Clergy Notes — July 26, 2026
St. James' Anglican ChurchToday we celebrate the feast of our patron. He is called James the Greater, because he is older than the other James, but I think he also wants to be ‘great’ as today’s Gospel story indicates. In their youthful zeal, he and his brother petition for something they do not understand the implications of: to drink the cup that Jesus will drink; to sit beside him in his glory, which of course causes some strife in the community of disciples.
Jesus doesn’t tell him he can’t be great, only that if he wants to be so, he must become a servant, and to forfeit his life in service of many. He reminds all of his friends that unlike the ways of those great ones who they are probably imagining, who lord it over others, “It will not be so among you.”
James, our patron saint, is also one of the three friends whom Jesus chooses to accompany him during the raising of Jairus’ daughter; to climb the mountain with him and witness the Transfiguration; and to be with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. During these critical moments when the full truth of who Jesus is, and why he has come, are revealed in their fulness, James is one of the friends he trusts most to be at his side, to show him what it means to drink from his cup. It is in these moments that he is being prepared to drink the cup he must eventually drink: formed by communion with Jesus for the witness he will bear.
As it is with James, so with us: it is only with time walking alongside Christ – in the day-to-day activities of life; the ups and downs; the wonders and disappointments; the challenges and sorrows – that we begin to really understand what it means to be called to drink the cup that Jesus drank. And it is only as we do so alongside one another; experiencing the little blunders and distractions that inevitably happen in community, and then being recalled back to who we are by the voice of Jesus reminding us, “It will not be so among you,” that we reorient ourselves, and together resume the path of discipleship, being formed for the witness we also must bear.
Mother Amanda