Luke 9:46-48 Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest. (47) And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child, and set him by him, (48) And said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.
Greatness is a quality for which most humans strive in some aspects of their lives. So much so, that at times, we do not even care at which we are considered “Great”, as long as we can call ourselves Great. To prove that point, just take a glance at the Guinness Book of World Records. Most of the “accomplishments” listed therein are just plain silly, but someone set it as a goal, strove, practiced and eventually beat the old record to get their names in that book of records....all for the sake of being “Great”.
God, however, sees greatness in a wholly different way that we do as humans. God wants us to achieve greatness, but not for the longest fingernails or the length of time we hop on one foot. He wants us to be great by his standard!
In our text today, we see humans being human. When you get a group of twelve men together and have no authoritative or predetermined hierarchy, you will have inner squabbling to determine who deserves to be the leader. Leadership isn’t just desired because we as humans want the responsibility of leadership. We want to be leaders because, by worldly standards, the leader is perceived to be the greatest. The problem with this kind of “reasoning” is that we will determine our own standard that assuredly makes ourselves out to be the best. We can see a humorous example of this in a cell phone commercial that is currently running on TV. A family is trying to determine who should get the most data minutes. The father says that the oldest should get the most minutes (because that narrowly helps him). One person says, whomever has the most braces on their teeth. One says whomever has the least hair. And so on.
We tend to view greatness in the same way. Can you imagine the debate that those twelve men had to help make their individual case to be the leader after Jesus was gone? “Well I was the first apostle picked”! “Well our parents knew each other as kids”! “We we are from the same Jewish tribe” And on and on. But none of those superficial, arguments have anything to do with greatness.
After a while, Jesus stepped in to the conversation to insert some real facts into the debate. What does God see as great? Jesus says that to be great in God’s eyes is to be the best servant! To be the LEAST as the world sees it. It is not a human trait to be the bottom of the totem pole...to serve quietly. To give instead of receive. To be happy and not complain in the face of adversity. To put others first and ourselves last. That is what Jesus did! If we want to be great, we must be as much like Jesus as we possibly can.
Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan
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