3.12. The Mother of Zebedee's Children— Maternal Ambition

CHAPTER XII The Mother of Zebedee’s Children— Maternal Ambition THE curious periphrasis with which Zebedee’s wife is described in Matthew on two occasions without being named, although her name is given in Mark and Jdhn, suggests that her eminent place in the gospel storyis assigned to her chiefly on account of her motherhood.

It was no small thing to be the mother of two apostles, and these of the inner group, both members of the trio of Christ’s most intimate friends, one of them even being known as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Hers was second only to the quite unique privilege of Mary, the mother of Jesus. What greater blessedness could any woman aspire to than that her son should be a St. John?

We cannot believe that the mother on whom this rare favour was conferred shone only in its reflected radiance. That might be all she would pride herself upon. And yet there is something in heredity. When reading, the biographies of men of mark, one is repeatedly struck with the fact that in the majority of instances they came of remarkable mothers. Monica is not solely noteworthy because she is the mother of Augustine. It is only just to say that Augustine became the greatest of the Fathers because Monica was his mother.

Most probably “ the mother of Zebedee’s children “ was favoured with another relationship of singular interest. By comparing Matthew and Mark we learn that her name was Salome. In Mattheio we read concerning the witnesses of the crucifixion: “ And many women were there beholding from afar, which had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto Him: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children.”^ In Mark the corresponding statement runs: “And there were also women beholding from afar: among whom were also Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome; who, when He was in Galilee, followed Him, and ministered unto Him “ — where Salome takes the place of “the mother of Zebedee’s children.” Now turn to John, In the fourth evangelist’s account of the women at the crucifixion we read: “ But there were standing by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” Here Christ’s mother’s sister seems to take the place of Salome. Another way of rendering it is to understand the phrase as in apposition with what follows — i.e. “ Mary the wife of Clopas” — so that this Mary is regarded as the sister of the mother of Jesus, But if so there would be two sisters each having the name “Mary,” a most improbable thing.

Besides, in this passage of the fourth gospel the names seem to arrange themselves in two groups, each consisting of a pair connected with “ and “ — first “ His mother and His mother’s sister “; then “Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene.” The balance and symmetry are broken if “Mary the wife of Clopas” is detached from the second clause and joined to the “ mother’s sister.” In some of the early versions of the gospels — the Syriac, the Persian, and the Ethiopic — there is a conjunction between the second and the third titles, plainly indicating that they stand for different persons.

It has been objected that Jesus would not commit Mary to the charge of John with the phrase, “Behold thy mother,” if John’s actual mother were standing by at the time. On the other hand, if John were His cousin, and nephew to Blary, it would be the more natural that this disciple should take her to his home. Perhaps we should not regard the identification as absolutely certain. Still the indications point to a high degree of probability.

Here, then, we have the strong probability of a second point of great interest in connection with “ the mother of Zebedee’s children.” Salome was sister to the Virgin Mary and aunt to Jesus. These two sisters were rare women, highly favoured, though in very different degrees. Our thoughts go back to their early days. We try to picture them in the home of their childhood at Nazareth. From what stock had they sprung? Tradition has encircled the parentage of the Virgin with a haj^o of_sanctity, and in legends of the church her father and mother, known as Joachim and Anna, appear as saintly characters of rare excellence. These legends are not of any real historical value. Yet we may safely conclude that it was no ordinary home that produced two such daughters as jNIary and Salome.

Then, it is natural to ask, where was Salome at the time of the wonders that accompanied the birth of Jesus 1 She may have been already married and away from Nazareth. In that case we should expect St. James, and perhaps St. John also, to be older than Jesus. That is not very probable. St. John is always represented in Christian art as a very young man in the time of Christ. Again we must beware of attaching too much weight to unauthoritative tradition. StiU the solid historical evidence that he lived on till the end of the first century of the Christian era renders it very improbable that he could be older than Jesus. It is more likely, therefore, that Salome was a younger sister of Mary. If so she was a daughter at home at the time of the Annunciation. Was she near enough to Maiy in age for any sisterly confidences to be whispered between them at this most perplexing crisis? The journey of Mary to visit her kinswoman in the south country rather points to the conclusion that the Virgin had kept her secret to herself up till that time. But before long the younger sister must have known at least something of what was occurring in Bethlehem and at Nazareth; and it is not at all improbable that the two families met on several occasions during those silent years of the boyhood of Jesus and His humble work in the carpenter’s shop.

Meanwhile Salome becomes the fisherman’s wife at Bethsaida. She is not mentioned on the occasion when her two sons receive their call. The evangelists direct our attention to the fact that they left their father to follow Jesus, without making any mention of their mother. But subsequently she is found among the women who also followed the new Teacher and ministered to Him. We are left in the dark as to many points that we should like to be able to clear up. Did Salome accompany her sons from the first 1 Or was it that the home seemed empty without them, and the mother bii’d deserted her nest because it had lost its attraction to her when the young had flown? So was it her mother’s love that first brought Salome into the circle of the influence of Jesus, where, however, before long she came to feel the spell of His Divine personality, and thus was led to become on her own account one of His most devoted disciples 1 If so the case is the reverse to that of Augustine and Monica. It is not that the mother leads her sons to Jesus Christ; but that more or less indirectly the sons bring their mother into discipleship. Then, we are driven to ask, what had become of the father? The Scriptures drop no hint of his ever having cast in his lot with the new movement. It is not so easy for a man in middle life to change the whole course of his habits, Jesus was a young man, and the majority of His disciples appear to have been young men. For the most part the Kingdom of Heaven came as an inheritance of the young. It was the startling new light of a new age; and the elder men, with their rooted prejudices and their set, stiffened habits, were slow to adopt it. So Zebedee, we must fear, was untouched by the teaching that was making so gieat a stir by the shores of his familiar lake.

Now if Zebedee was not a believer he must have thought he had a grievance. First his sons leave him; then his wife follows. The home is completely broken up. Was not this hard for the head of the family? It is often said that he had his hired servants, a fact showing that he was not in needy circumstances, and would not be left in the lurch as far as his fishing business was concerned. But hired servants are a poor compensation for the loss of wife and sons.

Again we must suspend our judgment for the reason that we are most imperfectly acquainted with the facts.

It may be that Zebedee had died in the interval between the call of the two brothers and their mother’s flight from the home. If so she may have thought that since there was nothing more for her to live for in Bethsaida she would join her sons and devote herself to the cause with which they were identified. It is really uncharitable to entertain the idea, but it must be allowed as a bare possibility for the exoneration of Salome from blame in leaving her home, that Zebedee had behaved badly to his family, or at least had taken the going of his sons so ill that while his wife, mother-like, sided with the young men, there was a family quarrel, and Salome was driven to the extremity of going with her sons. It is idle to dwell on such possibilities. They are only worth naming to indicate how very ignorant we are as to the facts of the case, and therefore how impossible it is for us to form any judgment on them.

This, however, may be said quite apart from all such speculations. The coming of Jesus broke up old familyties while it introduced the new brotherhood of the Kingdom of Heaven. He gave full warning that it must be so.

While in the end there is no firmer foundation for the famil}’ life than a common loyalty to Jesus Christ among the members of the household, it must not be forgotten that the claims of Christ are paramount. At times they cannot but traverse the lines of natural relationship. Then the closestties must not be permitted to interfere with them.

Following Jesus in the company of the women who were ministering to Him by the supply of the necessaries of life for Himself and His disciples, Salome must have heard much of His teaching. Thus she was led to the conclusion that He was the Christ. Certainly she had gained that great conviction before she came to Him towards the end of His ministry with her daring request.

It is from Matthew alone that we learn of the action of the “mother of Zebedee’s children” on this occasion. There is another account of the incident in Mark, where we read that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus asking for the favour on their own account, and no mention is there made of their mother.- Therefore it must be allowed that at all events they had a share in the ambition. This is also apparent in Matthew, since even in that gospel the mother is accompanied by her sons when she begs the favour from Jesus, These sons were not children, and their presence carried with it their own share in the responsibility for what Salome said. But we are now concerned with the mother whose leading part in the incident is clearly brought out in Mattheio. On the face of it the request has an appearance of most unseemly greed. The mother approaches Jesus with her sons. She bows at His feet and tells Him that she has come to ask a certain thing of Him. It would almost seem that she wishes Him to grant her request before it is named. Jesus could not agree to so preposterous a demand. Kindness itself, He could not neglect the principies of wisdom. ISTo prayer can be answered simply on demand. The saying that faith is a blank cheque on the bank of heaven is as false as it is irreverent.

Then Salome finds courage to express the desire of her heart. It is nothing less than that Jesus should command these her two sons whom she brings with her to sit, “ the one on His right hand, the other on His left hand in His kingdom.” No mother’s ambition could soar higher than that. Salome was careful to approach Jesus at a time when He was not suiTounded by the twelve. Yet the object of her errand leaked out probably through her own irrepressible maternal vanity. Naturally they were indignant. But now let us look at the case all round. At the first blush of it the crudity of the ambition is amazing. It is so naive, so deliciously unconscious of its extravagance, so rarely blind to all other considerations than the yearnings of a mother’s heart. But if this is all we see in the action of Salome we shall be guilty of great injustice to her. That her request was somewhat foolish is clear from the light thrown on it by the grave words of Jesus in His reply.

She did not know what it involved; neither did she recognise the grounds on which such a future as she foreshadowed for her sons must be determined. So much we must grant, and the perception of it must have been not a little disconcerting to the fond mother.

Still there is more in her request than an expression of inordinate maternal ambition. In the first place, as we have already seen, her action is an evidence of her unhesitating faith. She had received the tremendous truth that this peasant Prophet, her own nephew apparently, was the prophesied and long-expected Redeemer of Israel. His own brethren had not yet arrived at this stage; it wanted the resurrection to remove their doubts. But here is a relative who knows all about His early surroundings, and is not at all disconcerted by their homeliness. Her faith in Him is quite definite and settled. The favour she begs for her sons is based on the assumption that He will certainly enter into His kingdom.

Instead of under-estimating His authority she does what nobody else is ever recorded as having done, what we should have thought impossible, if we had not learnt it from the lips of Jesus Himself; she actually over-estimates it, ascribing to Him a function which He repudiates as the exclusive right of His Father. When we consider Christ’s circumstances at the time and Salome’s relationship with Him, must we not allow that this serene assurance of His lofty desting is perfectly sublime. But further the conversation which had immediately preceded this incident brings out the faith of “ the mother of Zebedee’s children” in the strongest possible relief.

Jesus had just been predicting His rejection by the Jews, the outrageous treatment He was to receive at their hands, the s’ourging and crucifixion, and the resurrection that was to follow. He had foretold His death on one or two earlier occasions, with increasing fulness of detail as He drew nearer to the event. But this is the first occasion on which He named the awful word “crucify.” Now immediately following on this terrible announcement comes Salome’s daring request. “Then,” says the evangelist, “ then came to Him the mother of Zebedee’s children, &c.”

It would seem that His very words about the approaching events at Jerusalem had stirred her up to seek the favour.

It was as they were on the road to Jerusalem that Jesus made this more full statement concerning His destiny, and He prefaced it with the words, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,” that is to say, He made it clear that the very journey He was then pursuing was to lead to the end of which He was speaking. Yet even this does not disconcert the confident woman’s faith. She is not dismayed at the sudden vision of the cross. We cannot imagine the ghastliness of the vision that word “crucify” would conjure up in the cruel days of Roman brutality, the pale horror of the future it would represent. It was more frightful than if one were to speak calmly to-day about having to put his head through the hangman’s noose. And yet with that horror just presented to her imagination, the very first thing Salome does is to proffer a request for her sons’ share in the kingly distribution of honours by this Man who is about to be tortured and dragged to a felon’s death. How shall we account for so remarkable a juxtaposition of incongruous ideas? Was it that Salome absolutely refused to accept the dreadful prophecy, in her request assuming the impossibility of any such thing taking place t Possibly, and yet our Lord’s answer takes no note of any apparent rejection of His words. It is more probable that she accepted them.

Then how are we to take her request in the light of the depressing information she had just received? May we suppose that she hung it on the last statement, the prediction of the resurrection? If so her faith had taken a higher flight than that of any other disciple, or at least higher than the faith of any but her two sons who accompanied her in the request. Perhaps it would be safer to conclude that Salome had no such definite conception. It was enough for her that Jesus was undoubtedly the Christ.

Therefore He must have His kingdom. What He had just said contained much that was very unlike Messianic glory.

She could not reconcile these things. But she was willing to leave them unreconciled, as beyond her comprehension.

She knew that nothing could upset the kingly desting of y the Christ. That is faith triumphant, a light in the cloud \ above the blackest storm.

There is yet another idea that may be brought in from the singular conjunction of Christ’s prediction and Salome’s request. If she attached any meaning to His words, if she did not thrust them back as absolutely unbelievable, they must have entered in some dim way into her conception of the Messianic glory and the road to it. Jesus pointed out that her sons did not know what they were asking. Salome could not know what her request involved. No one could imagine the bitterness of the cup He was to drink, or the severity of the baptism with which He was to be consecrated. Yet the mother and her sons must have seen that some dread ordeal was before Him, and their subsequent words show that the two young men were willing to share its unseen possibilities. As all three seem to have been of one mind in the request, the mother as well as the sons must have been willing that some hard and painful road should be travelled in reaching the coveted honour. To persevere with the request in face of such a prospect required more than faith; it demanded courage, a rare and heroic courage. There is something of the S part an mot her_in SalQme. Honour she covets for her sons; but not merely the gilded favour of a court, rather such honour as the general distributes to the survivors of his faithful staff who gather round him with the blood of the battle upon them. She is like the Roman matron whose proudest hour is when she sends forth her sons to die for their country, although hers is the hope of a larger faith, since she is well assured that in some way totally incomprehensible to her the ultimate issue will be the glory of a kingdom.

Nevertheless, when all this is said, there remains the unpleasant selfishness of this request. It is selfish on the part of the brothers; and it is now also in some degree selfish on the part of the mother! Family selfishness is a most subtle weakness. When we meet with it in connection with a more remote relationship we condemn it unhesitatingly, branding it with the ugly name “ nepotism.”

It is not so easy to detect the evil of it under the guise of that most unselfish of all passions, a mother’s love. And yet while truly unselfish as regards her own individual affairs, a mother is really in a sense selfish in making undue demands for her own children. But even here we may do injustice to Salome. She was not asking for her sons any favour which might be considered unreasonable in comparison with the claims of the other disciples. Already they were more than of the twelve; they were of the inner group of three. Besides, in the fourth gospel St. John is described as the beloved disciple, and as the one who leaned on the bosom of Jesus.

We must not think of this as only an attitude of affection. When reclining at a feast, leaning on his left elbow, anybody might be described as in the bosom of the person on whose right hand he was placed. This was St. John’s usual position in relation to his Lord. He always sat on the right hand of Jesus. And now, which disciple occupied the other post of honour, the left side of the Lord 1 The scene at the mention of the traitor during the last supper makes it apparent that it was not St. Peter, for that disciple had to beckon to St. John to ask Jesus who the traitor was. But it is most likely that it would have been one of the three. We are led then to the conclusion that in all probability St. James sat on the left of Jesus, so that while John leaned on the bosom of Jesus, Jesus leaned on the bosom of James. That is to say, the two brothers already occupied the very positions which Salome was asking for them. Her request comes to this, that the places they have held on earth in the time of their Master’s humiliation may be continued to them in the coming kingdom when He is glorified. Will the fishermen friends be owned still as the King’s most choice companions? And among the disciples, may they still retain their peculiar privilege.

St. Peter was the nearest rival. His impulsive nature often led him to assume a foremost place; and on some occasions Jesus had seemed to allow it him, describing him in his faith and confession as the rock on which He would build His church, and perhaps alluding to him as the doorkeeper who was called on to be especially watchful in a position of trust. ^ • Salome might have feared that her quieter, less assuming sons would be thrust aside at last in favour of the more pushing comrade and his brother Andrew. These four were the first-made disciples. Salome knew Andrew and Simon well; they had been partners with her sons in their trade. Possibly there had been an old rivalry between the two pairs of brothers. Or if this had not been the case it was not unnatural that the mother of one pair should feel a little jealous of the honour she thought due to her own sons falling to the other two young fishermen. This all looks very small and quite unworthy of the lofty aims of apostles. But Jesus had occasion to rebuke the miserable disputes of His disciples as to who was to be greatest among them.”

Jesus made it clear that Salome was making a foolish request. In the first place she did not know what she was asking. She had no idea of the real nature of the petition she was urging so decidedly; neither did she in the least perceive what would be involved in granting it. It is not wise for parental ambition to be too definite. The future shrouds strange possibilities. It is safest to leave them with God. In the second place, Jesus distinctly declared that it was not His part to grant such a favour. This distribution of final honours was entirely in the hands of His Father. As a matter of fact the slow unrolling of events declared a result of which Salome could not have dreamed. The star that was destined to shine most brightly in the kingdom of heaven was still below the hoi-izon. How far was this fond mother from imagining that there was then at Jerusalem a young Jew of good family and rabbinic culture devoting himself intensely to the practice of pharisaic piety, who was destined before many years to be the foremost leader in the cause of Christ? And yet to us Mark 13:34. Mark 9:1-50 who look back on those far-off times in the light of subsequent history, it would seem that the man whom God, in the mystery of His counsels, had chosen to sit on the right hand of the Christ, was neither James nor John, nor any one of the twelve, but the persecutor Saul. Nor does even the second place in the kingdom seem to have been assigned to either of the sons of Zebedee; for great as is the glory of being the first apostolic martyr that fell to the lot of St. James, and venerable as was the position of St. John in his old age at Ephesus, history marks as more prominent leaders of the church, first, St. Peter, the spokesman at Pentecost and before the council, and then that other James — “ the Lord’s brother,” who at this time was no apostle, and not even a believer. It appears then that the mother’s wish was not granted.

Still, it may be argued, she came very near to having her desire satisfied. Her elder son was the first apostle to win the martyr’s crown. Where was his mother when James was chosen by Herod as the most dangerous Galilean? She had heard her sons’ courageous acceptance of companionship with their Master in His sufferings. Did she think of this when James was drinking the cup of persecution and receiving the baptism of blood 1 It was thus that her first-born went to his seat of honour. Her second son, John, had the glory of writing the gospel of richest inspiration and deepest spiritual insight, of being in fact the author of the greatest book in all literature.

Surely these were honours enough to satisfy a mother’s ambition. And yet neither of them was what Salome contemplated when she came to Jesus with her bold request. From the first of them she must have shrunk with the agony of nature’s protest. This was too much like the desting of her sister, the Mother of Sorrows, when, as Simeon had prophesied, the sword pierced her soul.

It is by a natural instinct that a mother wishes the best for her chillren; it is with a beautiful infirmity that she beheves in them as worthy of the best. Alas! disillusion and disappointment too often follow these fond dreams, and therein is the deep pathos of that most Divine thing on earth, a mother’s love. And yet because it is Divine in its likeness to the yearning love of God — though that can never be deceived, being linked to the all-seeing wisdom of God — this love is an inspiration for the most earnest endeavours after a life that shall not overwhelm it in shame and despair. Such love must prompt the children who have learnt to appreciate it to strive to prevent the disillusion from being too complete and the disappointment too bitter. Nor can we believe that a Salome’s prayer, shortsighted and imperfect as it was, was wholly in vain. The old bishop whom Monica consulted in her anxiety about Augustine was right when he comforted her with the assurance, “ Go thy ways, and God bless thee, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish.”