Proper 20 (September 18-24)
Texts: James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a;
Mark 9:30-37; Jer. 11:18-20
SERVING ONE ANOTHER AS THE CURE TO ARGUING WITH ONE ANOTHER
“. . . on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.” Jesus is teaching the disciples about following the Son of Man, who would go to his death on the cross, and the disciples are arguing about who among them is the greatest. Jesus is offering them the true way to life in human community, and they are . . . what? They’re exemplifying the true challenge to human community, right? Jesus’s way of the cross offers true community, the disciples arguing about who is the greatest exemplifies the constant challenge to that way. (See also the Sermon Notes.)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was leading a seminary under the shadow of Hitler in 1930’s Germany, wrote a little book for his students called Life Together.1 It’s a book about how to achieve true Christian community — against the backdrop of how to do human community that the Nazis were offering. What a contrast, right? The Nazis were offering human community on the basis of a superior race ruling over all the other peoples of the world, a world in which the superior race was locked in a battle with all the inferior races. Who is the greatest was baked into the Nazi worldview. In that context, Bonhoeffer is trying to find the wisdom of the way to true community which Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord, is trying to show us. It will not be based on determining who is the greatest. It will be based on who learns to truly serve others.
Before we go deeper into Pastor Dietrich’s wisdom, along with the guidance from Jesus to his disciples and the Letter of James (our readings this morning), let’s notice our own context. We’ve been trying to be aware of a false alternative to an American way of community that goes by the name of Christian Nationalism. Basically, I would argue that Christian Nationalism shares the same basic worldview of Hitler’s Nazi nationalism, where the decision about who is the greatest is baked into it. With Christian Nationalism, Christians are the greatest. They should be in charge. Everyone else should serve under them. And the kind of Christianity is also pre-determined: their version of it, of course. They are the ones who are wealthy and powerful, which signifies to them that God has put them in charge. And so they further reason that if they are not elected this November, then it’s a failed election because they are supposed to be in charged as ordained by God. I have argued that the term “Christian Nationalism” is an oxymoron. This morning I think we will see a bit more of why. Because the true way to community in Christ does not involve determining who is the greatest. Quite the opposite. It involves who is willing to serve.
Back to Pastor Bonhoeffer and his little book written in 1930’s Germany, Life Together. One of the chapters is simply titled “Service.” Service. It begins by quoting this scene from the Gospels where the disciples are arguing about who is the greatest. On which he comments,
No sooner are people together than they begin to observe, judge, and classify each other. Thus, even as Christian community is in the process of being formed, an invisible, often unknown, yet terrible life-and-death struggle commences. “An argument started among them” — this is enough to destroy a community. It is vitally necessary, therefore, that every Christian community keep an eye on this dangerous enemy from the very outset and eradicate it. There is no time to lose here, because from the first moment two people meet, one begins looking for a competitive position to assume and hold against the other.2
He goes on to say:
All this can occur in the most respectable or even the most pious forms. But it is really important for a Christian community to know that somewhere in it there will certainly be an “argument among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest.” It is the struggle of natural human beings for self-justification. They find it only by comparing themselves with others, by condemning and judging others. Self-justification and judging belong together in the same way that justification by grace and serving belong together.3
There it is. Pastor Dietrich names it. Two basic approaches to life. One is based on self-justification, and the other is based on grace. Grace. He was a good Lutheran, right? One approach to life appears to be our “natural,” or default, way based on a constant struggle between “selves,” in which we try to justify or assert ourselves in relative positions of importance. Life is a constant vying for who’s greater than the other. Or we come to see our lives and selves in terms of grace, as pure gift. And we see others not as rivals but as gifts, too, so that we can genuinely live lives in mutual service to one another. Once again: One approach to life: as a constant struggle against others, as selves vying for position in perpetual self-justification. The other approach to life: as gift, in which selves see each other in grace and mutually serve one another.
The problem, of course, is that one of the approaches seems to be the more natural one, a default approach that seems to be part of our human software, our programming. When we get together, we seem to fall so naturally into arguments about who’s the greatest. Why is that? For the answer to that question, let’s turn for a few moments to the Letter of James — who is also asking the question, “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?” (James 4:1). He seems to clearly be writing about these two basic approaches to life, one he calls “earthly,” “unspiritual,” and “devilish.” The other he calls “from above.” In short, one appears to be natural, and the other comes by the grace of God. And where does the natural approach to life come from? James names it as having to do with our “cravings that are at war within you.” He names “envy” and “self-ambition.” And then he names “coveting,” that good ol’ Bible word from the last commandment, and its relationship to the other commandments. “You want something and do not have it,” he says, “so you commit murder.” Well, that’s the extreme, of course. Coveting more often leads to breaking the other commandments first, like bearing false witness against our neighbors (which we talked about last week), stealing from them, and committing adultery. But you get the idea.
What James is talking about happens to be the anthropology, the understanding of being human, that I’ve talked about with you several times. It was more formally theorized by a man named René Girard, who calls it “Mimetic Theory.” We mime each other, on a subconscious level; we imitate each other. It’s how we learn everything as human beings, which is a good thing, generally. But when we imitate our “cravings,” as James calls them, this leads eventually to becoming rivals for the same objects of our cravings. We covet. We fall into envy and self-ambition. And when our relationships are constantly about being rivals with each other, we begin to argue about who’s the greatest. We argue that we — my self, that is — deserves that object of our mutual cravings, that thing we both want, because I’m better than you. I’m greater than you. Our natural way of catching cravings, desires, from each other is what leads so often to arguing about who’s the greatest.
But there is another way, a wisdom from above. From the God who lovingly created each of us and who desires, who craves, that each of us learn to flourish in our lives. It is the way of grace which begins by seeing life itself as a pure gift from God. So our fellow creatures are not rivals for scarce objects of our cravings. We are gifts to one another who will best succeed by helping one another, by serving one another. This, of course, is the way of love. It’s the way especially pioneered by the Son of Man who was betrayed into the way of humans that leads to killing, but who was also raised on the third day to new life, as the fount of all life, the source of abundant life, here and now. How do we receive such life? By imitation of his service. My body broken for you. My blood poured out for you. Instead of imitating each others cravings in ways that lead to rivalry, we imitate the Creator’s loving craving for all of creation to flourish — which leads not to rivalry but to mutual service. We help one another. We care for one another.
Jesus gives us a very simple symbol about this way of wisdom from above: he places a child in our midst. As parents, we know the commitment of caring for children, of doing what we can to help them to flourish. We can understand, then, what it might be to see each other as God’s children and so seek to help each other to flourish as brothers and sisters. Can it go wrong? Of course. Brothers and sisters fall into rivalry, too. But we know the answer now that our brother Jesus has shown us. Instead of imitating each other’s earthly cravings, we learn to imitate God’s loving desire for all creatures. Instead of always arguing about who is the greatest, we learn to serve one another. Instead of life as a constant struggle against one another, we learn to live the life of grace as gifts to one another.
Let me finish with this short and simple poem from one of my prayer mentors, Steve Garnaas-Holmes:
Whoever wants to be first
must be last of all and servant of all.
—Mark 9.35
Not subservient, not inferior to others,
but helpful, in support, in service.
You’re not indentured or obligated;
you serve in love that is yours to give.
Your task today is to serve others—
not necessarily to please them,
not to save them or “fix” them,
but to offer grace, to bless them,
to set before them wholeness of life,
to open doors that set them free,
to speak a word that heals
and does not dishonor them.
Your task today is not to use or conquer others,
but to offer what love or joy you can
in service to their new life.
Today, for everyone you meet,
God is the chef of grace
and you are their server.4
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, September 22, 2024
Notes
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 5 (Fortress Press, 1996).
2. Ibid., 93.
3. Ibid., 94.
4. Steve Garnaas-Holmes, “Server,” https://unfoldinglight.net/2024/09/18/server/.
