Jesus intervened as the disciples bickered over who would end up greatest:
"Kings throw their weight around and people in authority give themselves fancy titles, but it's not going to be that way with you.
Let the senior become junior; the leader act the servant.”
Jesus is warning the disciples that by seeking positions of glory, they are in danger of breaking the unity he is bringing.
He is on the road to surrender and integrity, and ultimately to our salvation.
An earlier version of this same passage also occurs in Mark’s gospel.
There, Jesus says that even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Jesus is conferring a kingdom on the disciples in the same way that God has conferred one on Jesus.
A choice must be made. A distinction is being drawn by Jesus about what greatness entails in his way of seeing it, as opposed to the usual way.
Jesus faced an establishment for which religion was an arm of government. Roman rulers called themselves "Benefactors," as if the sole aim of their rule was the good of the people, while the Jewish leaders collaborated with the empire.
And in the world it is easy to convince oneself that one is doing something for the common good, when one is really glorifying oneself, with worldy feelings.
These worldy feelings thrill us, because they are invented by societies and cultures to make us productive and to give us a purpose.
But not so with soul feelings… Jesus’ kind of fulfilment.
The Jesuit Anthony De Mello explained it very well like this:
Compare your feelings connected to praise and applause with your feelings connected to seeing a sunset or hearing birdsong.
Compare your feelings of gaining a victory about something with your feelings of being absorbed in something.
Compare your feelings of being looked up to, with your feelings of intimacy.
Whenever we are motivated by the desire for self-glorification, attention, praise, approval, popularity, success, power or fame, or a million other worldly mentionables, we are gaining the world and losing our souls.
Jesus was on the road to surrender and integrity and ultimately salvation. But the English word “salvation” primarily means healing, and is related to its derivative, our word, “salve”, which we still use.
So how can we be healed?
There’s a very beautiful parable about worldy feelings along the journey we are all taking.
It goes like this:
“A group of tourists sits on a bus that is passing through gloriously beautiful country, lakes and mountains and green fields and rivers.
But the shades of the bus are pulled down. They do not have the slightest idea of what lies beyond the windows of the bus.
And all the time of their journey is spent in squandering over who will have the best seat of honour in the bus, who will be applauded, who will be well considered.
And so they remain, till the journey’s end.”
Salvation, or healing, may have been achieved by Jesus, but it only comes in us by responding to the invitation to open the blinds.
I remember when I was being confirmed, the curate was trying to teach me about Jesus as unique Son of God, and I mentioned that I believed that in the room we were all unique sons and daughters of God.
“Father Son and Holy Spirit”, he growled at me.
Well now I am a curate myself, and I still believe we are all unique sons and daughters of God, and that everything, and I mean everything, is embedded in God.
Father, that mystery which is beyond us, Christ, the experience which is within us, and Holy Spirit, the transformation and dynamic connection between us all, is in us.
With this understanding, greatness is not something we need to achieve or assert or defend or argue out, but something we just need to accept; we already are great.
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