Ranks are bad, mmkay? They lead to bad things, such as discrimination.
Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13-4:3,7-8a; Psalm 54; Jeremiah 11:18-20
I read a lot of books — Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction are my favorite genres but I’m pretty flexible as well. I just started reading The Trilogy by Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, about, essentially, the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th Century. But that’s neither here nor there; one of the themes in a lot of the books I read is a noble class.
A key feature of nobility is the idea of rank. Certain individuals are ranked higher than others, for example, a Baronet ranks higher than a Knight, but lower than a Baron. An Earl is higher than a Viscount, but lower than a Duke. A person’s title, in turn, determined how influential they were, as those with higher rank tended to be wealthier and had more land.
This idea of rank is something that seems to constantly occupy human thinking. We like to know who is our superiors or subordinates. We’re always looking at who rates higher or lower than us in our various situations, be it at work or in social situations. So it’s only natural that the disciples would do the same.
We kind of come into our gospel lesson at an odd break in the action, and I’ll explain a few things to give you some context. Back in chapter 8, Jesus, after asking the disciples who people said he was, was declared by Peter to be the Christ, only for Peter to rebuke him after Jesus said what that mean. So at this point, Peter, who up until then had been the “leader” of sorts of the disciples, lost a good deal of status. This was compounded during the transfiguration when he, somewhat stupidly, said that they should build tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah to hang out in. So at this point, Peter is of pretty low status in the disciples’ eyes.
When they came down from the mountain, they being Jesus, James, Peter, and John, they came across the other nine disciples trying to cast out a demon, only to fail miserably. Jesus, of course, casts the demon out handily, and the other nine disciples are shamed slightly, so their status is decreased. This of course leaves two disciples who, up until the point of the gospel, hadn’t yet done anything stupid to lower their own status. So, we get to our reading for today.
The disciples are arguing along the road from Galilee to Capernaum about which of them is the greatest, or who is the leader. They knew Jesus wouldn’t approve of their discussion, so when asked directly, instead of coming up with an excuse they just kept quiet. Remember, it’s highly likely that James and John were the current frontrunners for the title of “greatest disciple”, which explains what they do in chapter 10 when they ask Jesus if one of them can sit on his left and the other on his right.
Now, Jesus chooses not to answer their argument exactly, but did something better. He says, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” This goes against out natural instinct to rank people, but it’s what we’re taught anyways.
We like to find people that we think we’re better than, so we rank people. We declare some groups as better than others, based on any number of reasons. We rank based on sins, race, gender, age, hometown, hair color, sexual orientation, political affiliation, income, social standing, looks, style of dress, choice of entertainment, and so on and so on. We want to know who, based on these criteria, we are “better than” or “worse than”. But Jesus says, “If you really want to be great, consider yourself to be the servant of everyone, especially the very least.”
This ties right in with our lesson from James last week not to show favoritism. How can one show favoritism if one is to be the servant of all? This also comes down to the two big commandments: love God and love neighbor. “Rank” has nothing to do with those commandments, not in the slightest.
Yet this is something we continually do; instead of serving people with love, we choose to ignore them, and, unfortunately, it comes from our false assumption that we are “better” for whatever reason. Jesus words are rather cutting, and something that we need constant reminding of, especially given who actually said them — for the greatest of all, Jesus himself, became servant of all. His life is the ideal we are to follow, a life of loving servant-hood, rooted in a love of God.