Really Great
Mark 9:30-37

September 20, 2009


Many moons ago, to use a favourite phrase of one of our beloved members, I went to a basketball game between my college and the Athletes In Action squad of Christian players. They killed us on the court and then at mid-court during half-time and after the game worked to convert us to the Christian way of life. Athletes In Action is a branch of Campus Crusade for Christ International, an evangelical campus ministry begun by Bill Bright in the early 1950’s and still going strong around the world. Bright compiled the “Four Spiritual Laws” and these are regularly recited in any event of these evangelistic groups. I always remember the first one that sets the stage for all else: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”

I don’t know if Bill Bright was the innovator of this notion of God having a plan for your life, but certainly it caught on and I have heard countless people talk about God’s plan for them. I always feel uncomfortable when I hear that being said so confidently. The reason may be obvious - it is supposed to be God’s plan and we are so sure that we know how God is supposed to be planning that we can even tell you when God is not operating according to his plan. In other words, we are not always following God’s plan, but we are making sure that God is following our plan. After all, are we not guaranteed that God’s plan will always end up happily, successfully, even triumphantly? Too much of Christianity is dominated by the “winning is the only thing” mentality, so how can a great God allow you or me to fail? The people who fail are those who do not accept Christ or believe in God, or don’t follow God’s plan.

The Biblical reality is that God has more of a tendency to upset our plans than to make them. A bumper sticker driving around for a while perhaps was ribbing Bill Bright and company, “God has a plan for your life. And it is very, very difficult.” Once you have figured it all out, that is when plans inevitably change.

The Gospel episode seems almost a rerun of last week, but the reason for that is that Mark and Jesus know we are the reruns. Greg Harder’s observation in Friday’s Leader Post about the prospects for the Regina Pats junior hockey team applies to many people: “It’s a simple matter of learning from past mistakes, not ignoring them.” Most of us prefer the ignore option.

Jesus has had that famous question and answer period during which Peter blurted out that Jesus was the Messiah. When Jesus started to fill out the details of just what a Messiah is all about, Peter went ballistic and Jesus reciprocated in kind, “Get behind me, Satan!” Still itinerating throughout Galilee, Jesus wanted their journey to be under cover - no one should know about it.

Jesus, knowing that there was unfinished business, wanted to take his time explaining these things. Oh, they had heard him say these things and he repeated them, about being betrayed and being killed and rising again. There has emerged a popular rhetorical technique among some preachers in which he/she declares something and when the congregation doesn’t respond quickly enough, he/she comes back with, “You didn’t get it!” Then the preacher breaks it down into even simpler elements spelling out the issue at hand. Jesus had tried to spell it out carefully, enunciate more clearly, but looking at them, there was that vacant expression we’ve all seen at crucial times. They didn’t understand him, but understood him just enough that this was critically important, so they were afraid to ask any more about it. Maybe by the time they arrived at their home base in Capernaum, it would all go away and Jesus would be back to normal. He’d be talking the good stuff. After all, they had a plan. It was that urgent mumbling, accented occasionally by “shhh” that raised suspicion. They knew they shouldn’t be talking about this, and so the hushing, yet they were convinced that this was God’s plan. Jesus looked them in the eye and asked what they were talking about on the road that they didn’t want him to hear. At first nobody would talk, and that convicted them, but finally one admitted they were arguing about who was the greatest among them. Not just trying to figure it out, but arguing, for each one had it all figured out that in God’s great scheme of things he had to be the greatest.

It doesn’t take much to imagine how downcast Jesus must have felt at this moment. At least twice he had carefully, painfully described to them the necessary road he would have to take - which meant that they would have to go along with him - and they never got it. Perhaps they really did understand and here was a case where God’s plan upset their notion of God’s plan for them. So despite being taught about the way of the cross and the promise of the Third Day, they engaged themselves in fighting for who would be number one in the kingdom of heaven. They expected glory for all that they had done being Jesus’ disciples; suffering and betrayal and death, even resurrection, was simply not how they believed God worked.

But believe it or not, there are a couple of redeeming points to note for our sake here. The disciples were worse than dumb when it came to understanding Jesus’ mission at this time; they demonstrated a kind of conniving spiritual entrepreneurship for which many a Christian church is infamous today. If we are discouraged by how unpleasant and rigid and apathetic people are in this church, there is Good News squirreled away in this sad report. Eventually the disciples did get it, but it was because of God’s grace, not because of their virtuous characters. You and I are still the disciples, in our selfish ineptitude, and in hope of what we can become.

Jesus wasn’t giving up, however, so he changed the conversation from who would be the greatest, who would win and have the most power to how to be really great in the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” It’s popular to talk about being a servant in the church, but back then and actually not too long ago in our society, being a servant, a deacon, was barely a human occupation. The word deacon is often translated as slave, and as a slave or servant you had no real rights. You were allowed no voice, and no matter how well you performed your job, you were seldom recognized or credited with the accomplishment. No one will remember how much you have done for the church if you are a proper servant for the Gospel. Maybe those mumbling, whispering on the sly disciples had a better plan, to be the first super Christians and then reap the spiritual rewards.

And then to make it clear Jesus pulls in a young child milling about nearby. This event is described in several ways, but here he wants us not to become like a child, but to receive a child, to welcome him into our midst. In other words, in a society that was neither child-centred nor child-friendly, you were to accept a child as an equal. How low could you go? What kind of a plan is this?

When you get down to it, recognizing that God has a plan for your life means that you know that you are not in control. Most of the talk about God’s plan for me is based on a base transfer of our worldly human ambition into the churchly realm. When the church is a training ground for becoming famous servants, we are like the disciples who just don’t get it. We do not love in order to gain heavenly points that we can redeem in the kingdom for positions of honour and power. We love simply in order to love because God simply loved us first. We do not serve in order to serve our time for when we are promoted to greater things. We serve others because someone needs help and just helping is sweet reward enough.

I have mentioned before my Sunday School teacher in Grade 11. A businessman who was of quite average appearance introduced to us the “situation ethics” of Joseph Fletcher popular in the 1960’s. He brought to life for us the life of faith and the decisions we had to make as he kept presenting us these real life parables and challenging us to make the decisions. It came at a critical time for me and he was clearly one of the reasons I came to think of entering the ministry. The trouble was I cannot remember his name. Years later I came back to my home church to serve as the associate minister and one day thought to ask an older member the Butch Cassiday question, “Who was that guy?” The older member told me his name and noted that he had died several years before. I nodded happily and gratefully. Then I forgot his name again, and now there’s no one to ask. He was a servant for whom I am still grateful, yet while he is not famous by name, I know that someone has taken notice of his service and in some way he has been and is being rewarded. How sweet it is.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan