Luke 22:24-30

The disciples are again arguing about which of them should be regarded as the greatest.  And again the normal status system is rejected.  They need to learn that the leader should become like the servant.  They need to learn that the greatest should have no more honour than the least.  They have still not learned this lesson about service being the path to greatness.  They are still looking for power and supremacy, rather than simply taking their place and doing what they can to serve.  It is one of the saddest things in the Gospel story that the disciples could argue about who should be recognised as most important in the very shadow of the Cross.  What did it matter who exactly had which place?  And yet, though it is easy for us to condemn them, it is equally easy for us to do the same kind of thing.  We want our place, our position, our status.

Service is so important that it is of the essence of the Kingdom.  When we get caught up in thoughts and arguments about greatness, not only do we fail to serve as we ought, but we do God a grave disservice by letting him down and discarding his priorities.

The world needs service, and the world knows it.  A garage once claimed: we will crawl under your car oftener and get ourselves dirtier than any of our competitors.  One of the strange facts of life is that one place where there are often arguments about place and status is the church.  The world needs, and recognises, service.  Sometimes the church messes up by just arguing.  Let’s try and avoid that.

We might put it this way.  We can focus on giving.  Or we can focus on getting.  But the strange thing is that, if we do focus on getting, there are so many important and valuable things that we will miss out on.  There are different ways in which we can explain this, but they include what Jesus said in Luke 9:24/5 – For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.  What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self?

Jesus, as you would expect, does not approve of the arguments about greatness.  He tries to point through and beyond them.  He points out that the greatest must be like the youngest and the leader must be the servant.  Jesus calls us to perfection, even though he knows we won’t make it.  But that’s the aim.  Who really is the greatest?  Where is true greatness?  God may well surprise us as we grapple with that question.  But what matters for us is not a call to greatness, but a call to service.