“Defining Greatness”

Mark 9:30-37

September 21, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I love the story that made its way across my desk as I was getting our sermon ready for this morning about the man whose great ambition and goal in life was to become a general in the army. He worked hard at it. As he strived for it, he often looked back at his boot camp days and those early years and remembered how hard it was, But he always looked forward to his general days when he could just visualize all of the attention that he would get. He knew that wherever he went, there would be people saluting him. He knew that there would be a huge salary and a lot of benefits. Sometimes, if he closed his eyes and imagined it hard enough, he could see a young solider driving him around in a fine automobile. Well, his hard work paid off. After years of laboring and scratching his way to the top, he achieved his goal. He was promoted to Brigadier General and the next day he moved into his new office.

You should have seen this new office of his. Imagine the best office that you have ever seen and you would have his office in your mind. He walked past his new secretary’s desk and opened the heavy, wooden door. Bookshelves lined the walls. There was a large bathroom in one of the corners. The walls were lined not with paneling, but with real wood. The carpet was new. There were two desks in his office. Both were big and made out of cherry wood. The first was in front of the second and the second was a credenza that held a brand new, state of the art computer. He could just imagine the beautiful view that was his when his chair was turned towards the computer and the huge window. His desk chair, of course, was leather. It was his first day on the job. His books hadn’t been placed in the shelves yet, but he imagined what they would look like. He walked around his office and then finally he sat down in his chair at his desk. That is when his new secretary gently knocked on his door, delivered his mail and informed him that there was someone to see him. He asked her to give him just a minute. He wanted to impress his first visitor and so he reached for his phone and put it up to his ear as there was another knock on his door. He looked as the young man walked into his office. The general swivelled his chair around and spoke into his phone’s receiver, “Mr. President, I understand what you are saying to me. I think that your idea is a good one. I can tell you that I will share it and one of my own with the Secretary of Defense when I see him tomorrow. Thank-you for calling, sir. Good-bye.” The general hung up the phone, swivelled back around and saw this unimpressive solider standing in front of him. The general barked at the soldier, “What can I do for you, solider?” The young man tried his best not to smile and with all of the dignity that he could muster he said, “Nothing, sir! I am just here to hook up your phone.” I love that story. Isn’t that a great story? I think that we all love to see people’s pretenses punctured like that.

So, if you do love to see pretenses punctured, then you will probably enjoy our scripture lesson taken from seven verses in Mark’s ninth chapter, where we find Jesus and his disciples walking through Galilee on their way to Capernaum. Mark gives us this detail in the story, “He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples.” What is this teaching? What is it that Jesus wants the twelve and now us to hear and focus on without everyone else around?

Well, on this road, Jesus is talking about what lies ahead and what the disciples can expect once they enter Jerusalem. And so he says to them, “The Son of Man will be betrayed into human hands. They will kill him and three days later he will rise.” Mark’s gospel has the journey to Jerusalem lasting three chapters. I like Luke’s version a better. It is longer. There is more time to listen to the teachings of Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. But we are in Mark’s gospel these days and in Mark Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. You will probably remember this, in the gospels, there are three predictions of Jesus’ arrest, death, and rising. Our lesson today tells of the second of these three. This passion prediction is the shortest. “The Son of Man will be betrayed, arrested, killed, and will rise on the third day.” Mark tells us that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying to them and were afraid to ask him about it. Which, by the way, I find fascinating. I want to ask, “What’s not to understand?” The words are plain enough. So why don’t the disciples understand and why are they afraid to ask Jesus about his prediction? Well, let’s put those two questions up on the shelf and come back to them in a minute or two.

I think that Jesus must have walked ahead of the disciples. When evening came, they arrived in Capernaum and got settled in for the night. I think that it must have been at supper, sitting around the table, all thirteen of them, when Jesus swallowed what was in his mouth, glanced up at Matthew and Thomas and Philip and the other nine and caused all of them to swallow hard when he asked, “What were you arguing about on the way?” You know how arguments go. It is hard to have arguments without voices being raised. I am not sure if Jesus was close enough to hear their words or if he just knew because, well, he’s Jesus. But what I do know is that the question caused the disciples to stop in their tracks! Mark tells us that they were silent. I think that there must have been what I like to call a pregnant pause. I think that Jesus’ question must have hung up there in the air awhile. Mark tells us that they were arguing about which of them, would be the greatest in the kingdom.

I want you to get this, friends. In Mark’s gospel, we get two ideas of who Jesus is. Over and over again, you will hear Jesus being called the Messiah with all that means. It means being a king and an ultimate ruler. But Jesus is also talked about as the Son of Man and what that means is the suffering servant. And here he was, here was Jesus talking about being killed and the disciples were thinking about another way of Messiahing. I think that the question is out there, “Who will Jesus be? What kind of a Messiah will he be? What will he do?” Here is what I think, and I may be wrong about this, but I don’t believe that I am. I think that the disciples understood what Jesus was saying, but they did not ask because really they didn’t want to hear about it. After all, who would want to hear what Jesus was saying about being arrested and killed. Oh, I think that they heard what they wanted to hear. They heard, “The Son of Man is appearing.” They liked that. That meant that the showdown was about to happen, that the kingdom is about to come and when He does, then those who are with him will have special places. That is what they were talking about back there on the Capernaum highway. When the celebration begins and there is a banquet, they wanted to know, who will be sitting on either side of Jesus. Don’t you know that it was quiet for the longest time. Then Jesus broke the silence when he said, “If you want to be first, you have to be last of all and servant of all.” To illustrate his one-lined sermon, Jesus reaches for a child. You will know this. Children in the days of Jesus were honor-less and power-less. That does not mean that they were not dearly loved by their parents. In most instances, they were dearly loved. But children could not do much for you. They were not in a position to grant you favors or to move you to the front of the line. So the motivation for serving children or a Syrophonecian woman or a tax collector or a leper or anyone else who has no place at all is because you genuinely care for them. There in his lap, sermon illustration sitting there, was a child and Jesus who says whoever receives such a child receives my Father.

Well, this is our text for this morning and I will ask the question that I always ask in sermons, what should we do with these words this morning? Now please hear this. I hope that these words help you understand things and I hope that they touch your hearts. But I just might be preaching to myself this morning. You will know that there is little that brings more thrill than being the best and whatever you want to be the best at. The world teaches us this. There’s a not so great line in a movie about a conversation that a father and son are having about being great. The son finishes in the top in a race and he says to his dad, “Timmy said that he tried his best.” The father says, “Son, that’s just something losers say.” That is the message that the world preaches to us every day of every week of our lives. Look at the sports world and consider your favorite team. Mine, as you know, is the Atlanta Braves. It is not enough for my beloved team to win this afternoon. I want them to win all of the time. There is something inside of us that wants to be the best, the biggest, the strongest, and the fastest. We live in a world where we are taught to achieve success at all costs, no matter what. And here is Jesus, coming to show us not how to be successful, but telling us that there are some things that are more important than success.

Yes, and even success in the ministry. I heard the story of a preacher who was asked to attend his daughter’s parent teacher conference. He did not usually go to these sort of things. His wife usually did. His schedule was full, but when he complained about it, his wife told him that his daughter’s teacher had specifically asked for him. And so he went to the school, parked his car, found Helen’s classroom and her teacher. For a few minutes, Mrs. Garner talked about how Helen was doing in school. Her math and English skills were great and she played well with the other children. Then Mrs. Garner pulled out a folder containing Helen’s art work. She said, “We have been studying families. I asked the students to draw pictures of their families.” The preacher flipped through Helen’s folder to the picture of her family. There was a picture of their house with Helen and her mother on the front porch. Their dog and hamster were there and there were trees and birds scattered on the page. The preacher looked carefully and then he asked, “Where am I?” Mrs. Garner answered, “That’s what I wanted to know. When I asked Helen, she said that since you had not been home much lately, she did not put you in the picture.” Mrs. Garner said, “She did draw a picture of the church and you’re in that one, would you like to see it?” He shook his head and said, “No.”

I am not the preacher in this story and never do I want to be. We have to be careful as we live these lives of ours to know that people are always more important than schedules and success and greatness is not defined by what you do as much as it about who you are. Most of you know that I spend most of my time with families who hear sometimes very hard news. Sometimes it happens like this, the phone rings early in the evening, “I’ve lost my job. I cannot believe it!” Or, at six o’clock in the morning, “My aunt just died.” That is when you need your friends the most. You need them to put everything down and to come to be with you, to stay with you, to sacrifice something for you.

And here comes the news from Jesus, “I know how you think that it will be, but I am going to die, and here is something that I need for you to know. Following me is not about prestige. It is about service.” And Jesus reached for a child, and put her in his arms. I like the way that Barbara Brown Taylor puts it when she says, “Do you want to spend a little time with God? Then get down on your knees with Sarah over there. Get finger paint all over your new clothes and under your nails and laugh with her as she tells that joke. Never mind that there are more important things to do. She is not a filler. She is the real thing.” Put your arms around her, for when you do, you are putting your arms around God himself. I need to tell you this, Annie Grace has made me better than I could have ever hoped to be. Go home with this question, “What is greatness, really?”

(Special thanks to Rev. Mark Trotter for the opening story of this sermon and for an idea or two in it. Special thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor and her words about being with God and little Sarah. And special thanks to Annie Grace Fleming who makes her dad greater than he ever could have hoped to be).