The
Way Up with God is Down
Servant
Leadership
Mark 9: 30-37
Last Saturday Charlotte
and I attended the wedding reception for Tom and Martha Fleisher. It was a lovely affair overlooking the golf
course at Heritage Hills. We were seated with some people I did not know, but they
knew me because I had been standing up front and talking during the
wedding. One of them, just making
conversation asked “How big is your church?”
By that she meant membership and budget.
It is a common enough question and people ask I suppose to determine
your measure of success. Numbers are important and they do matter and we use
them to evaluate many things, but they are not the only criteria to define
success and they will not be found often in scripture and especially not in our
passage today.
In fact, Jesus turned our
understanding of success upside down when he said, “the first will be last and
the last will be first and whoever wants to be first must become a
servant.” In other words, the way up
with God is down. If you want to get to God you don’t climb up a grand
staircase. You walk down the back stairs into the servant’s quarters. This
morning we will explore both the meaning and the implications of these words.
First, let us pray:
Gracious God, we long to
know your Presence, to feel the movement of your spirit. Lead us, O God,
into practices from which our spirits shrink because the demand is so great.
Give to us quiet confidence, just a simple trust. Let us be true to that which
you have entrusted to our keeping, the integrity of our own soul. For us, God,
this is enough. Amen.
The disciples had given
up a lot to follow Jesus, so they expected a lot for their trouble. Their expectations of rewards and riches were
sky high, so when Jesus said he would be betrayed and killed and rise again,
the Bible says, “they did not understand and they were afraid to ask.”
I know the feeling. I remember my Old Testament professor, Dr.
Eberhard Von Waldow, who in the Second World War was a Panzer tank commander
for the German army and looked the part.
He had a high Prussian brow and slicked back hair and a thick German
accent. He had everything but a monocle
and swagger stick. He taught his class the
same way he led his troops and he did not suffer fools lightly. If you asked a question that was already
answered in the textbook assignment he would ask if you could read and if you
could why you didn’t. As a result, few
students asked any questions because they did not want to appear foolish. They followed Abraham Lincoln’s counsel,
“Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove
all doubt.”
Now, Jesus was not a
German Panzer tank commander. Everything
we know about him is gentle and kind, but still the disciples did not
understand what he was saying about the will of God because it was exactly
opposite from what they thought it would be.
If you asked them they could boil down God’s Will to a simple formula;
do the right thing and try not make too many mistakes and God will bless you in
this life and the next; do the wrong thing and commit too many sins and you’re
on your own and on your way down. God
will make you pay.
That made sense to them
because that was the way their world worked or at least the way they hoped it
would work. Good should be rewarded and
evil punished. That seems only fair and
just. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
This theology is alive
and well today, and I know this is so because of the many times someone has
asked, “Why did this happen to me?” They
get it when something bad happens to people who deserve it and say “she’s
getting her just deserts”, or “he made his bed let him lie in it”. But, when
something bad happens to them they think they didn’t deserve it and God has
made a mistake or is unfair, and so they ask, “why did God let this happen to
me?”
That’s why the disciples
were silent and afraid to ask when Jesus said bad things were going to happen
to him; because if something bad could happen to him it can happen to anyone.
That was the point. If you wish to follow me Jesus said you need
to understand that discipleship is about service and sacrifice and not selfish glory;
it is about giving and not getting. He
had said this before, but he had to say it again, because while they were
walking the disciples were talking and got into an argument among themselves
about who was the greatest and best disciple and so who would be most richly
rewarded.
They were using the
yardstick they were familiar with. They
were measuring success as we still do.
In a “me-first, my way or the highway” world, bragging about
accomplishments is the only path we see to recognition. If I don’t do it, who will?
We see this in the
current Presidential campaign. All
candidates boast of their accomplishments to garner your vote, but one in
particular, who identifies himself as a Presbyterian or at least has
Presbyterian roots, blows his own trumpet louder than anyone. So far this strategy seems to be
working. He has a commanding lead in the
polls. I’m not surprised.
I saw this
happen on August 31, 1997 when Princess Dianna was tragically killed in an
automobile accident in Paris. Accounts
of this accident and her life filled newspapers and dominated news broadcasts
for weeks - so much so that a few days later when Mother Teresa passed away
there was only a passing mention in these same papers and broadcasts. It was clear who the editors thought more
significant and what story mattered more.
Following the
death of Diana, princess of Wales, Kate Legge in an Australian newspaper made
this comparison between Diana and Mother Teresa.
"One was
young and beautiful and did some good works. The other was old and ugly and
devoted her life to good works. One had a First World eating disorder called
bulimia. The other lived in the Third World where people starve to death. One
wore designer clothes and once sold her dresses for $8 million. The other left
behind two saris and a bucket. One made headlines with simple gestures such as
touching a person with AIDS. The other lived her life among lepers and the
diseased." "In one sense there is no comparison between the two women
and yet the death of the elderly missionary, as a postscript to the dislocation
over Diana's death, seems to taunt our godless worship of glamour and
style."
We would be
hard pressed to find a clearer present-day illustration of Jesus' teaching on
becoming "the servant of all." Slighting Diana's character is both
undignified and unnecessary. The comparison between Diana and Mother Teresa is
not made to exalt one and debase the other, but rather to expose the human
tendency to glory in status, wealth, beauty, position, education, vitality.....
As a US magazine editor commented, if she ran a picture of an elderly person on
the cover, she could guarantee a drop in sales.
Our acceptance
of others is too often driven by the worship of style. Yet, Jesus would have us
accept and even welcome a seeker on the basis of a radically different
criteria. A person's relationship to Christ establishes the criteria for
acceptance. The servant embraces the sinner who would be righteous in Christ,
for in Christ the unlovely are lovely.
Human beings have mostly attributed value to those who have power.
I suppose that is why the rich get richer.
Jesus is challenges this
idea of people wanting to use
power to establish their own value and people using power as the measure of
value of human beings. Jesus subverts both. True greatness is not about either
of these relations to power. True greatness is to be like Jesus, a truly
powerful person, but who valued himself not because of power but because of his
being and his doing the will of God, which meant lowliness, in his case
including following the path to the cross. That is all implied in the context
of Mark’s story. Jesus in Mark subverts the standard values. He is a king, but
wearing a crown of thorns. He is the Christ, but broken on the cross.
Paul put it this way, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests
of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ
Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
himself, by taking the form of a servant,]being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”[1]
Why was this the strategy God chose? Why did he focus on the broken? Well, it answers the question, “How does
Jesus use imperfect people to build a perfect kingdom?”
God made the most radical decision, a Divine plan is that included
and in fact counted on the followers of Jesus Christ, with all their
weaknesses, to build the Church of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not go to the
rich or powerful or famous to gather troops for his movement. He chose the
"rag-tag" crew on the Capernaum road and still chooses people like you and me to build the church
and carry God's good news to a fractured world.
There is an old legend that tells how Jesus, after his ascension,
was asked by the angels how he planned to complete his mission. The angels were
incredulous. "Them?" they
exclaimed pointing to the fearful, unlearned disciples who stood lost and
confused on the earth below, "You
are going to depend on them to complete your mission?"
"That's
correct," Jesus answers.
"And
should they fail??" the angels
counter, "If they are not
capable of carrying on your work, do you have a back-up plan?"
"They
are my only plan," Jesus says.
There
are two key issues in our gospel lesson about the way Jesus intended to shape
imperfect people into bearers of his good news.
He
chose people who were willing to learn. He chose people regardless of their
station in life
"If you want to be first, you must be last," he taught them. They had argued
about who would be the greatest in terms of the world's view of
greatness. In the eyes of God, however, greatness is measured by
servanthood. Those who live with a "me first" attitude will come in last with
God. Those who live with a "you
first" attitude in the family of faith will come in first with
God. Jesus would continue on from this event to his arrest and
crucifixion in Jerusalem. The disciples would witness the greatest "you first" in all of
history.
Jesus
turned all of this inside out and upside down. He chose the fisherman and
tax collector over the priest and the scribe. He put a child first and a
ruler last.
The way up with God is
down !
Here's
the genius of God’s plan. Whenever the followers of Jesus Christ would
think about the fact that Jesus had chosen them - of all people - to carry on his mission, they would
automatically be called back to the heart of the good news of God. "If God can love even me, then God's
love is truly for everyone!"
That is the good news we are called to share with
the words we speak and the actions we take and with the attitudes we express.
Loving God, we give you
thanks for the gift of life and for the windfall of our birth. We pray that you
would awaken us to your call to service and that you would continue to bless us
in the living of these days. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
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