Anybody remember the riots that broke out some years ago when Sony’s PlayStation 3 was scheduled for release? Nearly 400 people in Boston’s Copley Place mall overwhelmed mall security. Nearly a dozen police cruisers responded to the call. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the crowd dispersed when ordered by the dozen police. But can you imagine? Some of the people had been waiting in line for three days, and all had spent the night outdoors through a stormy night with high winds and heavy rain. ((© 2006 Boston Globe 11/16) In Florida, Sheriff’s deputies shut down a Super Walmart after a crowd of shoppers camped out for a chance to buy PlayStation 3 got rowdy a full day and a half before the game machine went on sale. And saddest of all, a 21 year old man was shot while waiting in line to buy the video game system in Putnam, Conn.
Why does everyone feel it’s necessary to be first? Ok, ok, if there’s only one prize - whether it’s for President or a heart-transplant - then I can see being anxious to be the first out of the starting gate. But when the stakes are so low? Pulllleeeeze. It’s not even competition to be best, just to be first.
At least sports competition compares actual performance. But even there we don’t always know what we’re measuring. In fact, take any two people and you can always stir trouble just by tossing this simple little word into the conversation. For example, ask a Broncos fan and a Steelers fan who’s the greatest quarterback of all time and I’ll wager you they’ll debate it for hours. Ask a Texan and a Kansan who makes the best barbeque, and watch the sparks fly. Ask two musicians who is the world’s greatest pianist - or composer - or director and they’ll still be at it next month. Who do you think was our greatest president? Or let's bring it closer to home. Who makes the best strawberry jam, grows the best roses, has the best kids or the most money or the biggest house?
Why did Jesus’ disciples have to jockey among themselves to get to be in front when they’re already the elite of the elite, already in the top twelve?
Why? Ambition is built into us. Part of the image-of-God in us aspires to the best... and in our fallen state, sometimes the closest we can come to best is a pretty shabby imitation. But greatness is something we can aspire to. Greatness is something we are encouraged to care about.
Matthew reports in his gospel that Jesus said some will be called least and others “will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” [Mt 5:19] I don’t think that Jesus would have said it if he didn’t know that status was a big motivating factor - even among his followers. But what is the difference between the greatest and the least? Is it like composers or coaches or cooks? Is it a matter of opinion or taste? What’s the difference? How can we tell them apart? How do we define what greatness is?
I can tell you one thing for sure, before we even look at this particular text. And that is that Jesus turned everyone’s expectations upside down. If all we know were two facts: One, that the King of Kings was born in poverty in an out-of-the-way corner of the Roman empire, and Two, that he willingly suffered the cruelest death in the Roman’s repertoire, we know that he didn’t measure greatness the way we do. The classic text for that is also in Matthew, right before the incident that we read earlier. “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” [Mt 20:16]
Now Mark tells us that James and John came forward themselves to ask Jesus for the top spots in his administration. If that is indeed how it happened, it’s just another example of their deafness to Jesus’ true agenda. But Mark has a habit of condensing the narrative for the sake of speed, and so I’m sticking with Matthew’s account, which puts the mother of the two boys - who were, by the way, called the Sons of Thunder for their hot tempers and fierce loyalties - right in the thick of the controversy. And who could blame her, after all. She knew who had the best kids, even if Jesus was a little slow on the uptake. So what would any mother do, but go straight to the top, to make sure her kids got the recognition they deserved?
Which reminds me of a phenomenon that is all too common in our schools today... My sister reports that when she was teaching in a prosperous suburban high school in New York, she had non-stop confrontations with parents who were sure that if their children weren’t the top of their class that it was somehow the teachers’ fault. After all, their girl was destined for Harvard! Instead of advising them to play fair and work hard, they wanted to short-circuit the system. And all too many teachers tell me that it’s the same in their schools, too. What’s wrong with this picture? Can we see reflections of these attitudes in what Jesus was facing so long ago?
The path to spiritual greatness is first of all hindered by pride. Not legitimate satisfaction at skills acquired and exercised for good, but false pride based on a sense of entitlement or superiority. And that is one of the pitfalls in the whole conversation we’ve been having in Adult Sunday School about spiritual gifts. As Paul told the Romans, “...I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. [Rom 12:3]
Many scholars believe that Salome, the sister of Mary, was the mother of James and John. That makes him her aunt, and her request shows that she still had some pretty this-worldly attitudes about greatness. First of all, she probably thought that using family connections to get ahead was a legitimate course of action to take. After all, wasn’t Rome built on birth as much as ability? Weren’t priests and kings all born to their positions? And second, Salome thought that greatness was all about authority and status. Greatness meant getting all you could for yourself. It wasn’t enough that her boys were following Jesus. She didn’t want them stalled out in a mid-level management position, she wanted them to get ahead! And what use is having the inside track if you don’t use it to bypass the traffic jams?
One of my pet peeves is the people who, when there’s a reduction in the number of traffic lanes, due to construction or an accident, speed up the outside lane until the last minute, taking advantage of the courtesy and obedience of the drivers who move over as soon as the lane change is announced. They think they deserve better than the ordinary Joe or Jane. Their business takes precedence. To them, the humble are merely suckers. We know better. Furthermore, not only is it God’s job to give us our kingdom rankings, he subtracts points for pride. “God opposes the proud,” says Peter, “but gives grace to the humble.” [1 Pet 5:5]
When I was researching this sermon, I ran across a story that really struck me. Several years ago, Harvard University was erecting a new building that would house the Philosophy Department. A stone lintel with an appropriate inscription was to be put above the main entrance. So the university president asked one of the professors for a suggestion. After much thought, the professor borrowed a phrase from the classical Greek philosopher Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things.” To Protagoras, and to the professor, the individual human being, rather than God or an unchanging moral law, is the ultimate source of value, the determiner of life’s meaning. To his credit, the president rejected this perspective. Instead, he decided that what people would read as they entered the philosophy department would come from Scripture. The words still read, “What is man that Thou art mindful of him?” [Ps 8:4] The president understood something about greatness that this professor could not grasp. It is only in humility that we can begin to grasp who God is, and it is only when we begin to grasp who God is that we finally understand who we are.
Jesus replied to Salome’s request by saying, “You don’t know what you are asking.” [v. 22] You see, there is a price involved in true greatness, one they had hardly begun to suspect. Which is another mark against them, since the greatest prophet of them all, Moses, “was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth.” [Num 12:3] When it comes to greatness, the way up is down. The way over is under. You do not ascend to greatness. You descend to greatness. Greatness is not exalting yourself, it is humbling yourself. It is not lifting yourself up, it is lifting up the Lord and the body of Christ. When the disciples of John the Baptist complained that his followers were leaving to follow Jesus, John replied, “He must increase. I must decrease.”[Jn 3:30] That humility shows true greatness. And it is one of the reasons why Jesus said that there was not a greater prophet born than John the Baptist.
Pride gets in our way. Service smooths our path. After Salome made her request, the ten disciples “were indignant” with the two brothers. But it wasn’t that they hadn’t been doing the same thing themselves, fighting over whom among them would be called the greatest. They were all guilty. The only thing was, Salome was trading on her family connections, which, in their eyes, made the contest an unfair one.
Before things got too out of hand, Jesus taught the disciples a little lesson. And I think that it was one of the most important sermons he ever preached, right next to the Sermon on the Mount. Listen again, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave.” [v. 25-27]
It sounds like their world was very much like ours. One of the reasons we are losing our faith in our institutions is that too many of our leaders have forgotten that they are supposed to be, first of all, public servants. Power is seductive. From having power to accomplish things that you believe in, it grows sometimes imperceptibly into a desire for power for its own sake, an addiction to having hundreds of people jump when you say frog. Eventually you wind up doing whatever you have to do, to whoever you have to do it to, in order to get on top and stay there.
This even happens in the church, unfortunately. Some pastors enter the ministry with the best of motives, but soon begin to let desire for the wrong kind of greatness corrupt their ministry. They climb the ecclesiastical ladder, seeking a bigger pulpit, a wider audience, a bigger salary. And when that happens, they lose their moral compass as well as their spiritual one, as we see all too often in the news. But it’s not just pastors. Congregations also fall for this false definition of greatness, thinking that their church has to have the “greatest” buildings and the “greatest” programs and the “greatest” music and the “greatest” preaching and the “greatest” crowd. Thanks be to God, this is not our problem here! We know we’re small, and struggling, and humble. It’s not that we don’t want to be big and rich and influential. It just seems to elude us . . . .
Jesus used two words to tell us what true greatness is really about. “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant,” he said, “and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave” [v. 26-27] And that kind of greatness is something that we can, indeed, aspire to. The word translated servant is diakonos, or deacon. It simply means one who serves others. But verse 27 gets much stronger. He uses the word “doulos,” translated slave, and it means someone whose identity and actions are totally committed to the master. And so Christian greatness is measured by our identification with God’s purposes, and our willingness to serve others.
Our third lesson, once we have rejected pride and embraced service, is to realize that greatness is, above all, seen in giving. Not just money, not even time or service, but giving our whole selves. Our example here is Jesus Christ, who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” [v. 28] We often think that when we’ve written our check or come to worship or helped out with a project or two that we’ve done our “Christian duty.” But that kind of part-time commitment isn’t what God calls us to. He calls us to a life of total participation in his goals and to his example. Paul writes in Philippians, “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, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” [Ph 4:5-8] And isn’t that a reminder of Jesus’ words, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” [Mt 16:24]
It’s interesting that the incident that follows today’s text is an example of just the kind of service Jesus is talking about. “As they were leaving Jericho . . .there were two blind men sitting by the roadside. . . they shouted, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” The crowd sternly ordered them to be quiet; but they shouted even more loudly. . . Jesus stood still and called them, saying, “What do you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they regained their sight and followed him.” [Mt 20:29-34]
To realize more fully what this means, remember that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem to be crucified. This was the final purpose of his life. Most of us, with our eyes fixed on the final goal, would brush aside little distractions like this in order to focus on the completion of the task. But Jesus finds the time to listen to a couple of nobodies, to care for them, to spend time on them. Because in God’s kingdom it’s how we handle our everyday lives, not whether or not we make a big splash, that truly matters. It isn’t up to us to figure out where we rank in the kingdom of God. So maybe you have the gift of faith, or evangelism, or leadership. You’ve got a job to do, an important one, one that God has, in fact, called you to do. Does that mean you’re not obligated to show mercy, to take time out to serve someone in need because it’s not on your job description? I don’t think so. Our job is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. And if we do that, no matter what side trips we take in his name, our path will lead us into the kingdom.
