<p>10:35 <i>And there came near to him James and John, the sons of Zebedee, saying to him: Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we shall ask of you</i>- So often, the Lord&rsquo;s predictions of the cross are responded to in most unspiritual ways, as if the message really failed to penetrate. As with us today, people turned off at the message of the Lord&rsquo;s death. Whenever this happens, we must enquire as to&nbsp;<i>why</i>&nbsp;we turn off; for it surely has a psychological basis. Why does out attention wander so easily when reading or hearing discussed the crucifixion passages? The psychological, subconscious reason may well be that we realize that whatever is true for the Lord is to be true for us; His death there is the pattern for our death to self today. And we would far rather not be reminded of that.</p><p>Matthew places these words on the lips of their mother, Salome. But effectively the words were those of James and John. Divine inspiration reflects how God understood that completely. They tried to manipulate the Lord through the use of a female. Here is a classic example of where reading the entire Bible gives us a wider and fuller perspective. But a caveat needs to be sounded about such intertextuality, as it is called- the practice of interpreting a text in the light of other Bible texts. Of course, to get the wider and truer picture, this is a quite necessary and legitimate way of studying the Bible. But remember that the vast majority of believers over history have been illiterate. They heard the Gospels read to them. The text as it stands spoke to them- there are no Divinely inspired footnotes which signpost us to one of the parallel Gospels for the fuller picture. The easy use of computer-assisted analysis of the Biblical text is unique to our age, but one downside of this is that it can too easily be assumed that such endless chasing of connections with other Scripture is in fact how the text was originally designed to be read. It clearly was not. The fact the text of the entire Bible stands up to such analysis and indeed glows with glory under it- doesn't mean that this is the only nor even the intended way to receive the text. The ability to perform such detailed intertextuality just wasn't there for the illiterate; they heard the text of the Gospels as it was read, and there was a message within the text as it stands which they were intended to perceive.</p><p>Mark records the brothers asking: &quot;Master, we would that you should do for us whatsoever we shall desire&quot;- presumably trying to tie the Lord to His words in Mt. 18:19 about the successful prayer of &ldquo;two&hellip; who should agree as touching anything they should ask&rdquo;. But of course the Lord&rsquo;s context there was quite different. It was about restoring the lost to the way to the Kingdom. So often we likewise can seize hold of the Lord&rsquo;s words and try to twist them to as it were manipulate God into response. This sort of thing goes on&nbsp;<i>ad nauseam</i>&nbsp;in many Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, taking Bible phrases out of context and aggressively holding God to words He never uttered in the context required of them by the audience. &nbsp;They had the focus all wrong- they wanted to be in the Kingdom &quot;for us&quot;. Our motive for wanting to be in the Kingdom needs to be analysed. Is it for God manifestation, or mere human salvation from death that we are interested in to paraphrase a well known quote from John Thomas?</p>