(Preached on Sunday, October 18, 2009)
It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave.
-Mark 10:43-44
William Willimon, former dean of the Chapel at Duke University, tells a story about when his son was 11 or 12. He was having difficulty in school so they took him to a psychologist who put him through a battery of tests to find out why he was having a tough time. Upon completion of the tests the psychologist called in the Willimons to talk to them about their son. “Your son is a wonderful kid,” he said. “Unfortunately, he has an exaggerated sense of empathy for other people. He gets distracted from his school work by anyone else in the room who is having difficulty. He is kind, sympathetic, and really concerned about others.” “Well, what’s wrong with that!” they asked. “All those are esteemed Christian virtues.” “Congratulations. You have done a good job of raising a Christian. Unfortunately, none of those traits lead to success in a public school.”
We have to learn and relearn how odd the Christian way is when compared with the ways of the world. The world values competition, assertiveness, power, and prestige. Jesus calls us to walk the way of humble service. We need to learn and relearn this truth, much like Jesus’ disciples. Throughout Mark’s gospel Jesus has been teaching them that his way is counter to the world’s way. He is journeying, not toward fame and fortune, but toward the cross. Still, two of Jesus’ disciples ask to be near him when he finally takes his place “in glory.” “When you are finally elected Messiah, who will get to sit on your cabinet?” they ask.
So the fact that we need to learn and relearn the upside down way of Jesus is not surprising. After 2,000 years of following Jesus, we still struggle to get it. Drive through any town or suburb in America and you will see signs announcing the names of local churches. There will be a “First Presbyterian,” a “First United Methodist,” a “First Baptist,” a “First United Church of Christ.” Only after the “First” designation has been snapped up do later churches start to shop around for a different name. “Second” isn’t very popular. Even in the church, we all want to be #1! Being last, being the bottom of the heap, being so far out of the competition that the competition doesn’t even know you are there, is so NOT the place any of us want to be. The reward of hard work is to get ahead, get to the top, to be first in all you do. Second place is second rate. We all want to “go for the gold.” We all want to win.
The first really interesting thing in this story is that Jesus does not scold James and John. In fact, there is a sense in which he accepts and even affirms what lies behind their question – their ambition, their desire for greatness. He just teaches them that they have their definitions wrong. It’s all right to want to be great. But greatness is not what you think. It’s not about sitting at the right and left hand of the king. It’s not about having lots of money or even lots or professional success. Jesus says: “If you want to be great then you must become a servant.”
That is a major jolt to the system! It challenges the basic structure of the culture in which you and I live and work. Greatness is bigness. Greatness is political power, corporate success, a big salary, a big batting average. Our brightest and best no longer go into reaching, social work, or ministry. Even law and medicine are beginning to feel it; our best today are in business, economics, and management. Jesus challenges that culture to find ways to heal itself. Not that business schools shouldn’t have bright students, but we must find a way to celebrate teachers, for instance: the young people who choose to limit their financial future in order to teach children. Or the social worker, or police officer, or the nurse. Jesus would call them great. Or – and this is the critical point – the man or woman who has achieved a measure of this world’s greatness with its rewards, and then finds a way to invest it, give it, use it for the service of one’s fellow human beings.
Jesus told his friends that if they wanted to be great they must become servants. Furthermore he said that he was living his own life that way. He taught that God, the ultimate self-giver, is far more concerned about compassion and service than about ritual purity and religious power and prestige. And then Jesus went about living that teaching – healing, accepting the unacceptable, welcoming children, touching the untouchable, feeding the hungry. A few years later one of his followers, the Apostle Paul, will write; “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who emptied himself taking the form of a servant.”
That is the way we make community work. Because it means we will be living in love and harmony with each other. We struggle to make community work because we keep looking for our place, our power, our honor, our piece of the pie. We keep looking to be served, instead of serving. The attitude that builds community is the attitude of the servant. This means caring for each other in loving, accepting and sensitive ways. It means making room for each other and discovering ways to be together in mutual respect. It means speaking kindly and gently about one another and to one another. It is the way Jesus lived his life and because he did he built a strong community around himself. Jesus says in his society there is a new way for people to live: you show wisdom by trusting people, you handle leadership by serving, you handle offenders by forgiving, you handle money by sharing, you handle enemies by loving, and you handle violence by suffering.
None of this is easy to do. None of this makes any sense in the world of today. But Jesus doesn’t promise easy. In fact he seriously questions whether James and John will be able to follow through on living this way. But they do. Not without struggles. Not without stumbling along the way. But they do follow Jesus. Their relationship with him and his teachings is imperfect, but it is also unbroken. The honesty of their lives and their relationship with Jesus holds hope for us in our struggles. I know I struggle to maintain the attitude of a servant tremendously. I don’t struggle with a big ego; I really never had huge aspirations for high honors and position as the world counts those things. I have never even craved a large salary or lots of money. And I am pretty good at being willing to do the mundane tasks of life without complaint; like dishes and laundry and home maintenance, etc. But where I struggle with holding onto the attitude of a servant is when I feel my opinion discounted, when I feel not listened to, when I don’t feel heard. You see for me, it is not the big picture of being a servant where I stumble, but in the small details of truly putting others first and serving them in a way which enables them to truly discover who they are in the eyes of God where I trip up.
Another rabbi, Niles Goldstein, once said: “It is only through vulnerability that genuine community can emerge, that commitment and compassion become intertwined and inseparable.” We may never be able to achieve perfection as servants, but we don’t have to totally do it on our own anyway. We have the model and example of Jesus and we have the power of God at work in us continuously transforming us. Through that power we are set free to be great women and men who serve others, emptying ourselves. Through that power we are set free from whatever about us inhibits us, retrains us, or chains us to lesser aspirations. That power sets us free to create true community by serving one another as God, in Christ Jesus, has served us.
When a Hindu woman became a follower of the teachings of Jesus, her relatives who did not follow Jesus tried to make her life miserable. One day a missionary asked her, “When you husband is angry and persecutes you, what do you do?” She replied, “I just cook the food better and sweep the floor a little cleaner. When he speaks unkindly, I answer him mildly, trying to show him in every way that when I became a Christian I also became a better wife.”
Jesus doesn’t want us to give up our instinct to be great. He simply wants us to remember to be first in love. He wants us to be first in moral excellence. He wants us to be the first in generosity. That is what he wants us to do. That is the path to making community work.