What is Greatness?

Mark 9:30-37

August 15, 2004

³⁰They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; ³¹for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “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.” ³²But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Who Is the Greatest?

³³Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” ³⁴But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. ³⁵He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

On the morning of her first day at William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Ruby Bridges' mother told her: "Now I want you to behave yourself today, Ruby, and don't be afraid." Ruby and her mother went to the school and found so many people outside shouting and throwing things that the little girl thought it must be Mardi Gras. She seemed to be remembering her mother's words as she entered the school without showing any fear at all. Despite the fact that it was 1960, there were U.S. marshals walking beside her, and she was the first black child to enter an all-white school in the history of the American South.

A federal court had just ordered the desegregation of schools in the South, and although Ruby Bridges' father thought she could get a perfectly good education at an all-black elementary school, mother insisted that her daughter pave the way for other black children in the newly-integrated school system.

Charles Burks, one of the U.S. marshals who escorted Bridges and her mother into the school building, remembers the little girl who became a hero.

"She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. And we're all very proud of her."[1]

What is greatness?

Melinda Rose Hathaway was diagnosed with Askin's Tumor at the age of twelve years old. The prognosis for Askin's is always terminal, and Melinda's tumor was found at an advanced state. The doctors did not believe that Melinda would survive more than one or two weeks after the diagnosis.

Instead of letting her illness get her down, Melinda fought back with everything that she had. Undergoing radiation treatments, and all of the misery that goes with it, Melinda went into a partial remission, and then she began her true life's calling. Melinda spent a lot of time talking with other young cancer patients in the hospital. In the words of her father, David, "Her zest for life, her will to live, her unending hope, and her genuine caring let her achieve what many people only ever dream about - she reached out and restarted other peoples hearts."

Melinda lived with Askin's tumor for more than three years. During that time she touched many hearts and lives, Cancer Kids, their caregivers, and an entire world of people through the World Wide Web, where she and her father put up a website to provide information and hope for other families dealing with cancer in their lives. Her website, is filled with links, thought provoking pages, personal information, and fun. Her wish was that the site remain standing in perpetuity, to provide a safe haven on the web for Cancer Kids.

Melinda Rose Hathaway died in 1996, at the age of 15.[2]

What is greatness?

The disciples of Jesus Christ, those who walked the face of the earth with him asked a similar question.  For them, this issue of greatness was also an object of question, concern and even confusion. 

Jesus once gathered his disciples and told them of the plan that God had in mind for himself and the reason why he was sent into the world.  He said to them, “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.”  This was not the first time he had spoken of this, and it wouldn’t be the last.  But even until the last moments of his life, his disciples did not quite know what he was talking about.  As he spoke to them, the gospel records their reaction like this: “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”

You see they did not understand what he was talking about, because they thought he was a great man.  Their messiah, was a great man who would lead them to great victories, overthrowing the temple leaders, overthrowing the corrupt governments of his day, maybe even overthrowing the Roman Empire itself.  Moments after he tells them that he is about to be betrayed, killed and resurrected, they are arguing amongst themselves about greatness.  They were not arguing about what it would take for them to be great, or what was the greatest of Jesus’ miracles or even what greatness was.  These disciples, who had followed Jesus around wherever he went for several years, were arguing which one of them was the greatest.  They were arguing among themselves about which one of them deserved to be the next in command after Jesus himself - which one of them would sit at his right hand once he established his magnificent throne.

He had just told them what his ultimate purpose on earth was to be.  It was not to establish some military power, or some magnificent kingdom ruled from a golden jewel encrusted thrown in a fortress of a castle as they believed.  It was not to establish some great political realm or some great economic empire.  He had a very different purpose and goal, to devote himself to them and to sacrifice all to die a humiliating, excruciating and appalling death, in order to defeat the reigning ideas about power and establish a new one, in order to defeat death itself.  And within minutes, he finds his disciples arguing about which of them ranked highest in the measures of greatness that Jesus was going to sacrifice himself to overthrow.

Some years ago St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City was seeking a new president. Over one hundred candidates applied for the position. The search committee narrowed the list to five eminently qualified persons. Then somebody came up with a brilliant idea: let's send a person to the institutions where each of the five finalists is currently employed, and let's interview the janitor at each place, asking him what he thinks of the man seeking to be our president. This was done and a janitor gave such a glowing appraisal of William MacElvaney that he was selected President of St. Paul's School of Theology.

Somebody on that search committee understood, in a flash of genius, that those who live by the ideals of Christ himself become so secure in his love that they no longer relate to other people according to rank or power or money or prestige. They treat janitors and governors with equal dignity. They regard everybody as a VIP. Children seem to do this intuitively; adult Christians have to relearn it.

Greatness in the world around us, in the world that Jesus came to overthrow, is measured by different values than Jesus’ own values.

Edward, The Prince of Wales and son of Queen Victoria was at his mother’s side near the moment of her death when a member of the royal household mused, “I wonder if the Queen will be happy in heaven?”

Edward said, “I don’t know, she will have to walk behind the angels, and she won’t like that.”

Rev. Brent Porterfield, www.eSermons.com, Sept 2003.

_________________

In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, one character comments: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." Greatness in the Christian sense is neither born in you, nor achieved by you, nor imposed upon you. It is, rather, the byproduct of some deeper qualities and values.[3]

Ruby Bridges became great because she wanted to go to school.  Her mother and eventually her father wanted to take advantage of a situation to open the doors of opportunity for themselves and for their neighbors and friends, their brothers and sisters in the African American community.

Melinda Rose Hathaway reached greatness because she would not accept the darkness of loss and defeat and death.  She found herself wishing for something better for herself, ad nd others battling with cancer.  She wanted to laugh and to see others laugh.  She wanted less pain and to see that others had less pain.

Neither of these two girls was probably ever caught arguing that they were greater than someone else.  Neither of these great young people probably ever wished to be “great” or thought of themselves as the greatest of anything.

But I can think of a few people who thought of themselves as the greatest and who went to the greatest extremes to prove their greatness.  How about you?  The name of Adolph Hitler comes to mind first, but there are others, perhaps not so monstrous or extreme. 

How many sports celebrities have you read or heard about who would not sign multi-million dollars deals with their team because they wished the world to acknowledge that they were the very best in the world at their position or at what they did?

These are very different models than the model of greatness of which Jesus speaks.

"What do you think of the candidates?" That's what a reporter for a news magazine asked a young woman at Dartmouth University after a debate among presidential hopefuls. She didn't say a word about their positions on the issues or their skill at debate. She simply remarked, "None of them seems to have any humility."[4]

I knew a man once who had a great deal of trouble relating with adults, especially adults with whom he had disagreements.  But around children, he was as soft and mushy as a bowl of jelly.  A six feet three inches tall and seventy-four years old, it was always a surprise to see him get down on his hands and knees whenever a toddler of one or two years old would amble up to him in the halls of his church.

What was Jesus’ measure of greatness?

“He called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Jesus’ measure of greatness involves humility, compassion, kindness, love, sacrifice, obedience…

If a news reporter were to talk to our friends, neighbors, or fellow church members and ask them to describe us, what would they say about us?

Few of us would live up to “greatness” of Ruby Bridges, of Melinda Rose Hathaway, but it doesn’t hurt to ask where do we each fall ourselves? 

Christ on the cross is the ultimate example of that greatness.  But the greatest good news of all, the most important bit of good news about all this is that yes, inevitably we fall short of these ideals.  That if we measure ourselves on that spectrum of Ruby Bridges and Melinda Hathaway on one extreme and say the megalomaniacal example of Adolph Hitler on the opposite extreme, we fall neatly in between.  The good news of the Gospel however, is that wherever we may fall, that with repentance, Christ accepts us with open arms and brings us back from the brink to join him and his along the path of journeying toward his humility, his greatness and his model.

I pray that as we hear these words from Christ, encouraging us all to kneel down on our hands and knees to the level of accepting the little children, to the level of humility, to the level of compassion and greatness that is foolishness in the eyes of the world, that we wouldn’t feel oppressed and guilty and overwhelmed by his challenge, but we would instead repentantly ask for his hand to take ours, to lead us and to guide us, so that we too, might find ways back to him and the life he wants for us.

Amen