Ambition and True Greatness

Jeremiah  11:18-20

James 3:13-4:3 & 7-8a

Mark 9:30-37

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ambition!

It’s something which we all probably experienced at some stage in our lives. Most of us would quite likely have harboured childhood ambitions in our younger days……..some more realistic and attainable than others I’m sure! The days are long gone when little boys wanted nothing more to be an engine driver or a footballer and little girls had dreams of becoming a nurse or some kind of fairy-tale princess (if those days ever really existed in the first place).

I loved books as a child (I still do), and most evenings after school would see me heading to my local library where I would frequently stay until it closed. Thus were the seeds sown for my own childhood ambition to become a librarian. Ok, perhaps not the most glamorous or exciting thing in the world and in the end it wasn’t to happen, but at that time it was all I really wanted to be.

 I imagine if we went round this congregation and each of us shared our ambitions, our hopes and our dreams, we would all have our own particular tale to tell. Of goals that have been reached, or fallen by the wayside, or perhaps that we are still striving towards. Sometimes it seems that the greatest ambition for many is to be “famous”. Reality TV has tapped into and nurtured a desire for many to be famous for no other reason than its own sake. People avidly follow those on social networks who are famous for being famous. The infamous Andy Warhol quote about everybody being famous for fifteen minutes is one that many seem to aspire to at times.

Our gospel reading this morning sees the disciples behaving in a way that I’m sure is unfortunately familiar to many of us, fighting and bickering amongst themselves as they jostle for the number one spot! Their own ambition seems to be pretty clear at this point, who amongst them was the greatest?

 They had just been standing alongside Jesus as he experienced the transfiguration, that moment when Jesus was briefly revealed to them in all his glory as the Son of God. They had seen him heal a young boy apparently possessed by an evil spirit and witnessed many other miracles, and after all this all that they could think of was who was the greatest! It’s almost as though they are caught up in some kind of First Century reality TV show, each of them vying with the others in the popularity stakes……….keeping one eye on Jesus and the other on their own prospects, their own personal ambition.

These were the twelve, who spent the most time with Jesus, living, walking, talking, working with him for three years, and one day, as they’re walking along with Jesus, they indulge in this kind of Christian of the Year award. Arguing with one another about who was the greatest. Not the greatest mathematician, or the greatest footballer, but who is the “greatest” disciple!

You can just imagine them walking along, Jesus out in front leading his disciples towards Capernaum (and ultimately on his way to Jerusalem), and the disciples ‘discussing’ amongst themselves, trying to show how they are greater than each other. Each convinced that they are somehow a better disciple than the one next to them. Jesus, having to listen to all this must have shaken his head in despair. How could they have got it all so wrong? How could their priorities have moved so far from the one who they followed?

It’s not too difficult I guess for us to understand perhaps a little of where they were coming from. Throughout life we are told we should constantly aim to be the “best”, never mind if that means sometimes stepping on other people or shoving them out of the way to get to where we think we ought to be. We will somehow get to the top in whatever area of life we happen to choose, perhaps in our career or in our personal life, and if other people lose out or get left behind………well that’s a shame, can’t be helped!

And yet, the path to greatness lay not in their self-praise or their elbowing one another out of the way in their quest to be top dog. True greatness lay in emulating and following the example of the one who they had already recognised as the Son of God. Greatness is in the laying down of self and personal ambition. We hear one of Jesus’s occasionally puzzling and seemingly contradictory statements as he says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mk 9:35). On the face of it, just another of his cryptic sayings, yet it was a lesson that was so vital for the disciples to understand.

 So much of what Jesus stood for seemed to contradict and fly in the face of what was the prevailing attitude of the day. It is easy to forget sometimes in our often comfortable established church just how radically different the message he brought was to those who were hearing it for the first time. And indeed how radically different it is to the experiences of many today, both inside and outside the church.

He came, not as some great all conquering hero, but as the one who washed the feet of his disciples. He may have been the Son of God, but he was also the servant of all who came to him. For Jesus it was not about being put on some kind of unreachable pedestal where he could keep a distance from those whom society deemed unworthy. It was about being in the middle of an often messy humanity, loving, sharing with and serving people whoever they were in their situations.

 There is a vulnerability in being a servant. In opening up to others we open ourselves up to the possibility of being abused or taken advantage of, yet that should be no reason not to reach out to those in need. In many ways it is completely counter-cultural to the way we are conditioned to think about ourselves today. To put others ahead of ourselves and at their service…..this is the way of the cross! Jesus knew full well what it was that lay ahead of him as he said, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again” (Mark 5:31), and this is something that of course we see indicated also in our reading from Jeremiah.

 In his final words of our gospel passage Jesus talks of welcoming and serving even the smallest child. ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not me but him who sent me.’ There’s a lot of welcoming there, but basically whatever we do in Jesus’ name - whatever we do for him, all our acts of service, all our acts of welcome - when we serve others (like this child, like someone who needs our help, like anyone), it’s as if we’re serving Jesus himself - but it goes further than that, for in welcoming Jesus we welcome God himself.

So may we embrace the vulnerability of the cross and put aside our own ego and ambition as we seek to love God and love one another, and serve as he came to serve.

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

AMEN