Be Not So Great
Proper 20 B
I went back and read a meditation I gave almost two decades ago on this week’s gospel reading. I cringed a bit. Ugh. Whoa. Did I really say that? I was a young mom to two little kids and a pastor’s wife. I wanted to know what it meant to be a great mom. A great lawyer for the poor. Questions I am still asking today. Yet, in the voice of my younger self, I heard someone who sounded more certain about Jesus and the Kingdom of God. About what faithfulness looked like. Our church at that time had taught us to allow Jesus to challenge and dismantle deeply held cultural norms we’ve been fed by the world. Concepts like greatness. We did that. Perhaps too religiously. Yet, in looking back, I can’t help but notice the absence of wonder about the Jesus I thought I knew and the Kingdom to come.
I’m a lot less certain of everything than I was in my early thirties, when I thought I had a pretty good idea of what Kingdom faithfulness or greatness looked like. I would like to think that I’ve evolved with a couple more decades on earth – living with my own failures, vulnerabilities and grief alongside a broken Church and cruel world. Now I ask more questions than I have answers. I hear the stories of Jesus inviting us to more – more love, more grace, more living water, more forgiveness, more letting go. And wondering, with some apprehension, what that looks like.
The core questions that I asked two decades ago are essentially the same questions I am still asking today. The same questions those young and old are still asking. Who am I? Who do I want to become?
Jesus addresses these questions in this week’s gospel reading in Mark. He is still on his way to Jerusalem with his disciples, followed by the crowds. He tells his disciples a second time that he will be betrayed, killed and will rise again. The disciples respond with nothing. They are confused and afraid to ask any questions. Jesus takes a detour into a house, leaving the crowds outside. He gathers his twelve disciples, his inner circle, and asks, “What were you arguing about on the way?” Jesus is again met with sheepish silence. Mark tells us the disciples have been bickering with one another about who was the greatest. Post miraculous healings and the feeding of the 5000 and then 4000. Post transfiguration. On their way with Jesus to the cross. And they are squabbling about who is the winner. Jesus responds with a “show and tell,” taking a child into arms. He says: Be last. Serve all. Show hospitality to the least.
At some level, we all want to be great. Maybe not Olympic, Nobel Prize level greatness. But don’t we all strive to be successful, to be well-thought-of, to be good at what we do? Maybe most of us don’t care that our house looks like a West Elm showroom. Or obsess over how many followers and likes we have on our Instagram accounts. Yet, we want to be impactful leaders. To be a friend who always shows up. To be awesome parents. We want to be winners. We want our kids to win. What it means to be “great” divides us as a nation and as the Church.
Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t admonish his disciples for their argument or tell us to reject all ambition for greatness. Instead, He turns it on its head and redefines greatness for those following him “on the way.” “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” We are to aspire to be losers and servants. He just told the disciples that he will be betrayed, killed and raised. Dying sure feels like losing. This goes against every fiber of our being. But this is exactly Jesus’ unsettling invitation.
When Jesus then takes a child into his arms, he doesn’t do it sentimentally to tell us that we all need to be more innocent like children. For anyone who has spent time around young children, they’re not all that innocent. Not unlike us adults, they overtly exhibit the “bitter envy and selfish ambition” that James talks about. Because of the high child mortality rate, first century families couldn’t afford to sentimentalize childhood. Children had no status, no rights. They were invisible and didn’t attain “personhood” until they became adults. Children were lowly like slaves. Additional offspring translated to more workers. Their concept of childhood is antithetical to ours, where childhood is sentimentalized and children are often doted upon. We privileged Americans feel compelled to painstakingly manage our kids’ lives. So they can get into the best college. Get a meaningful, respectable job that pays well. Have options. Few (none?) of us are raising our kids to be losers and servants. Like my Chinese immigrant parents who sacrificed everything for their children so we would grow up to be “greater” than they were.
We, like the disciples, may presume that the greatest must be an insider. Those with access, knowledge and status. Instead Jesus reaches outside his inner circle and takes a child into his arms. He invites us to step outside our circle of influence and comfort and be hospitable to the least. For the disciples, this was a child in first century Palestine. However, it is Jesus, not the child, who is an example of what it means to be a servant. Jesus crosses boundaries to embrace one whom the world had deemed insignificant.
This gospel text disturbs our comfortable, lofty notions of greatness, the Jesus we think we know. To follow Jesus on the way is unsettling. Jesus invites us to be last, to be perceived as losers. To notice those on the margins. We are invited to not only serve those with whom we share kinship or affinity, but also to step across our self-imposed borders and show hospitality to those who have far less power than we have. To aim downward rather than upward. To be not so great in the world. We are invited to walk the strange and extraordinary path of following Jesus on the way. To imagine a wider, bigger Kingdom than we can wrap our human brains around. Let us savor the wonder and mystery of the new world order that Jesus has ushered in.