But the people who, in the end, share in the feast are those who didn't know the king, the likelihood of a feast, let alone had any of them any expectation of being invited. For James and John, in collusion with their mother, wanted to be, or become, religious authorities. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to become religious authorities, provided that the authority is used to magnify others - not to exclude others. So again, the purpose of scripture is to enable the religious authorities to exercise their authority appropriately. Today is the feast day of St James.
Today is a saints day.
We can celebrate St James as a wonderful person, though in actuality he is noted rather more for what happened to him, rather than what he did of his own volition. He was one of the privileged inner circle of disciples who was with Jesus on the mountain of Transfiguration and in Gethsemane, and was the first of the twelve to be martyred, being beheaded by Herod Agrippa in 44 AD, described in Acts 12.2. The anger of the ten towards James and John should also alert us to the possibility that much of what passes for religious activity is really no different from political in-fighting. That we dignify our own arguments with reference to the Almighty has been the habit of countless people down the ages and of all religious persuasions. The paradigm is no different from sectarian disputes which occur with monotonous regularity, and even if our arguments don't come to blows or to the use of weapons of war, that is no sure sign that others are not hurt and alienated.