I was once in a sports bar
with friends watching a game; it doesn’t really matter what kind of game it
was. One of my friends was a mammoth fan of one of the teams playing—you know
the sort, wearing the hat and jersey, cheering loudly, the whole drill. A few
beers into the night and a fan of the opposing team a table over starts
heckling him back. At first it’s good natured, then eventually less so. My
friend is not one to stand down to a challenge, but he’s also not the type to
get into a fight over sports. So, he hides that it’s bothering him until,
eventually, he can’t stand it anymore, and, seething, he heads for the doors.
I’ve been party to many such encounters between fans of
various sports teams. I’ve seen it often from all the fans of teams I love to
hate, but I’ve seen it also from Twins fans. I once helped get a Twins fan
removed from a game for abusing a Yankees fan who was there with his family.
I’ve seen it from Gophers fans, rioting in the street when I was in high
school. I’ve even seen it from Bearcats fans, perhaps slightly less
dramatically. Tribalism is alive and well in the sports world.
I thought about this today as I was reading the disciples
arguing behind Jesus’ back about who is the greatest. I don’t listen to sports
talk anymore, but I did in a former life and this is the kind of banal bull
they are talking about all the time. Who is the greatest? What team has the
most storied history? It filters down to the way that fans talk about sports. I
can’t count how many times I’ve seen fans of teams I love who run across the
guy (let’s face it, it’s always a guy) who says, “Yeah, but my team has more
championships than yours!” As if that means anything in the context of who I
might cheer for.
The idea that there are winners and losers is prevalent in
sports and in politics and in business—in basically every aspect of our lives.
The world is full of winners and losers, we are told. Is it any surprise that
the church is struggling to find its place in such a world? Or, I think more
likely, the church has never had a place in the world; it’s just that for a
long time the church was considered one of the winners. If you wanted to move up in society you went to church.
Nowadays, since the Christian faith is winning
less over other tides in our society; the church must fall back on being
what the church was actually supposed to be all along. The Christian church
doesn’t call you a winner; the Christian faith tells you that you are dust. And
dust doesn’t give a hoot about winners and losers. Dust is just dust.
So, when the disciples are lingering behind Jesus arguing
about who is the greatest they are doing what men seem to always do. Thumping
their chests, standing up tall, measuring the size of their egos, and probably
challenging one another to arm wrestling to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt
how great they are. Meanwhile, Jesus is giving them the long eye roll—the one
Elias has started to give me already—the one that says, “Why do I even bother
with these dummies?”
It says in our reading today, straightaway, that Jesus
kept his presence in Galilee a secret so that he could devote his time and
energy to teaching the disciples. You can imagine how frustrating it must have
been for Jesus when the disciples respond by grunting, and puffing up their
chests, and doing their “bro” stuff. That the disciples were apparently teenage
boys gives me hope for Confirmation, really. How much of Jesus’ ministry was
spent trying to wrangle adults acting like children, arguing over which of
their favorite chariot racers would go down as the greatest?
Meanwhile, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant of
all.” And the disciples don’t care, because, honestly, how often do we care? We
still argue over who is the greatest. We treat our heroes like they are gods
rather than the very same dust that makes up you and me. Several billion atoms
of you were likely once part of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther. Carbon dust
is re-distributed around the world in perpetuity, meaning that you are dust of
your ancestors—dust even of those you hate—dust of those you imagine as the
greatest but more often dust of those who are remembered by nobody at all.
The least is the greatest; the
greatest is the least.
In Genesis, we hear that God creates
human beings out of dust and breath—the Hebrew word is “ruach,” which means “breath”
and “wind” and “spirit.” You are spirit and dust, created by God not to be
great but to raise up those who are little, to serve all, knowing that because
you are dust, nobody is greater except by the grace of God that raises them up.
And God doesn’t care about your
favorite sports team. And God doesn’t care about your favorite politician. And
God doesn’t care about all the things you worship besides God. Winning is
losing in God’s eyes; the least are the greatest.
Now, we know that people aren’t
going to abide by this. We know that there are those who will continue to take
advantage of others, who will play the game of “Who is the greatest?” And they
will do it in the most mean-spirited way, pretending to be advocates for others
as they use and abuse whatever people they can to rise to the top. We know
this.
But none of this matters in the end
if we are just dust. So, you get remembered as the greatest? Big deal. In the
end, what does it mean to be the greatest dust if dust is all you are? Not a
whole lot. So, you think you’re great, but you’re also mortal. And on Ash
Wednesday we remind you that you are dust not out of some depressive
reality-check that you are one day going to die, but with an awareness that God
first breathed into dust and gave it life, so that one day it will happen
again.
It is only by God’s
ruach—God’s breath and the spirit within us—that greatness has any meaning. And
that greatness is about becoming servant to all—the least and the last. The
greatest man in heaven has no name, because it has been forgotten by those who
tread on him on the way to the top. The greatest woman in heaven is the one
looked down upon, disparaged, and destitute; you one picked last in gym class
and last for the dance. To be great is not to be accepted; it is to serve.
So, whether you consider yourself the greatest or the
least, you have one calling in following after Jesus: Serve. Serve God; serve
people. Because in the end we’re all dust. We are nothing but by the grace of
God that makes us more. We are dust, but more than dust. It is the spirit—the
breath of God—that promises us more. Yet, dust is still essential. We are not
called to leave the dust behind. Instead, we are promised that God can do
something with dust. God can raise dust and give it new life. Dust is just
dust, the least of all things, the kind of thing we sweep up and throw away.
Yet, it is the foundation for greatness and the stage for something amazing.
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