Jesus and his followers are journeying to Jerusalem. Jesus walks ahead of everyone else. He has a sense of determination… a mission to accomplish. The people who are following are amazed and afraid. They whisper to each other and shake their head, thinking about what will soon take place.

Jesus turns around, pulls his twelve closest disciples aside, and explains for the third time what is about to happen. In Jerusalem, he will be arrested by the religious leaders, who will condemn him to death for blasphemy. They will hand him over to the Romans, who will mock him, spit upon him, flog him, and hang him from a cross to die. Three days later, he will rise again. After making statements like this, it’s no wonder his followers are afraid. If Jesus is correct in his predictions, scary times lay ahead; if he’s wrong, he must be off his rocker, which wouldn’t be any more reassuring to the twelve disciples who had invested years of their lives in this man.

They get back on the road and Jesus is once again walking ahead. James and John, whom Jesus called the Sons of Thunder, come forward with an odd request. “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” That sounds awfully presumptuous, doesn’t it? But their request isn’t so different from the way we all approach God… at least sometimes. We imagine God to be like a genie in a bottle and if we rub the bottle just right the genie comes out and gives us three wishes. But remember, in those genie stories there’s always a catch; the people ask for something that they later come to regret.

Jesus doesn’t scold James and John for their presumptuous request; he just asks them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” They reply, “When you come into your glory, we want to be at your right and left hand.” Obviously what they have in mind is to become Jesus’ chiefs of staff… his number one and number two men in the kingdom of God… power, riches, fame, all that kind of stuff. But Jesus understands the irony of their request: he will come into his glory when he is nailed to the cross. Without knowing it, the wish that James and John are asking for is to be crucified with him.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Jesus tells them. “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?”

The cup is a powerful symbol that is used throughout the Bible. It’s often a symbol of judgment. Isaiah and Jeremiah talk about the cup of God’s wrath and fury that will be poured out upon sinful humanity. It’s this cup filled to the brim that Jesus must drink on the cross. But he drinks it willingly because he knows that this is why he was sent. This is his mission: to experience every human experience, including death. “Can you drink this cup?” he asks these two disciples. “Yes,” they answer, blissful in their naiveté.

Now at this point in the gospel, we are very used to the disciples’ foolish exclamations. Like Peter asking Jesus to let him walk on water. We expect the disciples to make rash pronouncements only to watch them eat crow later on. But the gospel writers don’t tell us these stories again and again just so we’ll think the disciples were bumbling idiots. These stories are in the gospels so that we’ll learn something about ourselves. We learn how easily we make rash judgments and promises. Knowing this, maybe we’ll learn to be a little more humble in our proclamations… to recognize our limitations.

But that makes it all the more surprising when Jesus tells James and John that they will drink the cup that Jesus drinks. Even foolish, deluded, and presumptuous disciples like James and John – and me – can participate in God’s saving work… in spite of ourselves. The cup is for us to drink… not just for Jesus.

But for us, it’s no longer a cup of judgment. Jesus, in his death and resurrection, has transformed it into a cup of blessing. He has filled the cup with his own life. We no longer live under the curse. Brokenness, suffering, and death are no longer a sign of God’s judgment. Jesus has transformed them into the gate of eternal life. We can drink the cup, all of it. We can embrace everything that life has in store for us – the joys and the sorrows – because in that cup of life we meet Jesus.

You’ve probably heard this so many times it’s become a cliché: the way to find fulfillment in life is to reach out in compassion toward those who are suffering. This runs counter to every instinct we have for self-preservation. We would rather flee from suffering because we know that it could jeopardize our own health and well-being. And yet, the person who succeeds in insulating his or her life from the possibility of pain and loss experiences a diminished life; the person who opens his or her life up to the full range of human experience, the good and the bad, that person lives the abundant life… eternal life.

When the other disciples hear about the request of James and John, they’re justifiably annoyed. If James and John presume to be Jesus’ right and left hand men, where does that leave them? And so Jesus tries once again to explain the Gospel to them: it’s not about domination. The Gospel of Rome is about domination. The Gospel of Rome teaches that you can use your power to intimidate your subjects into submission. You hold up a cross and say, “This is what you’re going to get unless you obey me.” And it’s pretty effective. If you have enough power, you can scare people into doing all kinds of things. That’s the Gospel of Rome.

But the Gospel of Jesus flips that whole thing upside down. Embrace the cross, Jesus tells his disciples. Embrace it, and then it won’t intimidate you. Embrace it, and you will be free. Jesus’ willingness to embrace the cross was the most threatening thing the Romans could imagine; it deprived them of their power to intimidate. When we follow in the way of the cross, when we lift the cup of Christ to our lips, when we receive his baptism, we are doing the same thing: we are living out the freedom that Christ revealed through his death and resurrection.

But there’s more to it than this. The Gospel that Jesus proclaims is not just about freedom; it’s about service… it’s about love. Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.” And as Martin Luther King Jr. said, that means everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a dozen titles or advanced degrees; you don’t have to earn a six figure income; you don’t have to have an extraordinary talent that sets you apart from everyone else. In the Kingdom of God, your greatness comes from your ability to serve.

Speaking of drinking our cup, let me offer a somewhat mundane example. I’ve gotten into the habit of stopping by Starbucks on my way to work in the morning. Now there’s a way in which the cup offered to us by Starbucks might seem like the exact opposite of everything that Jesus is saying. It’s generic: it’s the same cup in each of the 20,000 stores around the world. It’s commercialized: you only get the cup if you pay for it. And it’s not cheap: my new habit costs me about $5 a day, $5 that I really don’t have to spend on these kinds of luxuries. The other morning, as I was sipping from my paper cup, I asked myself, “Why do I do this?” There’s free coffee here at church; why don’t I just save my money and have a cup when I arrive at work. Then I realized what I was really paying for: Starbucks offers great service. The workers are really nice: they smile and they make me feel welcome. So for five minutes every day, I have a really pleasant encounter with other human beings. In a city like Philadelphia, where rudeness can feel ubiquitous, $5 is a small price to pay for a few minutes of civility. I’ll happily pay it.

But the Gospel is free. The Gospel reminds us of the incredible service God has rendered to us, completely free of charge: God serves us the food we eat, God builds us a beautiful world for our habitation, God introduces us to the friends we cherish. If Starbucks can be so enthusiastic about serving coffee, think how privileged we are to be able to serve people the cup of salvation… the life of God poured out for us.