Chapel Talk, February 7, 2007
James M. May
Our scripture passage today is from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, 22: 24-27:
A dispute also arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is the greater, one who sits at table, or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
You know—as much as I might like to deny it, I must say that at times the Apostles appear to have been real knuckleheads!! Take, for example, their actions recounted in this passage from St. Luke. Let me remind you of its context: this scene occurs in the midst of the Passover celebration, at the Last Supper, the night before Jesus was to suffer and die on the cross. Their master and Lord has just shared his last meal with them, and in doing so has just instituted the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist. In that post-dinner conversation, they begin fighting among themselves about which of them is the biggest shot—what incredible timing! After being hand-picked by Jesus, living with him on a daily basis for nearly 3 years, watching him perform countless miracles and signs, listening to him preach and teach, and now just having heard from him concerning his impending passion, how in the world could these guys start bickering about their own status and ranking? How embarrassing for them, and how discouraging for Jesus this must have been.
Those of us removed from the scene by 2 millennia, as armchair spectators of the situation, and imbued with a good bit of our own prideful arrogance might certainly be tempted to think, had we found ourselves in that upper room, we would have certainly comported ourselves differently. That, indeed, I must confess, is my almost automatic reaction when I read this Gospel pericope. But if I examine my conscience carefully, I find myself soon forced to admit that I am all too often just as clumsy and crass and prideful about my position in the world as were the Apostles at that Last Supper; and I think most of you would agree with me about yourselves. Indeed, if we think on it, we are not really as far away from the actual situation as we might believe. By virtue of the saving waters of our Baptism, our Faith teaches us that we are, in fact, every bit as much chosen disciples as were the Apostles. And like the Apostles, we have the privilege of partaking in that sacred banquet with our Savior. But how many times, like the Apostles, have we finished that holy meal, only to walk out of the door of the church and engage subsequently in some sort of contest designed to prove our own superiority? The tendency to promote oneself above others seems, in fact, to be almost endemic to the human condition; though I do believe that it manifests itself more strongly among some groups than others.
Consider the academic environment in which we live and move daily; it is almost a natural breeding ground for providing opportunities for us to contend over our own personal greatness at the expense of others. There are three thousand extremely intelligent, artistically and otherwise gifted students studying together on this hill. You have been at the top of your HS class, school leaders, extraordinary performers and athletes, selfless volunteers. The college hopes to provide all members of this community with the appropriate means to excel in their work. But wherever that much talent is present, self-absorption with the question of who is the greatest can also be great. True, outright arguments among friends, such as the Apostles’ dispute over who was the greatest, might not be commonplace in the classroom, the Commons, or in the corridors of Ytterboe, but much more subtle, and indeed more insidious jockeying takes place commonly among friends and associates, in hopes of asserting one’s own superiority on any number of fronts.
This tendency might even be worse among faculty and staff. I was reminded of this fact last month, when I participated in the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in San Diego. Can you imagine this scene: approximately 3000 Ph.Ds in classical philology descending on one city, gathering in one hotel, and for four days giving presentations on the most recent scholarly and often arcane discoveries concerning the ancient world? If you haven’t already noticed, most classicists are detailed-oriented people in the extreme, obsessed with solving obscure textual and literary problems, skilled in verbal and intellectual repartee. On average they have spent 6-8 years on an advanced degree, which requires, merely for the basis of their advanced research, excellent knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin, as well as good knowledge of French, German, and usually Italian or Modern Greek as well. Most of their lives have been consumed in proving their own theories or disproving the theories of another. With a little bit of imagination, you can surmise what a concentrated collection of such individuals might be like when it comes to debating about who might be the greatest among them! And while I may have witnessed only one or two who were actually openly disputing that, I experienced countless more subtle, and indeed more insidious, expressions of exertion of superiority during that weekend—if you get my drift. Unfortunately, our own campus is not immune to such displays.
Please do not construe my remarks as a commercial for mediocrity, or an endeavor to discourage any of us from excelling in what we attempt to do. In fact, there is another Gospel parable about talents and their use that guides us sufficiently in that regard. And indeed, it is clear that God calls us to employ our talents to be the best that we can be in all aspects of our lives here on earth. Rather, what I am talking about here is the kind of wrangling and jockeying for position that, like the quarrel among the Apostles, often results from our own hubristic attempts at exerting some sort of real or more often perceived superiority over our peers at their expense.
The irony involved in such cases, as Jesus is quick to point out and which is often noticed by people who take the time to observe carefully, is that generally those who strive the hardest to appear the greatest often end up in reality being the greatest only in terms of their arrogance, their foolishness, and their pride; through their actions they have actually become the least, rather than the greatest among their brethren.
Of course, there is in the Gospel yet another model of behavior, personified well in another disciple of Christ, the one whom we call St. John the Baptist. You remember him, the forerunner of the Messiah, the voice crying in the wilderness, the cousin of Jesus. That John was a charismatic figure is without doubt. Our Lord Himself chose to inaugurate His public life at John's hands in baptism. Disciples flocked to him in droves and in fervor to the degree that they were, on several occasions, ready to declare him the Messiah. Indeed, in speaking to the crowds about John, Jesus himself exclaimed, “I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John”—talk about a letter of recommendation and an endorsement of greatness! All of this must have been pretty heady stuff, and it must have given John a real feeling of accomplishment and power. A man of lesser mettle might have yielded to his own pride and ego; but not John--no, not John who, at perhaps the height of his influence and power, in the words of the Gospel, “confessed, he did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’” John repeatedly turned away the crowd’s invitations to be considered the greatest, and emphatically insisted that he was not worthy even to tie the sandal strap of his Savior. Finally, when approached yet again by his followers on this question, he uttered six of the most powerful words in Scripture: “I must decrease; He must increase.” Think of that, this one simple phrase turns the entire human drive for recognition of greatness on its ear, and lays out for us, in a manifestation of the Christian paradox, the true way for each and every one of us to become truly great, namely by magnifying the source of all light and life at the expense of our own egos.
Jesus himself, as was his wont, vividly illustrated this point precisely, and precisely in response to his Apostles wrangling about who was the greatest. Let us return to the scene of the Last Supper. St. John the Evangelist, in his Gospel account, adds great detail to the picture that St. Luke paints in our passage today, as Jesus talks about the leader who actually serves. John (13: 3-17) tells us that
Jesus…rose from supper, laid aside his garments and girded himself with a towel. He then poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded… When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
Can you imagine what an effect this humble act of servitude must have had on those men, who moments before were arguing over which of them was the greatest? Their Lord and Teacher, the incarnation of greatness in every single human aspect, humbles himself as a servant and performs the menial task of washing their feet. In less than 24 hours, he would surpass this example of humility by suffering the most degrading sort of death possible, in his loving service to all humanity.
I began my meditation by accusing the Apostles of being knuckleheads. Indeed, as we examine their actions more closely, both in this instance and in many others recounted in the Gospel narratives, we come to realize that their knuckleheaded words and deeds are generally simply reflections of the human condition as it found itself after the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve. With intellects darkened and wills weakened, their failures are reflections of the failures of all of us who walk in this worldly veil of tears. And in that, I suppose, we should find great comfort. For if we look to subsequent events, we can see that Jesus’ example at that Last Supper exerted a profound effect on those same Apostles, whose egos were jockeying for rank and position just minutes before. After their moments of weakness, they became true servants; they preached the Gospel of love and service to the whole world, and became living witnesses (as the word “martyr” signifies) to the Gospel. Imperfect and knuckleheaded as they certainly were at times, they were no more so than each and every one of us. Yet the example that Jesus gave to them obviously hit home; they stopped worrying about who was greatest among them and, like their Master and Lord, they girded themselves for love and service, love and service that would change profoundly the history of the world. Through their decrease and His increase, they actually accomplished great deeds, and as a result became truly great, taking their place at his right hand.
My dear friends, let us pray together today that we might find the strength in the midst of our personal struggles to appear great, to proclaim rather with John the Baptist, “I must decrease, He must increase”; and, like the Apostles, who ultimately put aside such concerns, to follow the example of our Teacher and Lord, by girding ourselves as leaders for love and service to one another. In the final analysis, as the Baptist knew and the Apostles discovered, this is the path to achieving real greatness, if not always by the standards of this world, certainly by those of the next.