Five or six times I have started writing this week’s commentary and five or six times I have erased what I had written and started again. It is hard to let go of how the world’s kingdoms measure success and victory and how God’s Kingdom measures success and victory.
After James and John messed up (Mark 10:38), the other ten disciples got all bent out of shape with James and John (Mark 10:41). (I suspect they would have been angry with me, too; I like the way James and John are forthright in stating what they want.) Jesus did what He often had to do when his followers got all mixed up: He called them together and explained things (Mark 10:42).
Basically, Jesus told them that things in the Kingdom of God were not as they thought they were. Kingdom value is measured not by greatness, but by servanthood. And Jesus Himself modeled that life (Mark 10:45).
The King James Version translates Mark 10:43 like this: “But so shall it not be so among you; but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister.” I am an ordained clergyman and around here we clergy are often referred to as “ministers.” This got me curious about the word that that the King James Version calls “minister” and the New Revised Standard Version puts as “servant” and the New English Bible says is “willing slave.” The New Testament word is diakŏnŏs. It has a number of English expressions, including deacon, diaconal, table waiter, menial attendant, or teacher (as well as minister or servant or slave).
Any way you slice it, Jesus says that greatness in the Kingdom is measured by being for others. One becomes fully the person God has called him or her to be when that person is fully for others. That does not mean we deliberately become weak; in fact, it means we seek to be strong in order that we may be more effective servants. The greatness is not in the strength; it is in how we use that strength for others.
“Being for others” does not mean the same thing for each person in each setting. For example, James dies for his faithfulness (Acts 12:2) and there is no report that his brother, John, was martyred. God used both as servants. To such ministry we all are called.
