Sunday 22nd September – Family Service led by Anne Walton
Anne’s Theme and her Reflection was on Greatness.
Greatness as defined by Wikipedia was, “ The concept of a state of superiority affecting a person or object in a particular place or area. Greatness can also be attributed to individuals who possess a natural ability to be better than all others in one, or perhaps even many things”.
Not said by Anne, but a truism, is that one person’s choice of a great person is another’s “pain in the butt” – best to be done away with. Certainly, Anne thought that being ‘great’ could be dangerous, citing the fate of Julus Caesar. John F. Kennedy, Joan of Arc and the Apostle Paul. And of course, Jeremiah, the subject of the first Reading a prophet who was the subject of plots to kill him. (Perhaps she might also have included Jesus himself?)
Anne thought that perhaps we should ask ourselves what it really meant to be great (She expected a different answer from each of us). And she also wondered how Jesus would describe greatness. The second reading from Mark 9 gave us an answer. “Whoever wants to be first must place himself last of all and be the servant of all”.
Anne was clear that it was almost certainly not how she’d lived most of her life, especially her early life. And it was probably not what most of us had been told or taught when we were growing up. We might well have heard that particular verse in Sunday School or in church – and even agreed with it. But then, wow!, along came Monday, the start of the working week. For most of us, she suspected, greatness on Mondays was about being ‘Number One’, a winner, a successful person. It was about power, control, wealth, fame, reputation, status and position.
Had we ever seen the losing Cup Final team dancing around, shouting, “We’re Number Two”. She doubted it.
And could we imagine a political slogan about making Great Britain or the U.S.A a servant of other countries? Not a campaign winner! After all, who wanted to be servant of all? That was for the poor, the uneducated, the minorities, the foreigners, and those we could safely get away with paying less than a living wage. Being last and servant of all wasn’t what we usually strived for.
If, as Jesus said, being great – holding the number one position – meant literally being last of all and servant of all, then it was obvious that we’d completely misunderstood what greatness was. And Jesus’s disciples hadn’t understood that greatness any more than we had. When Jesus had asked them what they’d been arguing about along the way, the disciples had fallen silent, because they had been embarrassed.
Jesus’s question had been asked in the privacy of a house, a deliberate act to move the conversation inwards, to invite the disciples to reflect on just exactly what it meant to be great. He was presenting the disciples with an image of their better selves.
Didn’t we all wish we could always be our better selves? Jesus does the same for us today. He presents us with an image of our better selves. He’s not saying we shouldn’t or can’t be great in the eyes of humanity, but he is asking us to reflect, and maybe reframe our understanding of greatness.
And Jesus provided an answer by taking a little child into his arms saying, “Whoever welcomes in my name one of these children, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me, but also the one who sent me”. Anne thought that child was a symbol for vulnerability, powerlessness, and dependency. A child in Jesus’s day had no rights, no status, no economic value.
Greatness, Jesus said, was welcoming and receiving into our arms one like this, regardless of his or her age. Greatness wasn’t found in what we’d accomplished or gained for ourselves but in what we’d done and given to (as Matthew described it) “the least of these”. True greatness in God’s eyes never put itself in a position of superiority over another. It was not about me, my nation, my people, my religion my politics, my bank account, my house, my job, my accomplishments, my reputation, or my status. No, our greatness was revealed in our service and care of others. Greatness came to us when we shared with others who had nothing, or much less than us, and had nothing that they could share with us. Greatness came when we forgave someone who’d neither asked for forgiveness nor changed their behaviour, when we refused to carry bitterness or envy toward another, when we responded to the needs of others, when we refused thoughts and actions of hatred or prejudice.
Greatness wasn’t something to be achieved or earned. It was a quality that arose within us when our lives were properly in balance, and we stepped into our better selves. Jesus’s kind of greatness happened in the very simple, very ordinary, and the very mundane parts of our lives. It often went unnoticed and unnamed, but it was still there. Greatness was always a choice that God set before us.
And tomorrow was Monday, the beginning of a new week. Anne wondered who the child would be that Jesus would set before each of us. Would we choose to strive for earthly greatness, or opt to pursue Jesus’s greatness – the greatness of the last and the servant of all.
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 