Mark 9:30–37
“The Greatest”
Muhammed Ali, a championship boxer, was famed for his trash-talk. Besides claiming to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”, he was also known to claim, brazenly, “I am the greatest!” And after seeing his prowess in the boxing ring, at least for a time, it would be hard to argue with him.
We admire greatness. We love to see people do well at their craft, their profession, their vocations. Ask me some time about my favorite chess grandmaster. There’s a sort of vicarious living that happens when you get caught up in someone else’s greatness. You feel a part of it. We do this so much lately we even have a new term, ‘the GOAT’, G-O-A-T, standing for the Greatest Of All Time.
Mark’s Gospel today calls us to consider a different kind of greatness - true greatness. Not at boxing or football or computer engineering or investing. Greatness in the kingdom of God. And like so many other things, the Christian appraisal of greatness is opposite of what you’d expect, against the grain of the world, and totally backwards from how most people measure greatness.
The disciples who alternate between faith and fear, wisdom and foolishness, great confession and horrible heresy – well we can always relate to those fellas. Today Jesus catches them, overhears them arguing like petulant children. Along the road, the bickered about who among them was the greatest.
Imagine what it might have sounded like, “Of course I’m the greatest, I’m Peter – the rock – which one of YOU got to walk on water with Jesus?” “Yeah, Peter, but then you sank like a stone,” John might have said, “I’m clearly the greatest because I’m the youngest and I’ll probably outlive you all.” But then Matthew says, “I think I’ve got the best story – I mean if Jesus can even call a tax collector like me – I think my turnaround is really the kind of thing people will relate to” “Yeah, but I’m clearly the greatest since Jesus trusts me to carry the money-bag.” And on and on it might have gone.
Imagine their sheepishness when Jesus calls them out. “What were you arguing about on the road?” The awkward silence. He knows, of course. He always knows the answer to questions like this. He’s caught them red-handed and they had nothing to say for themselves.
The law stops your mouth, and mine, too. There are no excuses. We have nothing to say for ourselves. When the accusations come, and the law always accuses, we are dead to rights caught. Whether we’ve been exposed as a self-serving and prideful brat, a lying and scheming snake, a greedy glutton or a back-stabbing gossiper. There’s plenty of ways we sin, and God’s perfect law shines the probing questions on all it. Have you loved God like you should? Have you loved your neighbor as yourself?
Ah but we’d rather compare ourselves to others, than to the law. I love God more than the next guy. I might not be perfect, but look at you. Chief of sinners through I be, at least I’m not as bad as thee. This is really the same thing the disciples were doing – only instead of arguing who’s the greatest, we play the game of who’s not the worst. As if that gets us off the hook.
But that’s not the standard God sets. He doesn’t call us to be better than average, or better than most, or better than your neighbor. He says love God with ALL your heart, soul, strength and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.
So Jesus takes the occasion to teach them a thing or two about greatness in the kingdom. He sits them down, gets their attention, and sets forth a principle. If you to be great in the kingdom, if you want to be first, you must be servant of all.
This flies in the face of what we know and do! The great people have servants – butlers, maids, nannies, groundskeepers, chauffeurs, even body-guards. The rich and powerful have servants to tend to their every need, and the mundane tasks they are too busy and important to do. They can’t be bothered. They’re more important than all that. Those menial tasks are for the little people. Or so the usual worldly thinking goes.
But Jesus says greatness, first-ness, primacy of place in the kingdom is found in servanthood – and in being the servant of all! Placing yourself lower than all. He even uses a small child to drive home this point. The lowest, the least, the humblest – that’s greatness in the kingdom of God. Exactly opposite of greatness in the world.
And then we hear from James, this morning, and he makes it even worse for us. “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
James brings a double barrel of accusations and unloads them on us today. He calls us to exhibit humility and the wisdom from above – that is “pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”
Contrast that to the worldliness of earthly wisdom – which has to do with jealousy, coveting, quarrels, murder, the passions, and pride. These are the things that friendship with the world brings us, but which make us enemies of God. And that’s not all that great at all.
So who can keep such laws? Who can exhibit such purity? Who can be so great? Who, after all, can succeed at making everyone else greater than self? It’s just so extreme. Who can attain to such greatness? Who can truly be or become the servant of all?
Only Jesus can. Jesus is the greatest among us. Jesus is the greatest of all time. For only Jesus is the servant of all. Jesus, who by his perfect life, does all that James could ask and more. Jesus, who keeps the commandments perfectly, earns righteousness by his own greatness in keeping the law. And then gives that righteousness to us, freely.
Jesus, who by his humble, sacrificial death on the cross came to destroy sin and death – for all. Jesus, who not only faces his mission head on – but even teaches his disciples about it beforehand, again and again, though they couldn’t grasp it. Look at the first paragraph in our text, where he shows them plainly:
“The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”
That’s greatness. That’s the Gospel. The cross. There Jesus took the lowest place, crushed under the burden of our infinite sins. There Jesus became the servant of all, dying for ever scoundrel, reprobate and rebel that ever was or would be. Suffering all for every lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, gossiping, greedy and jealous coveter of someone else’s greatness. He who washed even their feet now washes them clean body and soul, inside and out, by his holy precious blood.
And he does it for all. No sin is too great for him to take on. And no sinner is too great at sinning to be served by Jesus. Whatever your deepest, darkest sin – and we all have them – whatever your most embarrassing and shameful deed. Repent. Jesus forgives. He is that much greater than your greatest failing, that he takes it himself, takes it away, and makes you whole and clean and new.
So, who is the greatest? It’s Jesus, of course. As St. Paul says in Philipians 2:
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. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Even his exaltation is yours. His resurrection guarantees your own. His greatness is good for you, great for you. For in him, God, in Christ, has received you as his own dear child, his little one.
Or to put it another way, Christ, the greatest of all, makes himself least of all, servant of all, to exalt the humble and lowly in his kingdom. Therefore rejoice, and therefore follow him and trust in him. Humble yourself, and he will lift you up.
In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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