Being a Servant replaces Pecking Order

Text:  Mark 9: 33 And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you discussing on the way?"  34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.  35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all."    INTRODUCTION: My dear friends in Christ, Have you ever been around a farm? Something I’ve learned about chickens is that there is a definite "pecking order" to the flock. Within the flock of hens, one of them always becomes dominant. She will peck away at any hen that makes her angry or gets in her way. At first, the other hens that get pecked don’t like it and try to retaliate. But when they see they can’t win, they begin to turn on each other. Each chicken that isn’t the dominant one begins to take out her frustrations on the others. And soon there became a pecking order. The next strongest would pick on the next weakest, and so on and so on. Until one hen is left who is the lowliest and weakest in the pecking order. And she has no one to peck at, so she’ll just run away from all the conflict.
I.  Well, that’s something like the situation we have here in the beginning of the text from Mark 9:34.
	A.  As they are walking along the road, the disciples are trying to establish a pecking order among themselves.
			1. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that three of them were chosen to join Jesus on the mountain for His Transfiguration. Maybe it had something to do with the other nine disciples inability to cast a demon out of a local child, while Jesus was on the mountain.   2. But regardless of the reason, something spurred an argument about who of them was going to be the greatest in this new Kingdom that Jesus was constantly talking about. Their question really had to do with how men perceive greatness.
	B.  But this way of greatness also plays out among us today.
			1. Greatness is achieved when you have so much power that you are being served by others.
					a. The more people you have under you, the greater you are. The less accountable to others you are, the greater “greatness” you have. When man thinks of greatness, he thinks of being served and glorified by others. That's why our world idolizes movie stars, rock singers and professional athletes. The sinner in us looks at wealth, publicity and an entourage and says, "Now that's really great."   b. In 1980, the Oscar-winning movie Fame followed a group of talented students through four years at the New York City High School for the Performing Arts. At this performing arts high school, student is striving for “FAME.”  They were all shooting to become true stars. [Video]  One of the many stirring songs from the movie includes these lyrics: I sing the body electric, I celebrate the me yet to come, I toast to my own reunion when I become one with the sun. And I’ll look back on Venus, I’ll look back on Mars, and I’ll burn with the fire of 10 million stars; And in time, and in time, we will all be stars. That’s the dream of each of these young people: To become one with the sun, to become a star.  In other words they were seeking the world’s type of greatness.
			2. The pecking order type of greatness is even seen in our churches.
					a. Churches that are packed to the rafters for several services are considered to be great, regardless of their stance on God’s Word. And yet, the small, rural church that preaches the good news of Christ Crucified that struggles and has to share its Pastor with a neighboring congregation isn’t considered to be all that great.   b. Within the local congregation, we look at our service within the church as something to puff us up with pride. We shout out to God “God, look at what I’ve done for you! I’ve served on the council, I’ve been in the choir, I’ve taught Sunday School.  I certainly put enough into the offering plate. I’m doing pretty Good, Lord, so you must favor me over the next person.” While this line of thinking sounds good and pious, what word there comes up frequently? “I”. Instead of having Christ serve us or being a suffering servant, we have just made our piety into something to boast over. It’s nothing but sinful pride. This idea of greatness shows us that we don’t understand what being great in the Kingdom of God is all about.
II.  The measure of greatness is completely opposite between God and man.
	A. Because God is a servant in every way.
				1. He created Adam and Eve so that He might care for them.
					a. He created them in His own image to be servants to one another, to creation and to their children.   b. When they sinned, He did not respond with raw power and blot them out. Instead, He promised a Savior.  In other words, He promised that He would serve them by doing all the work to deliver them from sin and death.   c. God continues to serve by providing all we need for this body and life.
				2. Therefore God is, by nature, a servant.
					a. And when God measures greatness, He measures it in terms of serving. In other words, in God's eyes, the one who is great is the one who serves others.   b. Sinful man measures greatness in a completely opposite way.  It’s being served, not serving.
	B.   And in this text the disciples betray how far away they are from thinking the things of God.  And in response to their pecking order discussion, Jesus teaches His disciples with an object lesson.
				1. To illustrate his point he took a child.
					a. Jesus' action immediately makes the child the central focus of all attention.   b. The child represents the most powerless, lowest status member of any society. Children still had few legal rights, owned nothing and were completely dependent upon others for all their care.
				2.  This is where that object lesson with the child becomes even more significant.
					a. In order for God to serve us, He had to stoop down to our level, and take on our flesh, in order to care for our needs. Because there was no way that sinful man could possibly pay the enormous debt of his sin before God, Jesus left the splendor of heaven and took on the limitations of our sinful, human flesh. Where we broke God’s laws, He perfectly kept them. He then allowed Himself to be arrested, beaten, falsely accused of things He had not done, and allowed Himself to be crucified. Jesus humbles Himself and becomes last of all in taking our sin to the cross and dying for it there. And through becoming the least of all, He becomes servant of all, and greatest of all.   b. Yes, Jesus, the Son of God, who was present when the world was created, allowed creation to take His own life. But the grave didn’t hold Him, as He rose again 3 days later.   c. And the amazing part about that was, he didn’t do it for Himself. He did it for you and me. He died for that sin so that we may come before the foot of the cross, confess our sins, and hear the good news that we are forgiven.
III. The Lord remains the Servant. He went to the cross and died for the sins of the world in service to all, and He still comes here to serve us by His means of grace.
		A. Through Word and sacrament what He did is made ours.  We are given faith.  We are made His children.  The lowly are raised up to be God’s children.
				1. Our whole service may not look glorious in the eyes of the world.  All we have in worship is spoken words, bread, and wine. And yet our Lord is using these humble means to give to us the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation.   2. He uses this time of proclamation to either bring us to faith in Christ, or to strengthen our faith in Christ.
		B. Now the Lord is a servant who sets you free from sin to be a servant; and that sets you free for a life of servant-hood and contentment. You see, the entire Christian life is a life of service.  The entire Christian life is being made a servant like our God.
				1.  Now we are enabled to go out from here into our everyday lives this week. There we will be servants of our Lord Jesus Christ, as parents, children, teachers, students, employers, employees, and all the other occupations you have been given.  This may not be seem glorious either, but it’s glorious in God’s eyes.   2. Even though we are served by Jesus and receive salvation, we still persist in clinging to the pecking order way of thinking.  I like the way evangelist Bill Glass puts it. Some of you who are football fans may remember Glass. He was All-Pro defensive end for the Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns for many years. Since leaving football he has been involved in Christian ministry. He talks about what he calls “The Baseball Game of Life.” He says that there are three bases which the Christian needs to touch before crossing home plate. The three bases are: First base Salvation; Second base Sanctification or growing into the likeness of Christ; and Third base Service . . . Glass says that some of us try to touch only first base, salvation, without touching second and third.   It’s like an example that pastor Gary Sanford uses. He recalls playing baseball as a boy. Sometimes his friends didn’t have enough boys to play all the positions, so they played a game that they called “Chicken-Base Baseball.” In Chicken-Base Baseball, the runner was not required to run around all the bases. He simply ran from home plate to first base and back. He skipped second and third base completely.   Gary comments that the church is saddled with lots of “Chicken-Base Christians.” These Christians care only about their personal salvation. They run to first base salvation, skip second and third bases entirely (sanctification and service), and take the short trip back to home plate. In reality, that can’t be done. Both Glass and Sanford are right. When Jesus serves us by giving us faith, when we are baptized, when we are brought to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Lord of our lives, that is not the end of the process. It is only the beginning.
CONCLUSION:  Where are you in the pecking order?  We all want to be on the top.  But that’s not even a question that Jesus would have thought of.  Jesus is like His Father, a servant.  He serves and makes us servants too.  Not servants who play Chicken-Baseball, but servants who run all the bases.  Amen.