Who Wants to be First? A Meditation on Mark 9

I find this a particularly difficult question to ask myself-- not because it is difficult to understand, but because it is difficult to hear.  Like so many of my generation, and of generations before me, I grew up playing games in which we kept score.  While softer voices said that score didn't matter, I knew full well that victory was better than defeat, especially in games like football.  Who ever strapped on his pads and helmet after months or years of brutal training, and didn't strive to win?  Later as a military member, studying the history and methodology of war, I knew that losing meant death and destruction.  No longer playing for points on a grid iron, we were playing winner takes all on a global battlefield, and nobody wanted to come in second.

In life, it is easy to let this thought process dominate our thinking.  Is it good for athletes to strive with all their focus toward victory?  Certainly.  Is it good for soldiers to fight with singular ferocity to defend our Republic from the horrors of military defeat?  Absolutely.  But should striving for the top of the award podium, or the victor's song in battle, be translated into seeking to lift oneself over his neighbors, as if to be first ahead of other men?  Jesus teaches that the answer is no.

It is a great temptation to take what is noble, and corrupt it to unsavory ends.  Be it sport, or war, or politics at every level; from every type and kind of legitimate authority or accolade arises a selfish ambition to claim honor and prestige for one's self-- to take honor from another, that we might be lifted up over our neighbor.  We seek it in business and political campaigns, and those who seek power and authority are often those worst disposed to possess it.  This reveals something about ourselves that we would rather not see:  that we are dark and lustful souls, seeking tyranny over our neighbors in our pursuit for personal ambition and privilege.

Jesus, however, speaks of a different kind of Spirit which should abide in His people.  When Jesus catches His disciples arguing among themselves about which of them should be first, or what the pecking order should be among them, He demolishes all their sinful aspirations.  He tells them that if anyone would want to be chief in the Kingdom of God, such a one should be servant of all.  He then takes a child and sets the little one in their midst, making that child a model of godly superiority among men-- not because children are inherently better than adults, but because the child was the lowest in the social pecking order of their day.  That child couldn't vote or own anything, and all he could do was serve in the household as he was commanded.  The faith of a child that loves and lives in service to their family, is the model Jesus presents to His erring disciples.

Of course, the history of the Church is full of knuckleheads forgetting what Jesus so pointedly taught His disciples long ago.  We have bishops who think they are kings; voter's assemblies that think they are Congress; elders who think they are pastors; pastors who think they are bureaucrats; and every person with an opinion, educated or not, who makes himself his own pope.  Struggles for power, prestige, honor, and rule infest the halls of churches great and small, from little country parishes to national cathedrals; from the banks of the Tiber to the Bosporus to the Mississippi, headquarters of churches are teeming with self serving individuals who pursue power and position.  But this is not what our Lord intended for us.  His will was not that we endlessly debate the relative prestige and rank of our respective clergy and laity, but find a better example of leadership and the use of power.

In fact, it is Jesus who presents to us what it is to be first in the Kingdom of God.  It is Jesus who, though He is the very Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, sets aside His rightful glory so that He might save all mankind.  Jesus, who is legitimately First because there is none who precede Him in time or eternity, has become the servant of all, that all might have life in His Name.  And it is Jesus who serves us, a sinful and ungrateful world, all the way to and through the Cross.  This Jesus, the great King of all Creation, has given His life as a ransom for many, so that we might live by His grace through faith in Him forever.

What is the medicine for a Church fractured by a sinful lust for power, whose local congregations and national bureaucracies are possessed by demons drunk on their quest for illegitimate authority and honors?  It is the same medicine given for us all:  Jesus Christ, crucified for the sins of the world-- including adulterous people like us who desire the baubles of the world's affections, marks of rank and dignity, rather than the service of the Living God.

So to you, dear Christian, comes both the Word and Person of Christ Himself, calling you to lay down your fevered lusts and ambitions to rule your neighbor, and rather by faith and repentance to receive His Holy Cross of suffering servitude.  There in the bloody road to Calvary you will find what the King of Glory has always sought to teach His people:  that the first will be last, and the last will be first.  In a world which longs to slake its lust through domination and tyranny, mirroring the blackened heart of the evil one who inspires such monstrosity among men, it is Jesus who establishes the Kingdom of God among us, calling us away from the devil's highway of death to His Way of everlasting life.  Lay down your disordered passions for rule or primacy over your neighbor, and receive the rule of Him who leads by serving; who rules through suffering; who is Himself first and yet has made Himself last.  Receive the scornful wonder of His Cross, which though despised in this passing and fevered world, is glorious beyond measure in the Kingdom which does not pass away.  Do not think you can take for yourself the honor and authority which only He rightfully possesses, and only He can rightfully give.  Hear the gentle call of the King of Glory who comes to you as your servant, offering you the forgiveness of your sins, and life everlasting.  Hear Him, before His gentle call of the Gospel turns to the hard word of judgement at the end of days.  Hear Him.  Repent.  Believe.  Live.

Amen.