The Sermon for Sunday, September 22nd, 2024, The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
The Lessons: Psalm 54; Wisdom 1:16 – 2:1, 12-22; Mark 9:30-37
The Text: Mark 9:30-37
INTRODUCTION
Jim Stuart had led from a place of servant leadership and had led from a place of top-down leadership. He found that there is no question which kind of leadership is more effective.
His classmates at Harvard Business School used to call him the Prussian general because for many years that was his approach to leadership. Then he was hit by a series of personal and professional setbacks. His wife died. A mail-order venture that he had started went bankrupt. Rather than launch another business, he accepted a friend’s offer to head an aquarium project in Tampa.
He spent the next six years in a job that gave him no power, no money, and no knowledge. That situation forced him to draw on a deeper part of himself. He ended up with a team of people who were so high performing that they could almost walk through walls. Why, he wondered, was he suddenly able to lead a team that was so much more resilient and creative than any team that he had run before?
The answer that came to him was this: somewhere, amid all his trials, he had begun to trust his colleagues as much as he trusted himself. And that, he concluded, is the essence of servant leadership.
– adapted from Jim Stuart, cofounder of the Leadership Circle, Fast Company. September 1999[1]
MARK 9:30-37: SERVANT LEADERSHIP IS GREATNESS IN GOD’S KINGDOM
The Lord’s teaching about precedence, or greatness, in God’s kingdom is preceded in our Gospel lesson today by his prediction of his betrayal, death, and resurrection on the third day (Mark 9:31). Though his prophetic prediction hinted at his own path to greatness and his return to the presence of God the Father, the disciples not only failed to understand it, but also were afraid to ask him about it. When they arrive home in Capernaum, Jesus asks them what they were discussing among themselves on the way. This was an embarrassing question for the disciples, since they had been discussing who among them should be the greatest. Therefore, they were silent (Mark 9:34). Sitting down and calling the Twelve, the Lord gave them his lesson on greatness, beginning with this principle:
If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.
(Mark 9:35b, KJV)
This is the principal of the great reversal in God’s kingdom. It is not a matter of juggling for precedence based on one’s own status, knowledge, skills, wisdom, or achievements. It is a matter of serving one’s fellow Christians and being content to rank the lowest while being the servant of all. Sinful human society is conditioned otherwise. We think we should have status based on some merit of our own, or some experience that we have gained.
Here our Lord models this principle by taking a child in his arms and telling them that whoever receives such a child in his name receives him, and whoever receives him, receives God, who sent him (Mark 9:37). A child, then, can represent the Lord Jesus Christ, and be his ambassador, and an ambassador for God. The child shows that the humble person can serve God and be an effective representative of the Lord.
The message the disciples should have received from this lesson is that in God’s kingdom, those who are greatest must humble themselves as little children, serve and obey others, and so attain to greatness in God’s kingdom.
In St. John’s account of the Gospel, the Lord teaches the same lesson about servanthood by washing the feet of the Twelve, after which he concludes:
Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.
(John 13:13-17, KJV)
THE TESTIMONY OF THE SAINTS WHO FOLLOWED THE LORD’S EXAMPLE
We see the same principle of servanthood exemplified in the lives of countless saints, whether those who have been canonized, or those who have served the Lord and their fellow-Christians without being recognized while they lived on earth. We think of missionaries, evangelists, pastors, teachers, and many others in different professions, who have served Christ in serving fellow believers as well as many others. The lesson about greatness in God’s kingdom through Christians’ serving one another was such an important lesson that the Lord had to repeat it after James and John had requested him to grant them special seats on his left and his right in God’s kingdom. This is what he said on that occasion:
Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
(Mark 10:42b-45, KJV)
This quote clarifies that serving others is following the example of our Lord himself, whose purpose on earth was not to be served, but to serve, and that service included giving his life as a ransom for many by dying on the cross and rising again on the third day.
As a result of humbling himself in obedience and service to God by dying on the cross, Jesus Christ was highly exalted by God the Father and given a name above every other name, whom everyone will worship and acknowledge as Lord to the glory of the Father (Philippians 2:7-11).
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus and his ascension into heaven to be seated at the Father’s right hand supremely demonstrate the path to greatness through humble obedience and service.
CONCLUSION
What is your attitude to Christian service? Do you believe it should be left to others, or do you readily serve others, knowing that if you want to be great in God’s kingdom, you must be the willing servant of all?
[1] Original quote, p. 278, Craig Brian Larson & Phyllis Ten Elshof (General Editors): 1001 Illustrations that Connect. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, Christianity Today International, 2008.