Mark 9:30-37 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday, September 26, 2021 “Correcting False Ambitions”
What do you want to be when you grow up? We start asking our kids and friends questions like that at a relatively young age. And they often want to be like someone they’ve seen on television: an astronaut or a sports star, maybe a cowboy or a superhero. Many of us made a decision some time ago about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Perhaps it affected what we did in school and the opportunities that we chose to pursue. But why did we decide what we did? How do you decide what you want to be when you grow up? What’s the criteria you use? For many, a big part of it is can I make a living doing this? Or maybe the question is “How good a living can I make?” There are other questions we ask about our decision: Will I enjoy what I do? Do I have the ability to do it? What will other people think of my choice? And that is often a big factor, isn’t it? We want to be respected. We want to be admired. We want to make a name for ourselves. In the account in front of us today, we hear the disciples talking about their futures. And their thinking sounds an awful lot like this sort of approach to the question “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Their discussion centers on a certain sort of ambition. They want to know who might be the greatest. And Jesus takes all of their thinking and speaking and turns it completely upside-down. He tells them what it really means to be the greatest. He tells them what godly ambitions look like. The discussion with Jesus happens in Capernaum, a town near the sea of Galilee in the region where Jesus and his disciples had spent much of their lives. This particular time in Galilee would prove to be the last for Jesus before his suffering and death. And on their way to Capernaum, the disciples had found themselves in an argument. So Jesus asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” And they didn’t answer. Jesus knew all along what this argument was about. He wanted them to think about it. Maybe Jesus heard the argument. Maybe he didn’t need to hear the argument because he simply knew what it had been. The argument had been about who was the greatest. This was not long after Peter, James, and John had been with Jesus on the Mountain of Transfiguration. Jesus had at other times taken those three disciples along with him. Maybe they were pointing out to everyone else what a special relationship they had with Jesus. Maybe Peter was reminding the disciples about how he was always the one to speak up, so of course he was the greatest among the disciples. Maybe they all had huge dreams about what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus and what might come out of it down the road. But who is the greatest was not the question the disciples should have been asking. It was a selfish question. It was a self-serving question. It spoke about fame and admiration. It spoke about success and power. Wo is the greatest meant who had risen above all the rest and succeeded even more than they had? And that is a question that makes perfect sense to sinful people. That’s a question that really comes naturally to us all. We do want to receive praise and honor. We do want to be recognized and applauded. We play that game all the time of comparing ourselves to someone else. Why do they get something I want? Why does he seem so popular? Why is she so adored? Why don’t people see how great I am? We saw a similar attitude in our first lesson from Miriam and Aaron. They saw how Moses was the leader of God’s people, how he spoke God’s Word, how everyone recognized him. He was their brother. Why did he deserve it more than they did? After all, God had spoken through them on occasion as well. Who was the greatest? They had ambition for themselves. They had jealousy. They were sinful, selfish human beings like the rest of us. We can see how prevalent these false ambitions are. We can see how natural they are to sinful people. Even Jesus’ closest disciples were prone to these attitudes, and that even after Jesus was trying to explain deeper