The important question for James and John in today’s gospel is not where they will be seated but whether they can “drink” of “the chalice” that Jesus drinks. Fr Peter notes that it’s a question we must answer as well. Along with James and John we, too, are called to carry the dying and the rising of Jesus in our bodies.
[We are] always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.
2 COR 4:7-15
“Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”
MT 20:20-28