Envying Others' Gifts (GH Day 12)

Does this scene look familiar:
Susie: "It's not fair! Jimmy got to have an ice cream cone after his baseball game today. I want one too!"
Or
Jimmy: "Why does Susie get to sit in the front seat again? She sat there yesterday! I want a turn!"
Or insert a similar fight stemming from sibling envy that you've heard lately. The gist is this: one sibling has been given something that the other hasn't (for whatever reason), and that doesn't sit well.
 
Be honest now: have you ever envied a gift or talent given by God to someone else? Of course you have. We all have. We have no idea, most of the time, why God in His Providence has given wealth to one Christian and not other or a particular high-profile spiritual gift to one Christian and not another. And sometimes it's hard not to feel envious.*

George Herbert has what many, myself included, might consider an odd little poem whose scenario is sibling rivalry. It's one of his Latin poems, whose title might be translated "To John, Leaning on the Lord's Breast."** The title alludes to the poem's scene from the Apostle John's account of the Last Supper (John 13). I will quote the poem here from McCloskey & Murphy's translation, but the last 3 lines will be my own translation of the Latin:

Ah now, glutton, let me suck too!
You won't really hoard the whole
Breast for yourself! Do you thieve
Away from everyone that common well?
He also shed his blood for me,
And thus, having rightful
Access to the breast, I claim the milk
Mingled with the blood.
Where, if so much grace might be joined
To the forgiveness of my sin, perhaps
Falling with my shoulder I may provoke the Thrones themselves.

The speaker is envious that the Apostle John, leaning on the Lord's chest, is close enough to be able to "feed" from Christ Himself. While repulsive to modern sensibilities, the idea of Christ feeding believers with the blood that comes from the side of his chest (struck by the spear at the end of his crucifixion) was a familiar one from medieval art. Furthermore, this metaphor likening these siblings (both sons of God) to infants jostling to get close to the mother's nursing breast is not unlike the traditional image of the pelican, who supposedly would prick herself in dire circumstances, self-sacrificially feeding her young with her own blood.

So far, so good. And once we get the speaker's petulant attitude out of the way, the theological implications here are significant. Christ's "common well" is offered to all, and the speaker knows that he, along with the Apostles, has "rightful access" to that atonement. Moreover, Christ's blood (memorialized in the Protestant Eucharist) nourishes the believer, as a mother's milk does to her child.

But it's the last 3 lines, the ones I've been translating, that I'm really wrestling with. It's very tempting to fault my translation for the obscurity here, but the only 2 published translations I know of are no more clear. Having received forgiveness via God's grace, the narrator seems to take on the role of the Apostle John at the end. It is his shoulder focused on now, only instead of leaning, he's falling on Christ violently. The word (lacessam) used means to "strike," "provoke," or "challenge." The context suggests that he is falling dead (dying), and I'm going to suggest he is now dead to sin (Romans 6:2), the sins that have been forgiven via the shed blood of Christ.

Does his "striking" the Thrones (presumably a metonymy for Heaven, which is also a synonym for God) mean that he is like the spear that pierced Christ's side? In other words, who shed Christ's blood? I did. All sinners did. We are the spear that pierced his side.

Or, is there some defiant attitude on the speaker's part, suggested by the equally possible meanings for lacessam of "provoke" or "challenge"? Is he being over-confident? Something like "Move over, Apostle John; Christ's provision is mine, and I'll challenge all of the apostles to get it" (where "thrones" = the apostles' thrones in Heaven [Matt 19:28]). Yeah, strange. In fact, I'm rather reminded here of passages I've been reading in Homer's Iliad, where one mortal, Diomedes, takes on the gods in battle.

The lesson here is obviously not to challenge God to give you the same gift or talent that He has given a brother or sister in Christ, but perhaps to be grateful that Christ has shed his blood for all for the forgiveness of sins--and you don't have to beat any hoarding Apostles out of the way to get it. Christ has made that "well" open to everyone who comes.


*Envy is the correct word for this sin ("I wish I had what someone else has"), not jealousy, despite widespread incorrect usage.
**This is how McCloskey and Murphy translate the combination Latin/Greek title in their Latin Poetry of George Herbert.