Mark 10:37-41: in context

James and John come to Jesus with a request: grant that we may sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory. You do not know what you are asking, Jesus tells them. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? We are able, they say. And Jesus answers: you will indeed drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with my baptism; but to sit at my right and left is not mine to give. When the ten hear it, they are indignant.

The disciples asked for thrones; Jesus gave them a cup. They wanted the seats of honor and glory; and Jesus, rather than granting or simply refusing, redirects them entirely: are you able to drink the cup that I drink? The cup he meant was the cup of suffering, the cross he was going toward. And he tells them, you will indeed drink my cup, you will be baptized with my baptism. What he grants them is not the glory they asked for but a share in his suffering; and both James and John would, in fact, suffer for him, one martyred by the sword, the other exiled and afflicted. To follow Christ, Jesus is teaching, is to share his cup, not to secure positions of honor. This reorders our idea of what it means to follow him. We may come to Christ, as the disciples did, hoping for the seats of glory, the blessings, the honor, the reward; and Jesus points us instead to the cup, to the fellowship of his sufferings, as the real mark and path of discipleship. The one who truly follows Christ shares in his sufferings; that is the cup he gives his own, and it is a strange gift, for it does not look like the glory we sought. And yet it is a gift, for to share Christ's cup is to be united to him, to walk his road, and, in the end, to share his glory by way of his cross. The path to the glory the disciples wanted runs, as it did for their Lord, through the cup. Paul would later speak of wanting to know Christ and the fellowship of his sufferings; and Peter would call it a cause for joy to share Christ's sufferings. This is not the answer James and John expected to their request for thrones; but it is the truer gift. To follow Christ is to drink his cup; and those who share his suffering will also share his glory.

Do I come to Christ hoping mainly for the seats of glory, the honor and blessing and reward, or can I receive what he offered James and John instead of the thrones they asked, a share in his cup of suffering, understanding that to follow him is to share his sufferings, and that this fellowship, not the seat of honor, is the mark of the true disciple?