Last Shall be First

Pastor Robarge’s Sermon
Sunday, May 8, 2011

[Video] “The young man continued the very next week trying to save the people of Me. ‘Explain to us, Sir, what do you mean? The last shall be first, but how can that be?’ ‘Look,’ he said, and all eyes followed his, as he silently watched a young mom with three kids. There was scratching of heads as the townspeople watched and slowly there came the dawning of thoughts. ‘She gives out of love. She gives from her heart. Sir, is that it? Is that where we start? Put others first and put yourself last.’ He nodded ascent and then went to rest.”

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The United States began the Apollo project and put a man on the moon. The motivation wasn’t exactly scientific. It was geared partly as the space race. It was driven partly by the competitive nature within the American public. The Soviets were the first to put a satellite into space. The Soviets were first to put a living creature into space. The Soviets were first to put a man into space. So the reaction was we were tired of finishing second. We wanted to finish first.

So there it was with great joy on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of the Lunar Module with Buzz Aldrin and spoke those famous words, “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” We loved it because we were first.

There’s something going on with this craving within all human beings to be great, to be first. No one wants to finish second. There’s no glory in second place. We just call that the first loser, right? We want to be first. If you’re sitting back and you’re thinking, “Well, I’m one of those noncompetitive types. I don’t like competition,” and if you’re thinking maybe this doesn’t apply to you, I still would challenge you because I believe even people who are noncompetitive never go into a situation thinking, “Hey, guess what? I’m going to try to finish last today.”

There’s something that’s innate within us, almost innate, I think it’s a craving to finish great. It’s not just something that’s in our world. It’s permeated the church and the hearts of the church. It’s something that even exists amongst Christianity. Listen to the apostle Paul when he talks to the Church in Corinth, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run? But one receives the prize. Run in such a way that you may obtain it.” We’re all for that, aren’t we? We can do that. We’re not just content with walking this Christian walk. We want to sprint it. We want to soar. We want to go as fast as we can because we want to finish, not just by the skin of our nose. We want the crown of victory. We want to be number one. We want to be the greatest.

You see how this permeates our very hearts, wanting that first position, wanting that idea of greatness upon us? We like to hear messages about how we compete in this race. We like to hear what Paul has in this message saying, “Run for the goal. Receive the prize.” Why? Because we can do that. We can be competitive. We can strive for greatness because that’s who we are.

But then we hear words from Jesus that say, “If you want to be great, you have to finish last.” But that doesn’t make sense. That can’t be right. Jesus has to mean something else, right? Because this is not consistent. It doesn’t seem like that’s the way it should be. Jesus speaks these words that are counterintuitive, counterintuitive to our very cravings within ourselves to be great. I don’t want to finish last. Do you?

When we come face to face with words from Jesus that go against our very nature, we should say, “Let me grab this and hold it for a second so I can understand it more.” It should stop us in our tracks.

We’re not the only ones who have struggled with this, though. This temptation to be great started in the very beginning. Adam and Eve, as they’re in the garden, there comes the serpent next to them who says, “Hey, why don’t you take this apple or fruit? And when you bite of it, you will be just like God.” There’s a promise for something greater. It extends all through mankind, the idea to be greater.

The disciples also were there. You heard the text from Pastor Phillips just a few moments ago. It says the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest. If we just took that passage, we don’t really know what led to the argument, so I want to take you back a little bit before that, earlier in Chapter 9 in Mark. I want to set the stage for you because this will help as you try to work through these words of Jesus as being counterintuitive. So there it was, the Mount of Transfiguration started off Chapter 9, “Now Jesus, before He went up to the mountain, He took three disciples with Him out of the twelve.”

Moms, for you who have had multiple children, let’s say for example you went to your children one day and you said, “You know what? I just need one of you to come with me and we’re going to go and experience something great,” how do you think the other child might react? Probably the same as mine would, “What do you mean? Why can’t I go? What’s wrong with me? Do you not like me as much as you like them?”

Already, they’re pitted against one another because Jesus just chooses three of them out of the twelve to go up on this mountain to experience God Himself speaking, seeing Moses and Elijah. It’s a great experience. Why did He choose just three? That’s the place where the argument began. Three were chosen. The rest, He said, “You can stay here. You’re going to continue the work that I put here before you. You’re going to continue to teach and preach and go out and perform miracles. You’re going to do the things that you’ve seen me do. Now go do it.”

What happens is that Jesus and the three disciples return down from the mountain and the disciples come up to Him and they’re saying, “Alright, Jesus, we had a little bit of a problem. You asked us to do these things, but there was a boy and he had a demon and we were unable to exorcise that demon. Can you help us?” Do you see how this might further the argument the disciples are going to eventually have on the road? Because the three disciples who were chosen say, “You know what? We’re pretty special. We’re pretty great. You were left here to do a simple job and you couldn’t even do it. What’s wrong with you?” And this leads to the argument on who was the greatest among them. Who do you think it would be?

Jesus chose three, left the other ones here to do a job and then they can’t get it done. They argue amongst themselves and then they finally reach Capernaum. Capernaum was the place and then, all of a sudden, Jesus gets His disciples and He says, “So, what were you talking about on the way here?” As if Jesus didn’t know. And what was the reaction? It says they kept silent, probably a little embarrassed, maybe a little bit frustrated by what was happening, by the argument they just had on the road. But they kept silent. No words.

But Jesus knew. He sat them down and He called the twelve. He said, “Come. We need to learn something. I need to teach you about what true greatness is.” And then He follows with this, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus is radically redefining what true greatness is. The disciples had another idea. The disciples said, “Yeah, well, we were chosen. There were only three of us. We have to be the greatest.” But Jesus says that the greatest will be last, the greatest will be a servant of all.

He’s radically redefining what it means to be great and yet, He just doesn’t leave it as a statement. I’m pretty convinced that if it was just a statement, we ourselves would find a way out of it. We ourselves would say, “Well, there has to be something wrong. Maybe it’s the English translation. I bet you that’s it, right? There has to be some kind of thing in here that Jesus doesn’t mean what He says He means because I don’t want to be last. I don’t want to finish in last place. Do I really want to be the servant of all? There has to be a way out of this text.”

And yet there’s not, because Jesus goes on and continues to give them an example of what He’s talking about. Jesus doesn’t want to just leave it as a statement because a statement like this that goes against everything they believe needs further explanation. So this is what Jesus does: As they sit in that household, there’s a child there in their midst and He took the child in His arms and He said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me and whoever receives me receives not me but Him who sent me.” It’s a further explanation. The disciples maybe start to understand a little glimpse about what true greatness is in the kingdom of God.

It’s not simply just walking into a household and every time somebody has a child, you just say, “Hey, kids, how are you doing?” That’s not what it means to welcome. In that society and culture, the children were almost even less than the women of the society. The children would be the ones who would be the servant or the slave at the door. As people would come into the household, they would be the ones to wash the feet and wash the hands if they couldn’t afford a servant or a slave.

What Jesus is talking about when He is saying, “When you welcome them,” it’s a role reversal. He’s saying, “You become the one to gather them in. You become the one to wash the feet. You become the one who prepares them for entrance. You welcome them, you welcome me.”

True greatness is redefined, counterintuitive to what we believe, how we’re looking at our world. True greatness is not absent from our world; it’s just deficient. We see glimpses of true greatness around us. We see glimpses of true greatness in people around us.

With this being Mother’s Day, as I’ve been looking around, usually the week before Mother’s Day, all kinds of people post different articles and blogs and Facebook postings about their mothers. And there are some common threads that I see throughout those who talk about their mothers, about what they’ve meant to them, about what they’ve done for them. There’s always this theme of sacrifice, a theme of giving of themselves first.

For example, who’s the one who is usually the last one to eat? When there are a lot of people over at the house, usually Mom is the last one to fill her plate, to sit down and eat. Why? Because she wants to make sure everybody else is served. She wants to make sure that all the pieces are together so everyone feels at home.

And I believe it’s not with the intention of saying, “Hey, I’m really trying to finish first in the Best Mom Race.” There’s something that’s called motherly instinct and those kind of things, the servant attitude, the true greatness that Jesus pictured is displayed in mothers.

Whose room in the house is the last one to be furnished? Usually Mom’s and Dad’s. Why? Because moms look around and they say, “Alright, well, what needs to be in place? Well, the children have to have all they need. We need to make sure we have couches for visitors when they come over.”

There are true glimpses of greatness, true glimpses that we can see and that we can celebrate. But when we look around, we see that true greatness is not gone. It’s just deficient. We need more of it.

The disciples themselves needed further teaching, as we see going on further in Chapter 9 in Mark, into Chapter 10, there are still some issues with what’s happening with the disciples. Jesus sits them down still and continues to teach them about sin, about temptation, about the families, about children, rich men and young men and He tells about His death. And then it says in Verse 35 in Chapter 10, listen to this story of what happens next. James and John, two of the disciples who went up with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration, they come up to Jesus and they say to Him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” What? And Jesus says, “Alright. What do you want me to do for you?” And they say to Him, “Grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left hand in your glory.” Didn’t He just spend time talking about true greatness? And these disciples come up to Him with this question?

Moms, maybe you’ve sat down in conversation with your kids. Maybe your children were fighting, maybe they were doing something you were trying to correct and you sat them down. You’re trying to teach them something very important, maybe about how to get along, how to be a family, about how you treat each other. You have eye contact and you think you’re making that good connection. Then you stand up and you walk away, and there they go. They do the thing that you just spent time talking about. Have you had that happen? How do you respond? Maybe with some frustration? Maybe at times in anger?

Jesus has to be going through the same thing. He spent all that time. He sat them down and He gave them an object lesson and He said, “Here, these are the things that are important in the kingdom of God. If you want to be great, this is what you must do.” And then He spent time looking at what the kingdom of God was and how if you wanted to be great, you had to finish last. And then these two disciples come up to Him and say, “We want to be the greatest in the kingdom.” Jesus would have been like, “What? Didn’t you just hear any of the words I told you? If you want to be great, you have to be last, servant of all.”

But this is the way Jesus responds: Jesus called them to Himself. He didn’t react in anger or in frustration. He simply looked at their hearts, just as He looks at your heart today and He knows it. When we don’t get something, a difficult concept, words that are counterintuitive to our culture and our very craving, He doesn’t get angry. He doesn’t get frustrated, but He calls you back to Himself and He says, “Listen.”

Listen how Jesus goes on to explain to them, once again, about true greatness in the kingdom of God. He says, “Those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them. Their great ones exercise authority over them, but it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant. Whoever would be first among you must be slave of all, for even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many.”

There wasn’t anything new. Jesus didn’t go ahead and state something new to try to teach them something new, but He repeated almost the same exact words that He used just a short time before. “If you want to be great, you have to be a servant. You have to be last.”

It’s a concept that we should struggle with. We leave here today, we go out on the streets of Me, in the neighborhood of Me, our lives are what we see, about what experiences we have and we tend to just turn it all in and say, “What about me? What can I do? What can I do to be the greatest?”

But when we leave here, say, “We need to start to define how we see true greatness.” We look inside our own hearts and we say, “What is true greatness? How do I see it? Is it like the disciples? Am I chosen? Am I the best? Is it about my stuff? Is it about my possessions, my wealth, my prestige, my power? Is that where we find true greatness?”

And then we need to match that up with what Jesus has spoken today. We need to try to figure out where our true greatness lies and where Jesus says true greatness should be because He says, “If you want to be the greatest, if you want to see true greatness, it’s in servant hood.”

So when you go out, look for moments of true greatness. If you’re with your mom today, celebrate true greatness. Be thankful for true greatness and how it’s displayed; so when we go out, we can start to exemplify what true greatness is. Jesus said, “If you want to be great, you have to be a servant.” Amen.