Growing in the Right Direction
Mark 9:30-37
September 24, 2006
Depending on whom you talk to and who does the measuring, there is any number of different ways to measure a human being. If we wanted to get into an existential discussion of humanity, we would probably remember these famous maxims. “To do is to be” – Immanuel Kant. “To be is to do” – Jean Paul Sartre. “Do be do be do” - Frank Sinatra.
Actually, when we measure a person, we are usually talking about his or her height. As far as I know, I am the first person from either side of my family tree - for at least a couple of generations – to be six feet tall. I was in Jr. High School when I passed my dad’s height. I remember thinking how great it was when I could start looking down on the top of his head. It was a source of even greater pride when my feet grew bigger than his. But I’m no longer the tallest one in the family. My oldest son now has me by a couple of inches, and I look up – way up - to my two nephews.
If we go back into history, I am taller than the average height of men in Medieval England, where the average male height was 5’ 7”. I think that we’ve always assumed that the people in the days of Jesus tended to be shorter than we are, but archeological evidence indicates that they were about our height as well.
Do you want examples from Scripture? There are places in the Bible where the writers go to great lengths to describe and measure particular individuals. King Saul was described in I Samuel 9:2 as being “head and shoulders above everyone else. And who can forget Goliath the giant who was killed in battle by David. I Samuel 17:4 says that he was “six cubits and a span.” I really didn’t know how tall that was until I consulted The Message. There he is described as being nearly ten feet tall. Too bad he wasn’t a Hoosier so he could play on the IU basketball team.
On the other end of the scale is Zacchaeus. You might suspect that he was the shortest person in the Bible. We sing about him in our children’s Sunday School classes. “Zacchaeus was a wee little man; a wee little man was he. He climbed up in the sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see.”
Luke 19 1-3 says, “He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.”
But you know that Zacchaeus wasn’t the shortest man in the Bible. There was this fellow who asked a friend who was the shortest man in the Bible and his friend said that it was Zacchaeus. He said no, it actually was Nehemiah (he pronounced it Knee–high-miah).
We should know that there is more to the stature of a person than his or her height by the time we get to the story of Samuel and the sons of Jesse. Do you remember this story? God sent the prophet Samuel to Bethlehem because God said that the next king of Israel would come from one of the sons of Jesse, a resident of that town. So Samuel went down there, met with Jesse, and asked to see his sons. They all passed before him, one by one. They were tall, good looking and strong. As each one paraded in front of Samuel, he kept thinking that surely he was the next king. But God said, “Do not look on the appearance or the height of his stature…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Finally, it was the youngest and smallest of the sons, David, who was chosen. He was the one who had the heart to be king.
In the Scripture lesson for today, we find Jesus engaged in a discussion with his disciples over a matter of stature. This issue of greatness comes up on more than one occasion in the ministry of Jesus. The first must be last and a servant of all. For the Disciples, it was all about being first.
What is really mind-boggling about all of this is that Jesus has already predicted his own passion twice, and would do so again. In Mark 8:31, Jesus says, “It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the elders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and after three days rise up alive.”
In 9:31 he said, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed to some people who want nothing to do with God. They will murder him. Three days after his murder, he will rise, alive.”
In Chapter 10:33, he will say, “Listen to me carefully. We’re on our way up to Jerusalem. When we get there, the Son of Man will be betrayed to the religious leaders and scholars. They will sentence him to death. Then they will hand him over to the Romans, who will mock and spit on him, give him the third degree, and kill him.”
The Disciples just didn’t understand. Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem to voluntarily give up his life, and they were walking along trying to decide which one of them should be large and in charge. Jesus was traveling to his death in Jerusalem and the only concern on their minds was their own personal success.
In order to teach them the lesson, Jesus used an example: A child.
He called this kid over to him, wrapped his arms around him, and gave him a hug. Then he looked up at the Disciples and said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me, God who sent me.”
Now you have to remember that in this culture, children really didn’t count much. They were left at home with the women. In fact, they were even farther down the social ladder than their mothers. The only people in that day and age with a lower social standing were slaves.
I just called the child a “him” but the truth of the matter is that the gospel doesn’t specify the gender of the child. The Greek word that is translated “child” is neuter. It is not masculine or feminine. So in reality, the Bible says that Jesus took a child and put “it” in their midst. How’s that for impersonal? How’s that for an indication of the relative worthlessness of kids?
What is the meaning of greatness? This is a lesson in measuring one’s stature. But it is not physical stature Jesus is talking about, but the stature of the heart. I remember that Whitney Houston song, “The Greatest.” She sings about children being our future and about the need to teach them well so that they in turn can show the way to adults. It is a really touching and pretty song.
Then she comes to the part where she sings, “I’ve found the greatest love of all inside of me.” It’s incredibly arrogant and God-denying to believe that the source of love comes from within us rather than from God, the source of all love. But I guess that is to be expected from this song because it was the theme song to Muhammad Ali’s movie, “The Greatest.” Greatness, in the mind of Jesus is completely different.
Back in Chapter 8:34, Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” He would make this clearer in 10:45 when he would say, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The Disciples just didn’t get it. Jesus wasn’t taking an issue with the idea of measuring. He just thought that they were measuring in the wrong direction.
It is sometimes so easy to get off track and to think more highly of yourself than you ought to do. Sometimes life teaches you that lessons the hard way. My parents were recently visiting an old friend in Ossian. He gave them a newspaper clipping that he had been saving for over a year. Do you remember back to May 2005? The weekly newspaper in Ossian sent a reporter up here to interview me. She spent quite a while in my office asking me questions about my work and this church.
When the paper was published, there I was. Front page picture above the fold. It was really a fairly well-written article and I sort of got puffed up reading it…until I read my name. They called me Phil. I don’t know how anyone tries to type Scott in their computer and instead spells Phil, but it happened here. That went a long way to deflate my swelled head!
The disciples on the road with Jesus that day had a skewed understanding of greatness. They thought that it was something they could achieve if only they worked hard enough, if only they studied long enough, if only they paid close attention to Jesus. To be really great, said Jesus, you don’t measure how many people are below you. To be really great, you measure how many people are above you. The real test of Kingdom measurement is to see how low you can go.
We are called to be people who stand tall. We are called upon to be great. A great person follows Jesus and does what Jesus does. A great person is not afraid to lower him or herself in service to others, even those who may not merit our attention. To do that, we are told, is to serve not only others, but it is to serve Jesus himself.
As far as I can tell, this is a true story. The year was 1179 and there was a meeting of clergy in England. Invited dignitaries included the pope’s representative to England, and the archbishops of York and Canterbury. The pope’s representative was seated first. Then, the Archbishop of Canterbury came in and took the seat to the right because he was the most important bishop in England. When the Archbishop of York came in, he was insulted and refused to sit on the left because it would look like he was giving highest respect to Canterbury.
The Archbishop of York tried to squeeze himself in to the seat between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the pope’s representative. But the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to move. Now, according to “Hollinshed’s Chronicles” which was an historical source for much of the writings of William Shakespeare’s plays, here is what happened.
“And when belike the said archbishop of Canterburie was loth to move, he (the archbishop of Yorke) set his buttocks inst his lap, but he scarslie touched the archbishop’s skirt with his bum, when the bishops and other chaplains with their servants stept to him, pulled him away, and threw him to the ground, and beginning to lay on him with bats and fists, and the archbishop of Canterburie yielding good for evil, sought to save him from their hands…
The archbishop of Yorke…got up, and awaie he went to the king with a great complaint against the archbishop of Canterburie: but when upon examination of the matter the truth was knowne, he was laught at for his labour, and that was all the remedie he got.”
Philip Melancthon was a theologian, teacher, and friend of Martin Luther who took over Luther’s work upon his death. One day he turned to Luther and said, “Today, you and I shall discuss the governance of the universe.” Luther answered, “No. Today, you and I shall go fishing and leave the governance of the universe to God.”
I believe that we need to keep things in perspective. How can we even begin to consider ourselves great when we stand before the holiness of God? And if God in his holiness, decided to come to earth in the form of a human being, to suffer and die, not as one to be served, but as a servant…what does that say about our responsibility to be a servant as well?
True greatness comes not from stature, or power, or privilege, or office, or wealth, or education, or social standing. True greatness comes from servanthood.
We are always growing, but growing in the right direction means that we search out ways to be a servant. That is the sign of true greatness.
