True Greatness - 22nd Sunday after Pentecost
Author: Pastor Scott Schul
October 20, 2024
When you’re together with a group of friends, a nice way to pass a little time is to put your heads together and compile your lists of the all-time greats. List your top five rock bands… your top three all-time TV shows… the ten greatest movies… or maybe the best linebackers ever to play at Penn State. It can be a lot of fun to trade opinions and to make your case
why your favorite deserves to be on the list.
Something quite different is happening in today’s Gospel though. This appears to be a continuation from Chapter 9 of Mark’s Gospel, where the disciples quarreled over which of them was the greatest. Jesus’s answer surprised them because of how counter-cultural it was in their day. His answer is just as surprising and counter-cultural today. Jesus taught
them that greatness is determined by one’s commitment to servanthood, selflessness, and care and compassion for the most vulnerable among us. 1
Wanting greatness itself isn’t a bad thing. Think of someone born with musical talent (like a violinist), or someone blessed with great athletic ability (maybe someone with the hand-eye coordination, speed, and strength to be a star baseball shortstop). At some level, that fledgling violinist or that budding baseball player must desire to be great. Otherwise,
they’ll never invest the time, the energy, and the sweat to hone and develop their gifts. Without the drive to be great, they’ll quickly give up at the first experience of difficulty or failure. The goal of being great can be the fuel for improvement and excellence, and the key that has unlocked the talent of most of the greatest accomplishments in human history.
But what happens when that desire for greatness becomes primarily self-centered? It’s been said that throughout history, humankind has been tempted to pursue four things as a substitute for God: wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. 2 We know that worldly greatness can get you some or most of those four things. Think of a pop music star or an NFL quarterback. You can be entirely self-centered and self-absorbed in your pursuit of greatness and make a lot of money and obtain astonishing acclaim. But we’ve all seen how that usually works out. If that’s your goal in life, you eventually discover there’s never enough money to please you; never enough pleasure to satisfy you; never enough power to fulfill you; and never enough honor to match the size of your ego. And when the talent eventually fades, so do all the perks. That’s why Jesus teaches that true greatness comes from serving others, not yourself.
In reality, we all fall short of Jesus’s standard. Even at our very best we have mixed motives in our pursuit of greatness. This happens in every walk of life. Take the Church for example. To some degree, the generous donor wants to be thanked and acknowledged. That’s why so many churches are full of brass plaques with people’s names on them. To some
degree, dedicated volunteers want to be noticed. And there isn’t a preacher alive who doesn’t get some satisfaction from hearing how good the sermon was. Humans rarely do anything that isn’t shaded at least a little by notions of self-interest. I suppose that’s part of our “original sin.”
And so over-and-over Jesus seeks to lift us up above and beyond our ego. He wants us to catch a vision, his vision, that’s bigger, more meaningful, more durable, and more fulfilling than the self-centered vision that James and John had in our Gospel lesson, and which infects all of us from time-to-time. Jesus wants us to pursue greatness in the service of others, and not simply to satisfy our most personal and base needs.
Thomas Aquinas famously wrote that to love “is to will the good of the other.” And so to connect that to our Gospel lesson, the pursuit of greatness is holy, sacred, and saturated with love when that pursuit is aimed at blessing and benefiting someone else. That may seem like an impossibly high standard, and yet it happens more often than we might
think. Take my daughter and son-in-law. They’re typical young adults who are trying to build their careers and acquire the material things that make for a comfortable life. But something changed for them when their daughter was born. Suddenly their love for that helpless, vulnerable little baby put everything else in their lives into proper perspective. All their
priorities and goals were reordered around care and love for that child.
There’s nothing glamorous about sleepless nights and 2 AM feedings or changing an explosive diaper. But when you love; when you “will the good of the other;” when you live sacrificially not for your own benefit but for the benefit of someone else; you achieve a level of greatness and, I would add, a level of personal joy and fulfillment that no personal accomplishment can match. I don’t share this example because my daughter and son-in-law are somehow special. Lots of people demonstrate this kind of care for others. It's not an unattainable standard. Jesus is just encouraging us to live this way in all the aspects of our lives, not just a few, because he knows that greatness in the service of others will help create a
world that truly is a foretaste of the kingdom to come. And as we live our lives oriented toward the service of others, our lives acquire a richness and meaning that mere wealth, pleasure, power, and honor can’t match.
Friends, one of the most compelling and attractive things about Jesus is that he doesn’t just “talk the talk.” He “walks the walk.” Jesus’s whole life was lived for the sake of others. His greatness was dedicated to the blessing and salvation of all humanity. We know from his story how difficult that was. Our broken, fallen world often doesn’t react favorably to people
like Jesus who demonstrate selfless, sacrificial love. Jesus knew full well what the price would be. It wasn’t a secret; it
was all laid out in ancient prophecy. As we heard in our first lesson, from Isaiah, our Savior Jesus would bear our infirmities, be wounded for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities. He would experience anguish, be numbered with the transgressors, and pour out himself to death. 3 Jesus willingly endured all of it, for us, even though we deserved none of it. Why? Love! Jesus’s whole being, his whole mission was devoted to “willing the good of the other” regardless of whether we (the other) deserved it. That’s what it means to be great in the Kingdom of God.
James and John didn’t understand that, but eventually they would. As Jesus rightly observed, they too would drink the cup of suffering born from selfless, sacrificial love, and would be baptized in martyrdom. By the time that happened, I believe they were able to greet it with gratitude and joy because by then their minds, bodies, and hearts had been transformed
by love into an image of their master Jesus.
A wealthy man once observed Mother Teresa cleaning the oozing wounds of a leper. He was repulsed and exclaimed, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” “Neither would I,” said Mother Teresa, “But I would gladly do it for Christ.” It’s amazing what you’ll do when your motivation isn’t love for yourself but love for another. That’s not just the call of Jesus, or James
and John, or Mother Teresa. It’s our call, because that’s the life God created us to lead. It can be a hard life, absent the worldly lures of wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. But it’s the life which leads to true fulfillment.
Jesus said, “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
Citations
1 See Mark 9:33-37
2 See Word on Fire Bible, Gospels, commentary on p. 125.
3 See Isaiah 53:4-12
4 See Vintage Saints and Sinners by Karen Wright March. Copyright (c) 2017 by Karen Wright Marsh.Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL.
Copyright Rev. Scott E. Schul, 2024 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
Sermon Texts: Mark 10:35-45, Isaiah 53:4-12
Gospel Text : Mark 10:35-45
35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." 36 And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" 37 And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." 38 But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" 39 They replied, "We are able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared." 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great
ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
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