Deacon
Mark 9:30-37

September 21, 2003

I don’t when I first heard him say it, but things changed after he did. Maybe the world did not change, but the culture of North America at least shifted a few degrees from where it had been comfortably situated.

A young black man from Louisville, Kentucky, named Cassius Clay won the heavyweight boxing championship of the world and loudly declared, so that no one could possibly miss it, “I am the Greatest!” Wayne Gretsky may be the Great One, but the Greatest can only be the man we now know as Muhammad Ali.

People just don’t say that kind of thing, especially in professional sports. It’s so easy to be proven wrong. Lose the next game, the next bout, and someone greater has arrived to teach you a lesson. Ali said and everyone laughed, but over time he changed the meaning of the Greatest. When Ali lit the Olympic Torch in Atlanta in 1996 and his hand was shaking because of the Parkinson’s induced by too many blows, people around the world found tears in their eyes because he was still the Greatest.

It must have been one of those spirited road trips university students dream and make movies about. I have always imagined the disciples to have been young adults in their 20-somethings. Jesus, after all, was supposed to have been only 30 when he began the movement. This famous dozen were walking through Galilee on their way to Capernaum, Jesus’ town, and maybe there was too much wine. “I am the Greatest!” echoed up and down the road. No, I am the greatest.

It may have been fun, but I also think they were deadly serious, for the religion business can be profitable. The fun stopped when Jesus had them behind closed doors in Capernaum and asked what all that yelling was about.

Still, there is an important side to who is the greatest: who is the best model of a life well lived, who is the master of a trade or profession or skill we yearn to emulate? Since ancient times societies have depended upon the human role model, the person whose greatness demonstrates in flesh and blood how to live properly. Countless organizations like Big Brothers and Big Sisters operate on this premise. It explains the continual uproar and debate around whether those same professional athletes are supposed to be good role models for the young and for society. Add to that list ministers and priests, teachers and professors, police and politicians, and no one can deny that for moral living we need great people to imitate.

Just to remind you that being Christian is not part of the mainstream culture, Jesus does not want greatness, he wants a servant. The New Testament word is deacon and churches have been full of deacons ever since, and some of them have been great as well. Being a deacon, however, has lost some of its original bite; it’s too respectable to be a deacon to be the kind of servant Jesus insisted upon. Some Biblical translations feel the bite: deacon is translated not as a honourable servant, but as a slave.

The world of the first century A. D. - and for quite a few centuries before and after - assumed a slave society. Many were reduced to the inhumanity the word slavery conjures up in our minds; others were afforded great dignity and recognition for their skills and accomplishments. Joseph and Daniel were originally slaves who gained great renown through their courage and abilities. It was an anonymous Hebrew slave girl captured in warfare who advised Na’aman the Syrian general to go visit Elisha to be healed of his leprosy.

That’s good slavery, but most Western ears bristle at the suggestion of servanthood and slavery. Given our collective history, women don’t like being used and referred to as servants, and people of colour rightfully resist being reattached to the label. Is it right to be a deacon anymore? Should we be servants to anyone in the egalitarian, multicultural society?

Paul did not use the word deacon or servant or slave casually. He intended it to take you down a peg. Greatness needs to be reconfigured. Remember how the Swiss theologian Karl Barth would preach only in the City Jail of Basel, declaring to the prisoners behind the bars that the rest of us were just as much captives to our own sins as they were? Paul also indicates that we are all slaves to something, and most of the time our master isn’t human. We all jump to serve someone or something. When it comes to being a deacon, the issue is whom are you serving?

That debate among the leading disciples on the road to Capernaum was not an isolated incident. Ministers and priests of churches still talk among themselves about who is the greatest, who is going to be bishop or pope or minister of the biggest church. Laity and clergy alike assume that pastors are advanced Christians. That is hardly so. There is nothing particularly advanced about clergy, I can assure you. We are all - and always - beginners on the road to the Gospel. Children, in fact. That’s who Jesus lovingly wrapped his arms around and hugged in the midst of all those high-powered intense disciples. Not Peter or the Beloved Disciple or even Judas.

It was a little child Jesus brought before them, but we all love little children in our society. They are our joy and beauty and hope for the human race. Back then, little children were barely human in the mind of society. They didn’t really count or matter until they reached maturity. We are being sentimental if we adore the young child. Jesus wasn’t being sentimental in the slightest: he was holding up as a model of greatness the kind of person they all wanted usually to ignore.

Being a deacon isn’t easy and it isn’t hard. To be first you’ve got to be last of all and servant of all, a slave no less, a beginner on the journey, no matter when you start or how long you’ve been walking. I believe that Jesus would not choose a child today as his role model - it would be your teenager. The one with the long hair, possible multiple piercings and tattoos, acne and surly attitude and mouth, improper or inadequate clothing. The one who is so sure of herself, yet so unsure. The one who wants to be like everyone else, yet has the courage and the honesty to be like no one else. You want to follow Jesus and be a true servant, a real deacon? Be like a teenager, receive him into your midst, and you welcome God.

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