[Note: This post continues our two-month-long series through the month of July on the topic of “desire” and “longing” in concert with my recent book on the topic. Do make sure to read my book and podcast recommendation at the end of the post for anyone looking for a good read or listen this summer. Thanks for letting me be in your life each week. God is with you!]
In Matthew 20.20-28 as Jesus nears the arduous end of his earthly journey toward the cross, he is said to be attracting greater and grander throngs of crowds and onlookers. We are told by Matthew that the mother of two of Jesus’ disciples approaches their rabbi with a request. Salome, the mother of both John and James, comes, bowing before Jesus, “kneeling down...and asking a favor of him.” Jesus responds as he often does: “What do you want?” Out of the doting mother comes a daring request:
Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom. (Mt 20.21)1
What is she asking? In short, Salome is requesting that her two boys—sons that she loves and cares for and has their entire lives—be deputized with special places of power and authority in the kingdom Jesus is seemingly bringing to earth. Salome seems to be disoriented at this moment. By the looks of Jesus’ response, the mother has misunderstood something. She has somehow come to believe that the way of discipleship to Jesus is a surefire pathway to power, influence, and political authority for the children she had brought into the world. She makes an impossible request. The throne to which Christ would ascend has no extra seats. And no human could enter into the suffering Jesus would enter into. Jesus was God in human flesh. Humans could not ascend into divinity. Still, you gotta hand it to Salome. This is, for sure, peak helicopter parenting. But Jesus would need to gently remind her that what she desired was out-of-step with what Jesus was seeking to do:
You don’t know what you are asking...Can you drink the cup I am going to drink? (v. 22)
This fragmentary moment in the gospels captures an intimate (even if a little embarrassing) detail of Salome’s journey with Christ to his atoning death on the cross. She has momentarily misunderstood who it is that this Christ is. And it is on record for posterity to see. Matthew is not throwing her under the bus. The reader will find it redemptively liberating to discover that this unseemly embarrassment is not the climactic finale of her story in the gospels. Later, in Mark’s gospel, we are told that this same woman is “looking at a distance” as Christ is being crucified (Mk 15.40). Like Salome, we all have momentary infidelities in the journey of our fidelity to Christ. That’s okay. She still makes it to the cross. Moments of foolishness are but a chapter. If we keep going, better chapters are always ahead.
Salome’s request is striking, however. She wants something for her two boys that could never be attained. I’m sure, on some level, the boys would have wanted the same thing. They were known, to be sure, as “sons of thunder.” They were likely men who passionately desired to bring in the kingdom of heaven through their own strength and might. But their mother’s likely well-intended desire for her boys to enter into their own kingdom as Christ enters his is clearly described in negative terms. Her desire for her boys stood as a threat to their call to be servants of Christ’s kingdom.
There are times when we desire that which is impossible. In his book The Awakened Heart, theologian and psychologist Gerald May explores the fickle and clunky nature of human desire. It’s a fabulous book—one I’d highly recommend anyone to read. One of the dangers of human desire, May suggests, is that we often harbor desires within for that which it would be impossible to receive or attain. I think, for example, of this lurking desire I’ve had since turning to Jesus at 16 that I could eventually fully arrive at a vista of spiritual perfection and full sanctification when I never miss my morning devotions and pray perfectly. Desires like this are well-intended. And perhaps good at its core. But unattainable. May calls desires like these “impossible desires.”2 They are our desires that loom over our lives or the lives of others but could never truly be realized; desires that, when unconfronted, become the idealism that robs us of contentment, presence, and gratitude.
Desires such as wishing that your child could sit on God’s throne. Some of the greatest pains in our lives are not that we don’t get something that we have desired. This is a normal existence. The greater existential pain that comes with living with the haunting grief that our idealism let us down. We wanted something that we came to find was an impossibility. Our inner desires—especially the ones that are impossible to receive—lurk over our lives, whispering to us words of shame and condemnation because we can’t get what we want. And yet that experience is also sacred. Only by actually receiving the gift of powerlessness can we actually begin to enter into true power.
We can all be like Salome. This week, I was given the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon for a chance meeting with a group of inmates who had read as a group one of my recent books. The experience was admittedly terrifying. Yet simultaneously sacred. Never before had I taken seriously the words of Jesus of visiting those in prison. Sitting with a group of men who had done the unthinkable—rape, murder, violent theft—and talking about Jesus was a sobering and eye-opening experience. I was struck by the grace of Christ I saw in the eyes of many of them.
What most struck me about the visit was the motivation that fueled them to want to be better people. It became clear, after just a few minutes, that the desire for most of the men was to be transformed so that they could come to a place where they could love (and be loved by) their children whom they had been cut off from. One of the men—having read After Doubt—vulnerably asked me: “If you could write one more chapter, what would you write?” My answer was virtually immediate. I’d write a chapter for parents who have little to no idea of how to love and serve their children who had walked away from the faith that they had handed them. The chapter would be about learning to love the child you had been given rather than the child you wish they’d have become.
The conversation that ensued was almost electric. The inmates began raising their hands, asking, prodding, wondering—how could they love their children when they could not (in many cases) even talk to their little ones. It also led to some painful stories being shared. No less than three of them shared that they themselves had grown up in stifling Christian homes that put unfair expectations on them as children. Overburdened, many of these men were finding grace in prison that they had never found in their home of origin. I sat and listened to stories that had gone hidden for too long.
As I drove home, with the Oregon sunset glistening in the sky before me, I couldn’t help but think about my own son. And the impossible desires I often put on him. Like Salome, I want so much for my boy. Well-intended as they may be, I can place burdens that do more harm than good. Those impossible desires that want him to be better than I. Those impossible desires for him to be like me. Those impossible desires that he would never make the same mistakes and blunders as I did. Those impossible desires for him to be endlessly grateful all the time because he is receiving something that I perceive (in pride) to be better than the life I received. Like Salome, I heap on my son so many unspoken, impossible desires that he is supposed to have to be faithful to.
To love another, I wrote in my journal, is to love the one who is, not the one we want.
The journey of Salome, in part, is the journey of choosing to leave a life of impossible desires to enter into a life of meeting Christ at the cross. Or, to meeting God in reality. Not our false idealisms. This entails a willingness to cease the art of placing impossible desires on others. And on ourselves. This is the journey toward the cross. The journey to Christ is our increasing willingness to give over, time and time again, our expectations, unfulfilled idealisms, and impossible desires for our lives and the lives of others.
In so doing, at last, we can learn to love God and people more than our impossible desires.
Thanks for reading my work. As always, you can always find me wasting time on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Or you can listen to my podcast, Slow Theology. If you found this content helpful to your journey, yay! Consider enjoying my most recent book The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for our Wants, which was released with Zondervan in February of 2024. Within, I explore what the topic of human desire from the perspective of Scripture, theology, and experience—with particular interest to how we can be formed into the image of Christ through our desires. In short, it’s about why our cultural mandate to “you do you” is so profoundly unhelpful to the follower of Jesus. You can support my work by reading it! And sharing about your experience. Click on the image below to get yourself a copy.
Also, some recommendations. First, a book. I have always struggled to find a book I could recommend or use in class for a theology and practice of worship. Those days, I can say, are finally over. My friend, Dr. J. Michael Jordan—who has served the spiritual lives of students at Houghton University for years—has penned one of the best books on the topic entitled Worship in an Age of Anxiety. I endorsed it. And there is a reason. It is heady, dense, and theological—but well-worth the effort for anyone wanting to developing a robust theology of worship. Also, always the sucker for really good podcasts and listens, I can’t recommend enough the Intentional Parenting Podcast. It has quickly become my go-to to think through the challenging dynamics of being a parent in this world. To say nothing of just how to follow Jesus.
It is interesting to note that in Mark’s telling of what seems to be the same story in Mk 10.35-45, it is not Salome the mother who makes the request but her boys themselves. It remains unclear to New Testament scholars if these are two different accounts. Or, if it is the same narrative with an emphasis placed by the author on the mother’s request or the son’s request. Most interesting (and even comical) is that the story is entirely overlooked by John in his gospel.
Gerald May, The Awakened Heart: Opening Yourself to the Love You Need (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1991), 47.
Thank you, AJ. Hit the bullseye for me. I've been mullling over the subject of desire recently and stumbled across your Substack and book today. Guess I lost track of your writing post COVID. Looking forward to reading through the rest of this series and check out your book and podcast and the other book recommendations.
Thank you AJ, this is so true of our culture today, we seek unrealistic desires which leads to hopelessness. Let’s come back to what you said in your book THE GIFT OF THORNS…”We were born to behold God’s face. Until then, something is missing.” Let’s seek Him first.