Perspective: Followers of a Servant

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Followers of a Servant

For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45 (NRSV)

What if there's a bigger picture?

What if I'm missing out?

What if there's a greater purpose

I could be living right now

Outside my own little world?

From "My Own Little World" by Matthew West

One day, some people brought a blind man to Jesus, begging Him to restore the man's sight.  Jesus anointed the man's eyes with His saliva, placed His hands on the man, and then asked him if he could see anything.  The man replied, "I can see people, but they look like trees, walking."  Basically, he was able to see again, but he was still extremely nearsighted.  Jesus placed His hands on the man a second time, and then the man was able to see clearly.¹

Assuming that Jesus is indeed the Son of an all-powerful God, does it seem strange to you that He would have trouble restoring the man's sight?

Sometime after that, when Jesus and the Disciples were traveling together, the Disciples got into an argument about which one of them was the greatest.  When Jesus confronted them and asked them why they were arguing, they weren't very eager to tell Him.  He then said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."²

Later on, two of the Disciples asked Jesus for the privilege to sit at His right- and left-hand sides after He is inaugurated as King.  The Disciples believed that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah who would restore Israel to its former glory and usher in an age of peace, and these two wanted positions of power and honor when that time finally came.  Understandably, the other Disciples were angry with them for their attempted power grab.  Apparently Jesus' previous lesson about greatness had not yet sunk in for any of them.³

Jesus told the Disciples that they should not aspire to be like the rulers of this world who constantly exalt themselves over their subjects.  Again, He says to them, "Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all."  He then tells them that He, the Son of God, did not come to be served but rather to be a servant and to give His life for the sake of others.⁴

Perhaps Jesus' apparent difficulty in getting the blind man to see clearly is actually symbolic of His difficulty in getting the Disciples to clearly see important truths about the Kingdom of God.⁵  In the same way that Jesus had to place His hands on the blind man more than once before he could see clearly, Jesus had to tell the Disciples more than once about the nature of true greatness.  We've all heard Jesus' strange sayings about the Kingdom of God - that "the first shall be last" and that to be great is to be a servant - but I suspect that, like the Disciples, most of us don't really take it to heart.  We smile and nod when we hear such things, but I doubt that most of us really believe that true greatness is servanthood.

Jesus put this principle on display most vividly on the evening when He shared His last meal with the Disciples before He was arrested by the religious leaders.  During supper, Jesus surprised the Disciples when He stood up, took off His coat, tied a towel around His waist, poured some water into a bowl, knelt down, and washed their feet.  When He finished washing their feet, He reminded them that disciples are not greater than the one they follow.  In other words, if He wasn't too good to serve people in such a way, then neither were they.⁶

Later that night, Jesus said, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father."⁷  So often Christians talk about Jesus as if He was merely playing the part of a servant to be an example to us, and they speak as if God is actually greatest narcissist in the cosmos.  What if Jesus was not pretending when He knelt down to wash His disciples feet?  What if that really is what God is like?  At the end of the book Uprising, Erwin McManus writes,
The way of God is the path of servanthood.  This is not a test to see if we deserve better.  It is God offering us the best of Himself and the best of life.  God calls us to the servant way because God is a servant.  Sounds like heresy doesn't it, to call God a servant?  It seems demeaning to call the Creator of the universe something so common and so low.⁸

Have you ever done a good deed for another person, only to feel as if you were the one blessed by the experience?  It didn't quite seem fair, did it?  After all, you did what you did so that the other person would be blessed.  It seems unfair because we are so used to living in a world structured as a zero-sum game.  In order for some to win, others must lose: the equation must always be balanced.  You went out of your way for someone, intentionally making yourself the loser so that the other person would be the winner, yet your plan backfired because you ended up winning.

Believe it or not, if you have ever been in such a situation, you have actually experienced life in the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom of God is not structured as the world is now: it is an altogether different kind of game.  It is totally unbalanced, for there are no losers but only winners.

It is difficult to see the greatness of being a servant when we are stuck in a zero-sum, "either-us-or-them" mindset.  If we want to follow Jesus in the path of servanthood, then we must change the way we understand reality.  McManus writes,
Is it possible that the reason the servant will have the primary place, that the least will share in God's greatness, is that here is where God has been all along?  If we push ourselves to the top, we are pushing ourselves away from the presence of God.  When we move ourselves to the place of servanthood, we join God in His eternal purpose.  When we serve others, we look strangely like God.⁹

Many Christians, like the Jewish people in Jesus' day, understand themselves to be chosen by God, but so often we forget that to be chosen by God is to be chosen for a purpose and not for privilege.  The two Disciples who jockeyed for positions of leadership in Jesus' kingdom didn't realize that it takes a servant to be a true leader, for leadership is in itself a form of service.  A leader is not merely someone who gets to call the shots: a leader bears a great responsibility for the well-being of the people she leads.

If we claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ, we must open our eyes to the fact that we are called to serve, for we are followers of a servant.  We must not be blind to the ways of the Kingdom of God and stuck in old ways of thinking.  We are gifted so that we may give, and we are blessed so that we may be a blessing.


Notes:

1. Mark 8:22-26 (NRSV)
2. Mark 9:33-35 (NRSV)
3. Mark 10:35-41
4. Mark 10:42-45 (NRSV)
5. J.R. Daniel Kirk and E. Scott Jones.  "Mind = Blown."  Homebrewed Christianity's LectioCast, 10/19/2015.
6. John 13:1-17
7. John 14:9 (NRSV)
8. Erwin Raphael McManus.  Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul.  2003, Thomas Nelson Publishers.  pp. 250-1
9. Uprising, p. 251

Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles was painted by Meister des Hausbuches around 1475.