Scripture: Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13-18; Philippians 4:8; Mark 12:41-44 Series: After Pentecost
Preaching on Mark 9:30-37 and James 3:13-18, Wilson confronts Jesus’ jarring command that whoever wants to be first must be last. Using baseball, his own BJJ competition win, and workplace promotions, he shows our deep desire to dominate and be validated by worldly success. Servanthood is not domination by other means; Jesus challenges the very desire for competition and offers a transformation of desire by the Holy Spirit. Drawing on Augustine, the cross, James, Philippians 4:8, and the widow’s mite, he distinguishes domination from excellence: you can’t win at mercy, prayer, or service, but you can excel at them. Since believers are already loved and already victorious in Christ, the only worthy competition is against one’s old self, and we lift up our neighbors rather than minimize them.
Illustrations: astros-game-with-ephraim, world-series-2019-loss, chess-queen-sacrifice, promotion-to-sally, bjj-competition-win, augustine-cross-yoke, good-friday-scoreboard, widows-mite, marathon-community, kids-wrist-lock-confidence
September 22
Last Place
James 3:13-18
Mark 9:30-37
Who is wise and knowledgeable among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be arrogant and lie about the truth. This is not wisdom that comes down from above but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.- James 3:13-18
They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him. Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” - Mark 9:30-37
My family went to the Astros game last night in Houston. It was Ephraim’s first baseball game and he loved it. The Astros won 10-4. They had 20 hits and three homeruns. There was popcorn and soda and soft pretzels and Orbit the Astros mascot running around. It was a blast. A game is a blast and winning is a blast. Not winning is not as fun. I am glad his first experience of a game was a win, it was very different from my own. Growing up an Astros fan, I grew up with a team that lost a lot. Losing is not fun. The last time I had been to an Astros game was in 2019 in Game 7 of the World Series. They were winning in the Fifth inning and it felt great. And then Juan Soto kept hitting and the Astros were losing and it felt not great. And they lost. And losing wasn’t fun.
There’s only one winner at the end of the year. Even if you get to game seven of the world series, if you’re not the winner, it can be really disappointing; we want them to win. We want to succeed.
A lot of us, when we’re doing things in life, we want to win. We’re not aiming to be last place. Whether in business or family or other activities. We want to succeed. We want our friends and family to succeed.
Jesus’ words are hard here. Whoever wants to be first, must be last. These words are hard and they can be taken in a few different ways. There’s a way that you could think about them where losing is a long term strategy to win, like sacrificing your queen in chess. You could think, “Okay, Jesus, now I know in order to win to be a winner, I gotta show I don’t wanna be a winner, and then now I’ll be a winner.” That’s missing the point that Jesus is trying to make. Servanthood is not another form of domination. What Jesus is doing here is to challenge the very desire to dominate another person. Jesus is challenging the very desire for competition. And when we take it at face value, it is quite jarring. Competition can give a lot of value and purpose in this world. Competition is a goal that people strive for. Maybe not athletically, but in the workplace, you want to get the job, you want to get the promotion. Most professions are pretty zero sum. If you get the job, that means someone else doesn’t. People don’t often willingly think, “oh no, give the promotion to Sally, she deserves it more than me. When the promotion comes, you take it. You help your family or provide for your future. It is an untestable way that the world works.
I’ve mentioned before how I practice Brazilian jiujitsu with my family. We all do it. We’ve all competed a few times. BJJ competitions are strange affairs. All of them have kids sections, which is a lot like any other kid event. And then grown ups do it. Crowds are cheering, sweat is dripping. And then it is your time. You have to make weight and go to the bullpen, or the waiting area. Butterflies in your bellow. And when you’re doing it, it is hard to observe the absurdity of two 40-year-old men to walk out in pajamas basically, and try and choke each other. It’s an intense and surreal experience. I was thankfully successful in the only time I competed. I had one match. It started off very intensely. This guy’s coming at me. The human body has a lot of chemical responses when someone is attacking you. My heart beat shot up. Sweat was pouring from my skin. After a minute, I was able to calm down and go through my plan. I had a plan. I was gonna pull guard, which means I was going to sit down and pull my opponent into me.
I was going to reverse the position so that I would be on top, which I successfully did. I was then in the mount position which is dominant no matter that martial art. Then I isolated an arm. I moved his elbow over his head and then did what’s called an arm triangle or a kata gatame in Japanese. And then he tapped and I won. I won the competition. I got first place and it felt good. It felt really good. It was validating to be a winner.
And then Jesus goes and ruins it by saying, whoever wants to be first, should be last,
I think Jesus is directly challenging this desire to be validated by worldly success. That feeling of vindication is directly contrary to what Jesus is talking about in Mark 9. And we have to be all humble and admit that even if we don’t do anything competitively, that desire is present. In athletics is just right there in front of us, but it’s there everywhere. It is there with our heart, our house, and our lawn. It’s there. When our family is together, that desire is always present because the problem is not athletics. The problem is not jobs. The problem is not schools. It is this question of what is the source of our identity and purpose and meaning. And here Jesus challenges a common conception of ourself and self-worth in a way that is jarring at first, but is ultimately liberating. The wisdom of the world is that the strong will survive winners would be a winner. This is not the wisdom of Jesus.
As Augustine says, “Jesus has subjected all the powers to himself, he was made kings pass under the yoke, not with a proud army but with the absurdity of the cross, not by hacking away with steel but by hanging on a tree, suffering in body, acting in spirit.”1
According to the world, Jesus was a loser. He died. His followers were killed. He didn’t overthrow Rome. The wisdom of the world is that the strong will survive and Jesus did not. He died. So what are we left with?
The truth is that his death was not the end of the story. The scoreboard at the end of Good Friday had Rome 1 - Jesus 0, but that score did not hold out. In losing, in dying, Jesus received the sin of the world. The hatred. The pride. The anger. All of it. He carried it. All of it. And he killed its power on his body. In rising again, he revealed the truth of the universe that God is love and death has been defeated, victory has been won not be domination, but mercy and self-sacrifice.
James is here helpful for us here. James gives us another example. Whoever is wise and knowledgeable among you. Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness, born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish and ambition in your hearts, do not be arrogant and lie about the truth. This is not wisdom from above. What Jesus seeks is a transformation of our desire. Now, to be a follower of Jesus, to be a Christian, to be a student of Jesus, to be a disciple, is to desire differently. And it’s not about our willpower to just change and suddenly no longer like the things we used to like. But it is about an acceptance of the Holy Spirit’s transformation in our life and the building up of habits infused with grace, habits of mercy, habits of service, habits of prayer. You can’t win at mercy. You can’t win at service. You can’t win at prayer. Wisdom from above is first, pure then peaceable. Gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits without any trace of partiality or hypocrisy. Again, Jesus is offering us a life of integrity where our value and purpose is not found in the results of the competition. You are already loved. You already have attained the prize. So now how should we live?
There is a distinction to be found between excellence and domination. Striving for excellence in what we do is a very Christian notion. We can look to Philippians of four eight.,
whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
You can’t be dominant in mercy, but you can be excellent in mercy. You can’t be dominant in prayer, but you can be excellent in prayer. You can excel at it.
You are already loved. So live a life of excellence based on the love God has for you and that can take place whatever results you get. Let us think about Jesus’ observation of the gift of the widow’s mite compared with the Pharisees who are loudly proclaiming all the money they give. The widow gave two pennies, but it was more because it was all she had. She wasn’t competing against the Pharisees.
Giving, as well, can be turned into this competition. Churches are pretty bad about this and have been bad in the past. Giving is a virtue, like prayer, like mercy, a virtue without competition. We give out of response to God’s prior gift, to venerate and honor God not to compete. We seek to look at our own life and what can we do? How can we exceed in our yesterday.
If there is a competition in this world that Jesus honors, I think it is between ourself and ourself. It is between the new person and the old person. It is between the you of today, the you of yesterday and the you of tomorrow. Do you have the same desires today as you did yesterday? Then pray God wash you free? Do you wish to excel more tomorrow than you do today? Then honor God with your time by doing those things.
When it ultimately comes down to it, our competitive activities are not wicked or evil: it is about where our hearts lie. I’ve often found running to be one of the most poignant prayer times in my life. I had surgery right when I went to ministry and I couldn’t run for almost two years, and it was really, really hard spiritually to not have that time with God. I did two marathons as a runner, as a younger man. I wasn’t trying to win. But what I noticed about the marathon is the astonishing community that erupts around it. I was doing a hard thing with 30,000 other people and their presence made it less of a challenge. And that’s really like the beauty and the gift of athletics and a lot of human activity. It is an opportunity for community or in Paul’s words, koinoneia, fellowship, and coming together, us sharing with each other.
That’s ultimately why my family has kept going to Jiujitsu; it is because of the source of community that we’re not trying to win world championships. It’s good to be able to protect ourselves. It’s good that my kids have confidence. They know that no bully is going to be able to terrorize them physically because they can just wrist lock him. And if you don’t know what a wrist lock is, you can ask Dominic and he’ll show you. It’s not pleasant. That confidence is great. Some of you participate athletics, still, and it is a great that source of community, but what Jesus is calling out is our hearts: where our hearts lie. When Jesus says, the last shall be first, he is not offering a technique of domination by other means. He is giving us an opportunity to let go of worldly glory, to let go of the old person and embrace the new where we are already victorious in Christ. You are already victorious in Christ, so live into that victory. Take a new step this day in Christ. Your victory does not minimize your neighbor. In fact, you are all victorious together, and unless we lift up our neighbors, we lose sight of Christ’s offering to us. So let us receive Christ’s life and victory from the cross and lift up the people around us in order to honor God’s gift. Let’s lift them up with service. Let’s lift them up with prayer. Let’s lift them up with our gifts. Let’s lift them up with thanksgiving and worship together,
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes
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Sermon 51.2. ↩