Proper 20: Mark 9:30-37
Jesus sat down, called the twelve, and said
to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. –
Mark 9:35
Numbers are good and necessary for
navigating our world. Where would we be without their powers of measuring and
quantifying? Unless you are an ancient Pythagorean or a modern Math nerd,
numbers might be essential, but they are generally not able to tell us much
else about the world outside of measurement; the world, that is, of politics,
play dates, and postseason baseball. In recent memory, some exceptions to this
have arisen. Consider the numbers 9/11 in sequence, and then 14/200. The first
brings forth a history soaked in memories, a very human history of images and
stories. The later, well, it’s just a random sequence that doesn’t really hold
much meaning beyond the digits themselves.
In the past week, 47 has taken on new precedence, as in
Mitt Romney’s clandestine. What, or better, who
the 47% represents will, I imagine, be never too far from commentators and
pundits for the next short while. Prior
to 47, it was 99 and 1, as in, the 99% and the 1%. These numbers are also
packed with meaning. To be of the 99% or the 1% is both an economic and
political judgment. Finally, there is 5, as in IPhone5, which some committed a
week of sleeping on a New York sidewalk in order to possess the latest
incarnation of Apple’s ubiquitous gadget.
This morning i want to briefly
explore a few numerical terms with you; number-language that goes even further
into the realm of meaning than the specter of a 47 or even a 99. I have in mind
the terms, first and last.
First and last are not numbers as
such, but they denote the numerical world of counting and order. Between the
first and the last stands an undescribed world that could constitute a few or
represent the sphere of the unlimited. First and last, protos and eschatos in
the Greek of the New Testament: the beginning and the end. It is quite
understandable that we hear these terms as expressing a linear movement from
one to the other, from the start of a line to its terminus. Most of the time
first and last, protos and eschatos, are how we track the beginning
of something, and the end of something, like the winners and losers in the
Olympics, or who gets into the Apple store before everyone else. We sometimes
forget, however, that linear might be
how we describe the location of first
and last, but it doesn’t quite do justice to the question why: why this movement from point one to point two; what is the
significance of the end in relation to the beginning? This is where a deeper sense to first and
last comes in, one of purpose and meaning.
In addition to the sense of the end
as being where things stop, eschatos
can also refer to the reason for the movement. Think of it in terms of a destination. When we travel, we often do
so for the reason that our destination is where we want to be: it’s the desired
outcome that gets us up at the crack of dawn in order to miss the traffic on
the beltway, despite our dislike for early starts. The destination gives
purpose to where things begin. There has to be a protos, a first, in order to reach the eschatos, our desired end, yet it matters a great deal that the
particular end we have in mind is something that provides the reason for the
journey.
I wish now to add one more term –
another Greek term – to the mix: Diakonos,
servant. It is the other word from the 35th verse in chapter 9 of
Mark’s gospel that illumines our investigation this morning. Jesus sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to
be first (protos) must be last of all
(eschatos) and servant of all (diakonis). To be first, to share in what it
takes to follow him, Jesus is telling
his disciples, one must know the purpose and destination, and one must be clear
that this journey is one defined by service to others. To an important degree, Jesus had already
stated this when he announced, "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.” Here, Jesus is expressing what his obedience to God means: it is
to live as humanly possible with trust in God knowing that such a life so lived
will be a threat. But as Mark says, this was all a little too hard for the
disciples to hear at this point. Instead, we hear protos, eschatos, diakonis.
In a sermon, now twenty years old,
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, captured well the importance of
where we begin, why we move, and what’s at stake, for the life of Christians. Before all else,
Williams says, the mission of the church
is God’s authorizing or empowering people and communities to be where the
divine purpose for the world is made clear, a purpose made known as the
formation of unrestricted community. Williams might as well have said: the
formation of a servant community. For
what is an unrestricted community if not a community that practices service to
others? To belong in the servant community, Williams continues, is to be
involved in a complex act of service: to be at the disposal of God’s gracious
activity, to give away the life we have, so that God’s life can be given
through us.
All this talk about service and
being a servant might give us the impression that Christianity is about being a
slave: a position that we know haunts with images and memories of terror and
alienation. From Ancient to modern forms of slavery, injustice abounds. Surely
our proper end, our destination for living is more than servitude? Well, yes,
sort of. The service – the diakonis –
which provides the manner of our journey from beginning to end is defined by
the servanthood of Christ: who held
nothing back to live as humanly as possible in obedience to God. This is in
stark contrast to the barriers we erect in society and in our lives against
those we struggle to recognize as being “one of us”, whether politically,
religiously or any other way. What
Jesus’ service to God through his human life does is to challenge and judge all
the ways in which we enshrine separation from each other and superiority to
each other. The service that is to constitute the church is a pattern of
language and actions which keep open the doors of relationship and engagement,
even when the growing norm in society is towards greater levels of exclusion.
This is what it means to hold nothing back; a way of being in the world that
defined Jesus’ life and his death.
To be a servant, in the Christian
understanding, is the path we take towards the goal of living humanly well as
those who share in God’s life of joy and friendship. It might be through
working in a soup kitchen, assisting the elderly or participating in micro-loan
programs in East Africa. Service is also understood through attending to the
design of flower arrangements in the Cathedral, lobbying Congress against
injustices, and engaging in scholarship for the growth of wisdom and the
correction of errors. Jesus doesn’t stipulate exactly how we should serve; what
he does is to say that outside the life of service, there cannot be a community
gathered in his name. Outside the life of diakonis,
or servanthood, there is only a starting point, protos, but no destination, eschatos.
To be a servant as Jesus served, is to see the horizon for what it is: where
our lives are made full by God’s gracious wisdom and love.
This life of service is impatient
with numbers like 47, 99, 1, and even 5, if what these numbers represent is
competitive hostility or mutual isolation. We might say that these numbers are
just how things are; they simply represent reality as we know it. To this the
message of the gospel replies: there is a reality deeper and more pervasive, a
reality shaped by the ministry and person of Jesus, who forever serves through
the life of his people. First and last, beginning and end, the church has a
purpose: to realize in everyone the love and boldness, the intimacy and
authority that Jesus has in relation to the God he called Abba, Father.
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