Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
Proper 20 B - Sunday, September 19, 2021
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Before the physical cross is laid on Jesus, the way of the cross is present in the Gospel of Mark. It is this Gospel’s central theme and image of speaking about discipleship. This way is nothing less than the remaking of the world by self-offering love and thereby the abolishing of the world’s idols of power and domination. With the coming of Jesus, no more will fear and violence claim power, but now welcome, sharing, a new community of brothers and sisters will subvert empires and plant hope that no politics can stop, no evil defy.
The powers fight back with crosses and swords, and inflict the pain of their hatred of life. In Jesus the cross and sword and the terror that come with them is unmasked, exposed to the light of truth. Jesus has a word for the cycle of fear and revenge - hell. Only something - someone - more powerful can break the cycle. The way of the cross is the end of this cycle, the end of hell itself, in the power of a promise. The promise is Christ in us and in one another which is a foretaste here and now, today, of the new heaven and new earth that are on the way.
The stories which show the disciples not understanding, not having faith, which in Mark are numerous, are not there so that we will look down on them from our perch of superiority. Their hardness and dullness is a cautionary tale to us that we are always susceptible to the temptations of the way of rivalry rather than the way of humility. Without steady vigilance, we will slide into the easy, broad road of judgment and prejudice. Being last of all and servant of all will require intentionality and discipline.
The words of Jesus become so familiar that we have to imagine the initial shock and crisis of such a saying as this - choosing to be last of all and servant of all. He himself will be the model and supreme sign of this self-giving in his death and resurrection. What the disciples would have heard as Jesus’ failure and defeat in crucifixion, is, within the new life of the way of the cross, the triumph of love and the abolishing of the powers of death and hell. If Jesus can begin to open the minds and hearts of the disciples to a new way of seeing the world, of Jesus doing something grander and more monumental than they could dare think or imagine, they will begin to see the cross as the saving of the world that it is.
The disciples are beginning to understand that their rivalry with one another is not how Jesus invites them to be, yet they are still attached to status and the avoidance of suffering. Jesus’ response to their arguing with one another about who is the greatest is extraordinarily beautiful and insightful. Notice that Jesus does not rebuke the impulse to greatness, he rejects their divisive application of the impulse. He replaces a greatness that seeks power over others, at their expense, that believes we can only gain status if others lose it, with something even greater. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” He is not saying that wanting to be first is the problem. He is saying that using that desire to gain power for myself while taking it from you is the problem because it is not true or real.
The goal to which we aspire is not domination of status over my brother or sister, but to imitate Jesus in the way of the cross in self-offering love. He is saying, “Yes, compete with each other! Seek to outdo one another! Strive for the place of greatness - the last place!” This is not as the world competes, not as another status game or as a way to show off and become thought of as special and elevated, but in order to build up the whole community, even at the expense of acclaim and praise focused on me. The way of the cross means rising to the lowest place and thus lifting up all of us together.
What might the practical implications of this imperative from the Lord look like? Choosing to be last of all and servant of all is an ethic that is intended to be real in the concrete. Even our smallest acts participate in the cross. We can rest in the acknowledgement that while the way of the cross is the way of joy and community, it is also always disorienting and disruptive to that part of me that wants to know, control, and define. This is the heart of the drama of trust, risk, and conversion.
In Tools for Peace, Abbot Andrew Marr writes of the Rule of St. Benedict, “Benedict envisions a community where everybody outdoes everybody else in caring for everybody else. This is quite a contrast to the usual mode of human competition, where people seek to come out on top of the pack by making everybody else a loser.” He goes on to say, “We prefer nothing to Christ only if we prefer everybody else to ourselves, since Christ preferred everybody to himself.”
Jesus was the Messiah, but he did not have a Messiah complex. Since we believe that Jesus was the perfect model of human life, living last of all and servant of all, we can learn from observing him how it really works. How did Jesus live this out? He showed up. He gave freely of his energy and compassion. He also needed to renew himself and was aware of and attentive to his needs. He took time for rest and silence and solitude. He said no. Being last of all and servant of all in no way ever means dismissing or sacrificing our presence, our voice, or our value to anyone or anything.
Jesus reminds us that being last of all and servant of all sometimes takes the form of speaking the hard truth, naming what is uncomfortable, making an unpopular decision, disrupting and stopping what is harmful and abusive and corrupt. Last does not mean conformity and servant does not mean passivity. When we are freed from the game of rivalry and chasing status, we can take risks for the sake of the greater good because there is nothing to defend, no agenda other than that we are all growing and thriving.
The way of the cross gifts us with a new vision of identity. Jesus is not a mascot to defend nor is his call a weapon to inflict pain. He is the one who leads us into seeing the worth and value of the invisible and lost. The old labels of insider and outsider, worthy and unworthy, acceptable and unacceptable are burned away under the radiant light of a love that has abolished such ways of being. In the way of the cross, fear becomes identity, rejection becomes community, division becomes welcome - the welcome of Jesus himself.
Amen.
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