The Irony of Greatness
A sermon by Brent J. Eelman
September 24, 2006
Abington Presbyterian Church

Mark 9: 30-37
    ³⁰They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; ³¹for 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.’ ³²But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
    ³³Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ ³⁴But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. ³⁵He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ ³⁶Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’*

What does it take to be great? For a football player, greatness mean consistently rushing for over 200 yards in a game, or passing for 250 yards. For a baseball player it means being able to hit more than 50 homeruns in a season. For a performer, it means getting critical acclaim from critics and the audience. For a pop star it means selling a lot of records. For a student it means straight A’s. You get the idea. Greatness is reserved for a few. But what does it mean to be a “great disciple” or a “great Christian”? How do we measure greatness in terms of our faith? What did Jesus regard as great? This is the question for today. In the next few minutes I want to three questions. 1. How did Jesus define greatness? 2. What does it mean to be a great Christian? 3. Is Jesus’ idea of greatness a case of crazy idealism, or is it practical wisdom in our world today?

I

How did Jesus define greatness? The text for today comes from a series of sayings that Jesus directed to his disciples. These teachings were not easy and seldom do we hear the modern Christian discussing them. In this section of Mark, Jesus spoke about his own death. He related to them that he would be betrayed and eventually crucified. He also told them that they must also take up a cross to be his disciple. Then he put a child in their midst and told them that they must welcome that child, because when they welcome the child, they welcome him. These were not easy things to hear. The language of Jesus was also imperative. He did not say, “You might want to take up your cross.” He did not say, “This thing about welcoming a child is optional.” These were clear statements about the nature of discipleship. They are a challenge to anyone.

How did the disciples respond? They got into an argument about who was the greatest. It must have been quite an argument because Jesus overheard and asked them about it. This was a classic moment in the gospels. Jesus surely wondered what were had guys heard? Jesus spoke about sacrifice and children and his followers were concerned about who was the greatest. Are these disciples for real?

Jesus called, “Time out!” He pulled them around in a huddle and tries to tell them once again what it was all about. “If you want to be first, you must be last.” And then the clincher, “You must be servant of all.” Once again this was an imperative. How do we qualify that saying? Jesus understood greatness in terms of service. Followers of Christ need to understand their lives in terms of servant-hood. Indeed, Jesus understood his life as one who served. He was, in the best sense of the word, a servant.

II

What is a great Christian? Part of us wants to asks, “Is this servant thing still a requirement?” If Jesus was alive today, living in our complex world, would he say to us: “every now and then you should serve others”? Let me put it more bluntly: have we watered down Christian discipleship? I fear that we have. There are two modern heresies. The first is the cult of belief. This is summed up in the saying: “What you believe is what is important. What you do is secondary.” I can remember driving on the highway in Houston when a driver cut me off, and made an obscene gesture at me. On the bumper of that car was a sticker that read: “God love you.” I do not doubt the piety of that driver. I do not doubt that she, (yes it was a woman!) truly believed in a loving God. What troubles me is the disconnect between her belief and her actions. Jesus was concerned about belief, but belief was manifest in action. One who believes in a loving God… will love his neighbor. Jesus did not say, it is enough to believe that I am the son of God.. he said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” He said, “If you want to achieve greatness as a disciple, you must be a servant of all.”

That is the challenge we have. Like the original 12 disciples, we too want an easy soft discipleship. We get our backs up when we hear Jesus say, “you must be a servant of all.” In the 1960’s the United Church of Canada asked a well known agnostic, Pierre Berton, to write a book critiquing Christianity. His book was entitled, The Comfortable Pew. Berton saw no continuity between the teachings of Christ and contemporary Christianity. That is a troubling judgment.

The encounter with Jesus is never easy. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. Jesus called his disciples to serve. Christian faith does not merely take place between the ears, it has legs, arms and hands. It gets dirty in the world and serves those whom Jesus called, “the least of these.” Does this describe our discipleship?

III

Is this idea of servant hood realistic and practical? Was Jesus off base when he told the disciples to stop thinking about being great and start getting serious about serving others? I don’t think so. The secular world has picked up on this lesson of Jesus. It is practical. In 1970, an A.T.&T executive, Robert Greenleaf, wrote and essay entitled “The Servant as Leader.” Greenleaf did not write his essay for pastors or for Sunday School. It was for executives in the hard-nosed business world. He coined the term, “servant-leadership,” and spent the last 25 years of his life writing and lecturing about servant-leadership. He was also brought in as a consultant to institutions like MIT, The Ford Foundation, Ohio University. In his forty years of management, he discovered that the great leader is first and foremost a servant to others. True leadership emerges from individuals whose primary motivation and desire is to help others. Good leaders, Greenleaf observed, desired first to serve others. Servant-leadership transforms people, it heals and makes a difference. It brings meaning and purpose to others. This is not idealist mumbo-jumbo. Consider the number of companies who have adopted servant leadership as part of their mission statement: Toro Company, ServiceMaster, the Men’s Wearhouse, and Southwest Airilines. TDI industries, a large national construction company, was one of the earliest practitioners of servant leadership and they were recently ranked in the top ten of Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. Today we hear a lot about leadership “styles.” Servant leadership is not a style. It is about the motivation behind the thoughts, words, and actions.

When Jesus challenged his disciples to practice servanthood, he was challenging them to be Christian leaders. When we read the words of Jesus today, he is giving us that same challenge. Christian faith not only believes. It serves.

The original 12 disciples just did not get it. They had conventional ideas about what greatness was. I am not sure that we get it either. Often there is a disconnect between what we believe and how we live. Jesus challenges us to get our hands and hearts dirty helping others with no expectation of anything in return. Jesus challenges us to look at the world and ask, “how can we help our fellow human beings. Ironically, the secular world, concerned about effective leadership, has discovered this teaching of Jesus and adopted it to develop leadership within the corporate world. The challenge of discipleship today is service. We are called, by Jesus, to be servants to others. Through service to others, we will discover the irony of greatness. Amen.
 

*The New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989.

Abington Presbyterian Church, Abington, Pennsylvania,  www.apcusa.org