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WHO IS THE
GREATEST?" Readings: Psalm 1, Proverbs 31:10-31, James 3:13-4:3+7-8a, Mark
9:30-37
Preached at Baldwin
Presbyterian Church, NY, September 20th 2009 Who were your heroes when you were growing up? Whose pictures would you have put up in
your room? (If you had a room in which you were allowed to put pictures up).
And what kind of role models were they?
When I was in my early teens I started off with a few sporting
pictures, mostly race car drivers, but later on they gave way to rock stars
and memories of things I'd done or places I'd been. When I think back, some of the people whose pictures I had on my wall
didn't make for good heroes. I used to
have a picture of Jimi Hendrix, the guitarist. As a rock guitarist he was a genius, but
when it came to mastering life he didn’t do so well. Whilst proclaiming a
message of love, peace and freedom through his music, in his personal life he
couldn't hold down a relationship, he could be hurtful and ego-centric and
far from being free he was addicted to a drug habit that eventually cost him
his life. What kind of role model is that? What sort of hero? I guess there must be
something in me, that made heroes out of racing drivers and rock stars;
something in me (and maybe in you) that admires people who flaunt convention,
flirt with death and live "Life on the Edge". One day Jesus was talking with the disciples about what sort of a Messiah
He would turn out to be, and far from getting the point, they wandered off on
their own and started having a discussion about, "Who is the
greatest?" This was not the sort
of conversation they wanted Jesus in on because when He asked them,
"What are you arguing about?" they lapsed into an embarrassing
silence. It was all part of the learning process.
Jesus couldn't really start explaining God's way of doing things until
they had worked through for themselves some of the ideas about what made a
person great and what made people important.
In the pecking order of life, who were the great ones, who were the
important ones? It's a stupid argument to become involved in. Farmers could claim to be the greatest, because they produce the food and
drink that everyone, from the pet hamster to the President consumes. A teacher could say, no I'm the most important. Under my influence the
minds and lives of the future are shaped. A doctor could say, I'm the greatest because I keep you alive, I fix you
when you are broken, I have the knowledge to make things right. A funeral director may say, it's O.K. for you lot to brag about what you
do in life, I'm the only one who can deal with you when life runs out. No-one else will take that upon themselves.
And so it goes. Jesus refuses to be dragged into the argument. He calls them over and
says something along the lines of, "Come here, sit down, we need to talk
this one through. So you want to be the first do you? You want to be the
hero, you want be the big guy? Then stop worrying about where you come in the
scheme of things and start concentrating on how you can be of service to
somebody else! Drop all this stuff about your rights and your needs and start
worrying about how someone else's rights can be fulfilled and how someone
else's needs can be met." Then, somewhere around, there's a little kid playing, maybe making a bit
of noise in the way that so infuriates us important adults when we are trying
to concentrate. I know. I've done it.
I've sat in a service and there's been a kid in front or behind making a
commotion and I've thought, "Why doesn't someone shut that child
up? I'm the important one here. This is my time. This is my space." Preachers up there thinking, "I've got a right to be heard".
The choirs thinking, "We don't want that racket ruining our
anthem". Those sitting around the child are thinking, "I came here
to listen to a sermon, not some noisy munchkin". The parents are
thinking "This is our church … we've got a right to be here, you guys
promised to help us bring this child up in the faith and right now we are
having problems!". Being part of any kind of family is a high calling. Being part of the
Christian Family is a real challenge. We all feel like we have our rights and
our needs and when those rights and needs don't seem to be met we start
thinking like the disciples, "Hold on a minute, who is important around
here – its me – right?"
Wrong. On the basis of this passage of Scripture, the Kingdom way is about
putting others needs before personal rights. And for each group of us in the
congregation, Little ones, Youth, Older adults, Parents and Singles, all of
us need to think not only about what has this church got for me, but how can
I help the others of my family, who are maybe at a different stage of life or
experience be a part of the family. To paraphrase a famous quotation,
"Ask not what your church family can do for you, Ask what you can do for
your church family". To bring that point home to the disciples, Jesus invited the noisy kid
over to where He sat with His disciples. He put His arms round the child and
said something along the lines of, "You know something, If you can
recognize the rights of a little child like this, if you can welcome and
receive what a child can teach you, then you'll be doing the will of God,
then you'll be coming near to greatness, then you'll be a hero. Whoever
receives one child like this in My name receives me; and whoever receives Me
does not just receive Me, but Him who sent Me". At the time Jesus was speaking children had no rights, no privileges, no
legal status, no voice whatsoever. They were non people. They didn't
matter. They didn't count. We have lost the element of surprise that
this incident must have had on its first hearers. Sometimes we look upon
childhood with a romantic view, as a period of simplicity and innocence. In
those times no such notion existed. A child, particularly a female child,
just didn't count for much, simply wasn't important. That child stands for all people who are not held in high regard, all
those without a place, all those without a voice. Those who others label and
call names to make themselves feel superior. Those who are seen as useless or
no-hopers or just "Different".
We often pay lip service to the view that the "First shall be
last" so long as we are not challenged to the test of accepting someone
whom we consider a real "Outsider". The theologian Karl Barth describes the radical acceptance of others as
the basis of Christian Ethics. "To think of every human being, even the
oddest, most villainous or miserable as one to whom Jesus Christ is brother
and God is Father; and we have to deal with him on this assumption." All of this brings us full circle to where we started, thinking about
heroes and who is important and what it takes to be great. I very much doubt
that any here will be running home to change the posters on their walls or
that any of us will go out and try and find a few pictures of Karl Barth, the
disciples or Jesus himself in an effort to give ourselves good role models to
follow. Because, after all, greatness is not about images. It's not about looking
good or even about winning the admiration of others. From the Kingdom
perspective (a view which has the habit of turning everything upside down)
greatness is measured by how great you make others feel. Importance is about what importance you
give to other peoples lives, particularly those whom the world denies any
real significance. We want to be great? We want to be
important? Then let us forget about
being great and being important and get on with the business of sharing the
love that God has given us with a needy world. There's a hymn that speaks of Jesus in this
way:- "Thou who wast rich, beyond all measure, All for our sake, becamest poor" That is greatness. One who would rather die on a cross for our sakes than
see us divorced from God's love. One
who prayed, "Lord, not my will, but thine be done". Serving
ourselves only leads to a never ending desire for more of what we don't
have. Christ challenges us to serve
one another, to say "Yes" to God and in doing so discover an
otherwise unattainable peace, a peace born out of having the humility to
count others as more important than ourselves. May God help us to govern our
lives by Kingdom values and see each other through the loving eyes of Jesus . Adrian J Pratt |