Servants of All - A Question of Greatness

            Emily Dickinson wrote: “I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody too? Then there’s a pair of us-don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog. To tell your name the livelong day to an admiring bog!”

            To admit to being nobody, even today, is slightly blasphemous to the culture of success in Western culture. We absorb the call to succeed and strive for greatness from the time we are little children. Who was it that said, “Winning isn’t everything…it’s the only thing” I think it was Woody Hayes, the legendary coach of Ohio State (at least if you grew up in Ohio). We seek greatness and at least success, in our careers, our marriages, our families, for our children; it haunts us if we fail, and it puffs us up if we are successful. It is all pervasive. We hesitate to return to High School reunions unless we have a good story of success to tell. You might think that churches were above it, but of course, we are part of the culture like everyone else. Who is serving the biggest or most successful church? Jokes about pulpit envy go around among preachers. There was an article about the pastor of Heritage Church, who makes $700,000 a year and has a Cadillac and a private plane. To fail is devastating, and leads to many suicides.

            So we shouldn’t be surprised that success and competition reared its ugly head among the Disciples. James and John, the brothers Zebedee listen with the others as Jesus discusses his eventual death and suffering, and somehow miss the point and proceed to ask Jesus if they can sit with him when he comes into his Kingdom. They want to be first, to know they are important to him. It’s a logical mistake. Jesus says he is the Messiah and their assumption is that this means he will be successful, powerful, a King, and they want to know that they will be part of that glory. We have an advantage over James and John since we know how the story ends and we can even laugh a little when Jesus says to them, “You don’t know what you are asking for”. But they insist they are able to follow him, so he grants them their wish.

            The other Disciples hear this and they are jealous, another perfectly normal and common emotion. They want some of the greatness too. They think that worldly success is what Jesus has to offer. And Jesus then warns them that to be great in the Kingdom of God means something very different. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant,” Jesus says, “and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” Jesus turns greatness on its head, something we are still trying to get through our heads. To be great is to be a servant. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

            On whatever level one looks at it, Christianity is about negating self, service to others, and humbling ourselves. I have been reading wonderful book about  mysticism and meditation about Thomas Merton called Merton’s Palace of Nowhere recommended to me by Bud Wonsiewicz. The title tells a lot about it. Merton said that we make ourselves the center of the universe. He calls the self that shapes ourselves as the center the “false self”. He said instead of seeking God we tend to seek to build up this false self. The false self is  all about the success that I was talking  about earlier. We want our false self to be successful at everything, even at creating a self that is acceptable to God. We  seek to make ourselves worthy of God and then present this successful self to God. Wrong. Our true self is what is left we strip away all of the layers of the false self.  We must have a daily death of the self and open ourselves to compassion  for all. God creates the true self that is who I  am at my deepest level, and my goal should be to lose the false self and find the true self who has nothing and is nothingness.  Merton said, “The trouble with monastic  life is that too many enter it with the hope  of becoming a mystic. What they do not realize is that in being a mystic you are not more than you were before – you’re less. In fact, there is nobody left by God.” The path to God, according to Merton, does not add anything to the ego, but is a path of self emptying and “self naughting”. What is left without self? It is Christ within. He said, “the plain life as lived by a Christian…in the spirit of faith, is  a life redeemed by Christ. It is Christ’s life…When you eat breakfast, Christ is eating breakfast. When you go to work, Christ is going to work. When you meet your brother…Christ meets Christ”.

            So at the level of a mystical relationship with God, we are called to a path of self negation, but this is also true at the level of our daily life. Living with other people means not always having our own way. It means a life of giving and sharing. We are first to b e servants of others. The message of Jesus turns the human view of success on its head. It is in humility and service that we are most in harmony with God.

            There was a curriculum of adult Bible Study that  I used at a former church that was kind of progressive Bible 101 class. I can’t even remember its name now, but I remember the symbol that was plastered all over the books and videos we used - it was a symbol that was aimed at capturing the meaning of our Bible in light of the life of Christ as the Messiah. It was a figure of Jesus, on his knees, serving, washing the feet of the Disciples, but wearing a crown: the slave king. He was the Messiah, the one closest to embodying the love of God, the king, and this meant that he lived like a slave, the servant of all. To be great, you must be the servant of all. The last shall be first and first shall be last.

            To put a human face on this I wonder if you have ever heard of  Brother Damien? He was not famous, but was a Catholic brother who went to the Hawaiian Islands as a missionary many years ago. He saw people with leprosy being gathered up and taken away and not returning and he asked what happened to these people. The islanders explained that for the good of the community they were taken to Molokai, where they were dropped off to live in a colony, segregated from the rest of humanity. It was rumored to be a violent, lawless place where the law of the jungle reigned and people  lived out their lives in horrible, unsanitary conditions. Brother Damien traveled with one of the ships taking the lepers to  Molokai and as the ship  drew near, the wretched community came down to the shore to retrieve what supplies and packages the ships had brought. These were thrown into the water, for the sailors wished for no contact with the lepers. Then the sailors began to force the lepers on the ship into the  water to swim to  shore if they could, and those who  refused were thrown into the water. Brother Damien on his own accord, leapt into the water and swam ashore. He was to spend the rest of his life serving the lepers. Eventually his efforts led to the building of strong, sanitary buildings and a hospital to treat leprosy. In the end, he contracted the disease and died there on Molokai.

            “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave to  all.” The way to self fulfillment is through the negating of self and the path of humility.