The road to greatness was marked by the actions that spoke louder than words in the life of Jesus as the road to greatness was taking Him to Jerusalem of suffering, being persecuted in the form of being spit on, mocked and flogged, and to die only to rise again on the third day. After predicting His death and burial which will lead to His resurrection, for the third time, we are met in the Gospel of Mark with a déjà vu moment. Did we not hear Jesus already speak about who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Mark 9:33-37)? Yet, here Jesus goes again for the second time repeating Himself to His disciples the same lesson of how to be great and again, after He predicts His death, burial, and resurrection as though the disciples were ignorant and/or simply ignoring what Jesus was saying. We can assume they will get it this time around, but unfortunately this déjà vu moment occurs again in Matthew 23:11 for the third time, where Jesus speaks about who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven after exposing the religious leader’s false greatness that was associated to the ways of this world and what it called greatness. ​
The disciples, who seemed to ignore the predictions of Jesus, focused on greatness through their false perception of Jesus’s Messiahship being one of military takeover of Rome and freedom for the Jews who were also presumed to rule and reign with the Messiah in His presumed earthly kingdom. It was with this perception that James and John dared to petition the Lord for such a position in His kingdom, seeking favor and honor from the Lord through simply asking rather than through actions that speak louder than words and that through the favor of their mother which Matthew’s account records in Matthew 20:20-28. Matthew states it was James and John’s mother who the sons sent to ask Jesus for such a request hoping to gain favoritism through their mother who was thought to be Jesus’s aunt and Mary’s, Jesus’s mother’s sister, making James and John Jesus’s cousins. These were also the same two who were affiliated with Jesus’s inner circle who Jesus took aside to the mount of transfiguration along with Peter and who would also be the three that Jesus takes with Him into the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prays for the cup to be taken. Jesus uses James and John’s petition to speak for the second time about the road to greatness.​
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