The Royalty of Service

October 18, 2009

Proper 23

Mark 10:35-45

I can hear it today as clearly as I heard it 37 years ago. It was a warm May night in a crowded Idaho church building. Our small graduating class was seated on stage enduring a rambling one-hour-and-forty-minute sermon. An hour into the sermon I heard the voice that only I would recognize. My mother, making sure my nearly deaf father would hear, “whispered,” “Why doesn’t he just shut up and let them graduate.”

That was my mother, always on the lookout for her son. And though Mark doesn’t mention it, Matthew informs us that this exchange between James and John and Jesus was instigated by their mother. She was looking for positions of power and prestige—possibly positions of posterity— for her boys. Instead, what the brothers received was a life lesson in leadership we all need to hear.

The leadership Jesus models and inculcates in His followers is servant leadership. The royal leadership of the kingdom models the heart and character of Jesus.

I. The servant-leader submits.1

Paul Cedar, in Strength in Servant Leadership (p. 69), says, “The temptation, even among church leaders, is to go on an ego trip and to work at building our own kingdom rather than the kingdom of God. Such leaders are more concerned with their own agenda than God’s. They seem to enjoy controlling the lives of other people more than setting them free through faith in Christ.”

Jesus’ teaching is clearly the opposite perspective. He submits His role to the role of His Father (v. 40). Leaders in the kingdom are challenged to cultivate and maintain the same humble spirit of submission not only to the Father but also to the needs of people. Jesus models such a spirit of humility in becoming a servant (Phil. 2:5-11), and Paul calls for us to do the same (1 Cor. 9:19-23). Even impetuous Peter realized in his mature years that power and authority belonged to God, not man—not even leaders (1 Pet. 5:1-4).

II. The servant-leader serves.

Hanging on the kitchen wall in a small church in Northern Indiana is a ceramic dustpan with the adage, “Blessed is he who cleans up.” I’ve seen that come to life as elders in the church washed dishes, preachers swept floors and deacons emptied trash.

God stresses task, not position; service, not office. Hans Kung, the Roman Catholic author says, “Authority in the community is derived not from the holding of a certain rank, not from a special tradition, not from old age or long membership in the community but from the performance of a ministry in the Spirit.”² Wise churches turn servants into leaders; they recognize the futility of seeking to make leaders into servants.