelation 4:8,11; 5:9–13), are an affirmation that the great work of service into which Jesus summons his followers is nothing less than the vindication of God’s love in the face of all that is destructive, transient, and evil. Salvador Dalí’s Surrealism invites wider reflection on the role of the absurd in twentieth-century art and literature. Claims about faith’s absurdity are not necessarily negative. Embracing the absurd may open vertiginous and valuable perspectives unlike those delivered by our ordinary methods of rational enquiry. In his 1995 novel Therapy, British writer David Lodge describes the experience of a depressed middle-aged sitcom writer, Laurence Passmore, while a pilgrim to James’s shrine, exploring in the process the themes of seeing and believing that are so central to the Gospel of John. Passmore declares that a pilgrimage is ‘a leap into the absurd, in Kierkegaard’s sense’ (Lodge 1995: 304–05). Yet it turns out to be the therapy that he needs. Zebedee’s two sons had likewise to undergo the radical transformation of their expectations and outlook. In Lodge’s words, they ‘chose to believe without rational compulsion’. Therein lay their way to glory. References The Catedral de Santiago Foundation. n.d. The Portico of Glory: Master Mateo’s Masterpiece, available at https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-portico-of-glory-master-mateo-s-masterpiece-cathedral-of-santiago-de-compostela/hQUhSvsh2im5Lg?hl=en [accessed 16 June 2025] Lodge, David. 1995. Therapy (London: Secker & Warburg), pp. 304–05