True Greatness

Mark 9: 30-37

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’

We are so used to the Gospel narrative and to the words of Jesus we’ve heard time and time again that we think we understand the message when in fact, like the disciples arguing who was greatest, we haven’t really absorbed the message.  

By taking a little child in his arms, Jesus was still instructing his disciples that following him was going to take them down a path that was polar opposite to what they were thinking was going to happen, which was overthrowing the Romans and establishing a strong Jewish nation. They had been arguing about which of them was the greatest. This was an important point they wanted to settle because whoever was the greatest would surely have a position of honor and would have a lot of power when Jesus conquered the Romans. They just didn’t ‘get it’ and Jesus was so patient. He knew he was teaching them something contrary to centuries of social and religious conditioning. It’s not easy to suddenly understand new concepts and change your mind about something you learned from birth.

We can shake our heads at what dim bulbs those disciples were, but are we any quicker to recognize when Jesus is asking us to re-examine our own deeply rooted cultural and social conditioning that spills over into how we operate as a Christian community?

Is Jesus capable now of shocking and challenging us just as much as he shocked and challenged the disciples? Are we even open to that? Or have we gradually become so familiar and comfortable with our own sets of definitions that we have absolutely no thought that God would ever shock us by exposing how we have misunderstood his desires and intentions?

The disciples truly thought Jesus was a wonderful Messiah and they weren’t wrong there. Where they were wrong was in their visions of what ‘Messiah’ really meant and in their expectations of where they were all going, how they were going to get there and what it was all going to look like when they got themselves there. I deliberately used the phrase, ‘when they got themselves there’. They really thought they were going to change things in Israel. Sure, Jesus would be the leader but they would all be up there with him. He couldn’t do it without them, right? He needed strong right hand men to pull this off, right? He needed their hands and feet. He needed their strong religious fervor. All they were doing on the way to Capernaum was having a serious discussion as to which of them would be his strongest right hand man. Yes, Jesus was the Messiah, but he was going to need a Vice-Messiah and a whole Ministry of Messiah Affairs. He would need advisors, councils and special committees. They were pretty sure Jesus was dependent on them to get this new era off the ground and established in a proper way.

Had Jesus allowed them to continue with those visions, expectations and wrangling about their positions, the twelve would very soon have organized themselves into an elite core group. Then their energies would have been expended in defending this core group, maintaining its power, position and vision and not allowing it to grow, expand or change – or even disintegrate if that was God’s will. Their focus would have been inward on the maintenance and function of the group first and then outward on making sure the community respected their visions and their authority.

The true Kingdom servant actually has no claimed territory, no expectations that must be maintained and no agendas that must be pushed through at all cost. The Kingdom servant responds to the needs of the people. Because the servant has no position of controlling power, he or she is wonderfully free of the need to defend a position, keep control or sit in judgment. The servant is free to serve where he or she is being sent to serve – and it may be someplace doing something completely different than what that servant had done before. Or it may be doing nothing. Just because the servant has always served and ministered a certain way or in a certain area doesn’t mean that tomorrow the Lord won’t call that servant to do something entirely different which will once again push against and expand the servant’s self-set expectations, borders, definitions and limitations.

The moment any one of us is asked to operate in a way that is polar opposite to how we were brought up, we have major meltdowns. Just talk to any married couple from two distinctly different cultural backgrounds or radically different ways of being raised as children. The challenge to back down and agree that the other’s values and perspectives are a better way to go in any situation is a huge battle and most often ends in resentment and wounds within the one who loses the battle. 

Eventually those disciples were sent into a life of service that none of them had ever conceived of, but in order to get there they had to go through a few years of having their perspectives completely blown apart. And it may have begun when a Shepherd King placed a child on his knee.

Whenever God changes any one of us through inner death and new life, he is profoundly changing the whole Kingdom. But if we, like those disciples, keep thinking it’s an outward game plan and we have to tightly control the visions and outcomes, then no…we still don’t get it.