I know that you know Aesop’s fable of the sun and the wind:

The north wind and the sun were having a “conversation” about who was stronger, better, greater.

The north wind blustered, “I’m obviously strong. I can blow the anything off anyone.”

“Is that so?” answered the sun.

“Anyone can see,” the north wind continued huffily, “that I am the greatest. I can blow anything you like into kingdom come.”

“Is that so?” replied the sun.

“I’ll prove it,” the north wind pouted out its cheeks ready to blow. “Any time you like.”

“Is that so,” smiled the sun. Then it continued, “Look! See down there that traveller, with the cloak and the staff. I tell you what, whichever of us can get his cloak off him, that one will be acknowledged as the greater.”

The north wind agreed readily. Thinking this was its game, it blustered and blew and huffed and whistled, but the traveller, disturbed and chilled, only pulled his cloak tighter. The more the north wind assailed him, the more closely the traveller wrapped himself in his cloak, as though he might blow away with it if he dared to let go.

Eventually, the traveller sat down for a rest beneath a tree. The north wind also needed a breather. So the sun took over.

First, it shone gently through the leaves, dappling the traveller into soft dreams. As the beams grew stronger, and the traveller more relaxed, he began to loose his grip on his cloak. As the sun cleared the tree’s canopy and shone fully on the traveller, he shrugged off his cloak, folded it up, and put it in his pack to use as a pillow.

***

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. The Son came to serve, to warm and melt the hearts of the heartless, to overcome the coldness of sin with love.

I am reminded by a preacher’s podcast called The Lectionary Lab that the language of ransom can cause some theological problems for some of us. So let’s be clear: God is not a hostage-taker. Jesus is not saving us from God; Jesus is God, who loves the world and its creatures so much that God became human to set us free, to show us the way of freedom, the way of love.

God is not a hostage-taker. We, like James and John, like their aggrieved and angry companions, tie ourselves up in knots, bind ourselves to ambition and external recognition, envy and rage – these are not the attributes of God.

Left to our own devices, to our own imaginations, to ourselves – well, the devil makes play for idle hands and inflated egos. James and John, the anger of the disciples, left to spiral like a cyclonic wind, their bloviating would only cause them to wrap their errors more closely around themselves. If Jesus had agreed that they could sit at his left and right hands, the next argument would be who got right and who got left!

But the ransom of love, the profligate and abundant outpouring of love, that is the ransom that frees us, not from God, but from sin and its consequences in and for us.  

When Jesus asks James and John, can you be baptized with my baptism, isn’t he remembering that moment in the river, with his cousin John, who said, “Should I baptize you?” Isn’t he remembering that immediately afterward the Spirit drove him into the desert where he fasted until he was famished, until he could dream of stones becoming bread, until he was tempted to simply grasp the power of the world, and let it go to the devil, rather than wait a minute longer for a single sip of water?

But he resisted. He stayed true to his journey of love. In the desert and on the cross, he defeated the devil and all of its evil ways. He put to death in his body, through fasting and through death, the sin of the world.

When he asks James and John, can you drink the cup I drink? He is asking them, can you, too, absorb the pain of this world, the pain caused by its overweening ambition and selfish pride, can you absorb that pain and turn it to healing? Because that is what resurrection requires. That is the ransom.

The disciples, the twins, say, “Yes, Lord, we’ll get right on that,” but they still don’t understand. We still don’t get it most of the time ourselves. We get caught up in power plays and righteous anger and we imagine that God wants us to fight for God.

But what if instead, God wants us to love for Them, to warm the hearts of those around us with the love of God, to melt the armour off them, as Jesus, God’s Son, has melted our coating of sin until, at least from time to time, the glory of mercy shines through.