Who is the Greatest?
Who is the greatest person in this church? That should be an easy question to answer if we use our culture’s criteria of greatness.
In our society greatness is decided with three measuring rods:
• Money
• Beauty and
• Brains
All we would need to do is submit our financial assets, hold a beauty contest, and run an IQ test and that should settle it. Whoever has the most money, wins the beauty contest and is the smartest will be declared the greatest person in this Church. We could put your picture up in the main entrance. You would be exempt from paying tithe for a year.
How many like that idea? Do I hear the word ‘appalling’? Do I hear someone muttering under their breath: Christians should be known for their love not their bank account? Christians should live above such petty things such as looks and smarts. Christians are people who live above such sinful things.
Really? In our Gospel text this evening we find the early followers of Jesus Christ fighting over who was the greatest among them. I wish I could say this was a one off. I wish I could say that the people of God never again did anything embarrassing, never again preaching one thing, and doing something else.
But friends the history of the Church is strewn with murder, adultery, gossip, theft, in fighting, arrogance, treachery, covetousness, avarice: all committed by Church going Christians. Our text is not an isolated case.
We expect this sort of thing from the people out there, but we are always shocked when one of our own falls off the rails. We’re supposed to be better.
These same men who appear in our Gospel story this evening a few days later were quarrelling over the seating arrangements at the Lord’s supper. In Bible times people didn’t just grab a chair and sit down. The table was in the shape of a U. Jesus sat at the bottom of the U or as we would say, the head of the table and the apostles relined around the other sides. And the question was: who is going to get to sit the closest to Jesus? Because whoever gets to sit the closest to Jesus is the greatest.
We love that word great! What would happen if some angel came along and with a mighty stroke of power suddenly wiped out the word ‘great’ from our vocabulary.
• It would remove most TV and Internet commercials.
• It would reduce most Church conventions to deaf and mute conferences
• It would scuttle most family reunions
We love the word great in all its forms. We love to find out who is the greatest.
We love the question: What part of town do you live in? That is not a google question. That is a who is the greatest question. We have the whole city divided up into winner and loser districts.
We do the same thing in talking about our adult children. I saw a cartoon with the back end of three camels. It was the first century. It was Mary and Joseph and a couple of other families riding along. All three camels had bumper stickers. The first one read: My son graduated from the University of Jerusalem. The second one read My son is a lawyer. The third one read: My son is God.
We love the greatest. We love the best seat. And these pathetic disciples were scrambling for the best seats within hours of the crucifixion. So, in the middle of this carnal chaos Jesus teaches the path to true greatness. And it turns out it has nothing to do with wealth, beauty, or brains.
Jesus used two people to make his point. First, he picked up a little child. He said to his scrapping, carnal friends: do you want to know who’s the greatest. This little person is the greatest human in the room. Here is someone with no money, no political clout, no academic training, no fame. He is physically and mentally weak. He is totally dependent. I will turn the world upside down with weak and dependent people.
That is what God is looking for in his followers. Dependence! People who know that all is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down. People who cry out My God, I am lost without You. I cannot do this on my own.
The second person Jesus pointed out to show what true greatness is, was a slave. They were plenty around. 60,000,000 slaves kept the wheels of the Roman Empire moving.
We have tamed the word in translation but usually when the New Testament says servant it means slave. If you want to be great in God’s eyes, then live a life of service. Realize that your life is not your own. Jesus used the illustration of a waiter in a restaurant. Our culture would say that the greatest people in the restaurant are the rich man and his beautiful escort eating their steak and lobster dinner. But Jesus says that the greatest person in the restaurant is the waiter.
And John’s Gospel tells us that at this point Jesus stopped everything and started washing the disciples’ feet. Knowing full well that two of the feet would betray him, two feet would deny him, and the rest of the feet would scatter in the night.
Who is the greatest person in this room? The person who, like a little child, confesses their weakness and dependency. The person who is willing to serve others.
I have just finished reading the story of the late Henri Nouwen. Nouwen was one of those rare Roman Catholic priests who was able to walk comfortably in both the Protestant and Catholic worlds. On the same day he might speak to left-wing Catholic theologians and hand-waving charismatic evangelicals. Highly educated he taught at Notre Dame, Harvard, and Yale. Wrote scores of best-selling books, was constantly in demand as a conference speaker.
It was while he was at the height of his fame and influence as a professor at Harvard University that he felt God’s call to leave it all to become a servant at L’Arche Community for the seriously disabled in Toronto. He was assigned to look after one person – Adam. Adam was the weakest, most disabled person in the community. Adam could not speak or dress himself, could not walk alone or eat without help. For the rest of Henri Nouwen’s life he would serve Adam. He would feed, cloth, bathe this seriously disabled man.
And in that experience Henri Nouwen found peace and greatness. Who is the greatest person in this room? The main ingredient for making a person a great in the church is not what he or she knows about the Bible or how much money she has or how smart he is but whether he or she has a servant’s heart. That is the path to greatness.
