Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Putting Others First (Matthew 20:20-28)
Date: August 11, 2024
One of my favorite cartoons from my high school days was Disney’s Recess. It ran for an impressive 10 seasons and even had a couple of feature-length movies to its name. The thing that made Recess so magical was how it captured the innocence, optimism, hope, and wonder of that special time in every elementary kid’s life. It may have only lasted for 20 minutes out of an entire day, but it was pretty unfailingly…well…magical. Do you remember playing on the playground at school when you were growing up? I think what I remember most about that time was playing kickball. All the boys would gather in the corner of the playground with a ball, split up into teams, and then argue for the next 15 minutes about the rules before we finally got a little bit of playtime in.
Isn’t that how things like that so often go? We’re so committed to getting our way, that we will sacrifice all kinds of things, including things that are good and fun (like 15 whole minutes of kickball), in pursuit of that end. When we decide that we want something, there aren’t many things that we will allow to get in the way of that. Good sense, other people, close relationships, steady employment. Depending on just how badly we want something, all of those and more can become little more than obstacles waiting to be removed so that we can lay our hands on the holy grail of getting what we want.
One of the most incredible things I got to witness at camp a couple of weeks ago didn’t happen during any of the major events of the week. It unfolded in between those times when the kids, and especially the three boys I had charge of almost 24/7 were having to kill time without the aid of a screened-device. They made up at least three different games that carried them through the week along with a handful of other activities. Such game-making efforts among boys of that age often devolve quickly into increasingly acrimonious squabbles about rules and what’s fair. With this trio of boys, though, and really all five of the kids, I lost count of the number of times they were magnanimous in both victory and defeat, graciously conceding lost points and good turns by one another, even when such acknowledgements came at the immediate expense of their own advancement. It was amazing. It was also wildly countercultural. Normally, we operate by the principle of wanting to win so badly that we’ll bend the rules or outright cheat in order to get ahead. We live in a culture that tells us over and over again to put ourselves first. That’s all normal, but it’s not living with the end in mind. Jesus gave us a different—and better—example to follow.
This morning, we are in the fifth and final part of our teaching series, Who Do You Want to Be. For the last few weeks we have been taking a look at the world through the lens of its forthcoming end. All of the various New Testament authors were pretty unified around the idea that this world isn’t going to last forever. One day it is going to come to an end when Jesus returns to bring judgment against sin and to restore creation to its God-intended glory. The question that has been driving our journey is one to which the apostle Peter gave word in his second letter. Given that all of this is the case, how should we be living now?
After establishing that it does in fact matter how we live here and now in the first part of our journey, we have spent the previous three weeks talking about ways we can live in such a way as to make a positive difference in the world around us in light of Christ’s return. We need to be good neighbors, good citizens, and to put the concerns of God and His kingdom ahead of our own. In this last stop, we are going to look at a really practical way we can put God’s kingdom and the concerns of His kingdom ahead of our own. This amounts to following God’s lead in putting others first.
The idea of putting others first is something that appears multiple times across the New Testament, but it’s something Jesus said to the disciples toward the end of their time together that I want to direct our attention to in particular this morning. If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you, join me in Matthew 20:20. The disciples still didn’t really understand what Jesus’ plans were, much less who exactly He was. They grasped and believed that He was the Messiah, but the full nature of what that meant, divorced from its cultural costume, still escaped them. Because of that, they were starting to jockey with one another for position in the kingdom they understood was coming.
James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, had long been part of Jesus’ inner circle. They knew that Jesus spent most of His time with the two of them and Peter. And they were brothers. They were close with Peter, but eventually people were going to be given positions in Jesus’ new administration (which they assumed was coming because every kingdom has an administration of some sort). Blood was thicker than water. They wanted to be sure they got what they felt was their due. As a result, they concocted an interesting little scheme. In fact, their whole family was apparently involved in the plot.
Check this out with me: “Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons approached him with her sons.” I’ll pause here long enough to note that other Gospels have just James and John coming to make this request. The harmonization here is simple. Their mom actually made the request, but she made it on their behalf, so it was as if they had gone themselves. No contradiction. Just different ways of presenting the same facts. In any event, “Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons approached him with her sons. She knelt down to ask him for something. ‘What do you want,’ he asked her. ‘Promise,’ she said to him, ‘that these two sons of mine may sit, one on your right and the other on your left, in your kingdom.’”
There it is. Jesus only had two hands. There were three guys in His innermost circle. They couldn’t all three have the peak positions. James and John wanted to be sure they had those for themselves. Peter could do something else important, but they wanted the top spots. Isn’t this how we think? We want the best positions for ourselves. Everyone else can have other good stuff, that’s fine. But we want first billing. Us first, others second. That’s how the world has pretty much always operated. Yeah, there have been a handful of notable exceptions like parents wanting the best for their children (which we see on display here), but generally speaking, we put ourselves first. Even as parents, though, we are still remarkably adept at taking care of our own needs before those of our kids. And this is only right, isn’t it? After all, you secure your mask before you help your kids with theirs on an airplane in the event of a drop in cabin pressure.
This, however, is not how Jesus’ kingdom works. Once the request was made (presumably at least somewhat in private), Jesus set about helping them understand this. Stay with me in the text at v. 22: “ Jesus answered, ‘You don’t know what you’re asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ ‘We are able,’ they said to him.’” They didn’t say this because they were actually able. They didn’t have a clue what “the cup [He] was about to drink” was. They assumed they did because they thought they understood what kind of a kingdom He was going to bring. They didn’t. His was a cup of suffering and persecution and death. That was most decidedly not a part of their plans at this point. If they really knew what was coming, they might not have been so bold as this.
Still, Jesus knew they would indeed have a role to play in His kingdom. It just wasn’t going to be like they expected it to be, and the nature of the role was something His Father would yet direct. “He told them, ‘You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right and left is not mine to give; instead, it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’” Who His Father prepares for such service doesn’t always fit our expectations for quality candidates as His eventual choice of the apostle Paul to fill such a role would make abundantly clear. Roles of prominence in God’s kingdom are for those who are willing to put His kingdom first rather than their own interests as we talked about last week.
Well, power plays behind the scenes like this don’t tend to stay behind the scenes for long, especially in the context of a fairly small group. Before long, the rest of the disciples learned of James and John’s play for power through their mom. Needless to say, they weren’t thrilled about it. Verse 24 now: “When the ten disciples heard this, they became indignant with the two brothers.” You think? Who are you to ask for such a position for yourselves? You haven’t been any more faithful to Jesus than we have. You haven’t sacrificed more than we have. Plus, Jesus doesn’t even really rank you two as highly as you think. Remember the whole calling down fire from heaven on the Samaritans episode? You were ready to blow up the village, and Jesus had to talk you down. That kind of a response wasn’t like Jesus at all. Do you really think He wants to give a prominent position or a bunch of power to a couple of hotheads like you when He’s fully in charge? What happened to our all ruling equally together? Aren’t there twelve tribes? Well, there are twelve of us. So much for that equality, you jerks.
Jesus could see things spiraling out of hand, so He grabbed the teaching moment by the horns and did some vision casting with them on how His kingdom would actually operate. Listen to this. “Jesus called them over and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them.’” Pause here for just a second. Why did Jesus start this point with “you know”? Because they knew. He wasn’t delivering new information to them here. He was simply describing to them a situation with which they were already familiar. They knew that was exactly how Greek and Roman leaders behaved. They had heard the stories. They had perhaps even seen it with their own eyes. That kind of behavior was normal. It was expected. It was what everyone else did. If the context here were a bit different, Jesus could have said something like, “If the rulers of the Gentiles lorded it over them, would you do it too?”
That kind of behavior is still par for the course nowadays. Think about how many different shows have featured the powerful executive whose position and prestige resulted in his looking down on the people under him, demeaning them, treating them like they are disposable, and so on and so forth. And in each one of these instances, I suspect that not even once have you witnessed the profile and thought, “That is a totally shocking characterization of someone like that. I’ve never in my wildest dreams imagined that someone in that kind of a position would do something like that.” Why have you never thought that? Because it’s how we expect people in those kinds of positions to behave. We expect people who have leverage to use that leverage for themselves. People with advantages will use those advantages to advance their own interests. People with connections will tap those connections to construct their circumstances in a way that best suits their desire for them. That’s normal. We know that people exhibiting no connection to Jesus behave that way just like the disciples did. Because it’s how they behave. People connected to Jesus have enough trouble not behaving that way.
This is not, however, how His kingdom was supposed to work. People who are living their lives like He is in charge and will be in charge even more fully in the future take a different approach to their leadership and personal advantages. “It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Like before, all of Jesus’ words matter. He introduced this whole idea by saying, “on the contrary.” This was on purpose. What He was proposing to His disciples here (and through them all the rest of His followers ever since) was contrary to the way the world normally operates. It was the opposite of that. God’s kingdom very often calls us to behaviors that are the antithesis of how the world generally works. That’s not an accident. The world doesn’t reflect the holy and righteous character of God. It is the opposite of that, in fact, a corruption of it. When God calls us to His kingdom, that is a call to emulate His character rather than the character of the world.
And what Jesus has to say here really does present the opposite of how the world typically works. Great people have servants, they don’t serve themselves. The wealthier and more prestigious a person believes himself to be, the greater the likelihood that he will hire people to do work that most of the rest of us do for ourselves. Or perhaps to put that more plainly, in the kingdoms of this world, poor people don’t have servants; they are the servants.
That is just the opposite of God’s kingdom. There, the greatest people are in fact the ones who serve. In the next part of that phrase, Jesus switches to the word “slave.” That’s a loaded word for us today, so let’s talk about it for just a second. The word translated, “servant,” is the word from which we get our word “deacon.” In the broader culture of the day it referred to someone who waited on tables like at a restaurant. Today, not many people wait tables at a restaurant because that’s what they want their career to be. Most do it as a kind of holdover until they can position themselves to do what they really want. None of that means servers aren’t important people who are deserving of our respect and appreciation. If your mind went there, you are missing the point. This was and is generally considered a lowly position in the culture.
The other word Jesus uses is the Greek word doulos which is typically translated as “slave” like it appears here. It can also be translated as servant. The two concepts which are fairly distinct in our minds today occupied much of the same lexical space then when everyone was either a servant or freeman. Servant and slave was basically an interchangeable concept for them. This is because they thought about slavery in rather different terms than we do.
Jesus’ point here was not to make any kind of a statement about servanthood or slavery as institutions. It was to make the point that in His kingdom, the greatest and most celebrated people are those who are the most committed to advancing the interests and needs of the people around them. This is just the opposite of the various kingdoms of this world in whatever form they have happened to take. In the kingdom of God, the greatest people don’t have servants, they are the servants. But—and this is really important—Jesus isn’t calling us here to anything He isn’t willing to embrace Himself. In fact, He did embrace this. Rather profoundly. When He said, “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” He meant it. That’s what He was doing and would yet do.
Jesus came to serve. He spent His whole life serving. As God incarnate, He was always the greatest person in whatever room He happened to be in. And yet, as the apostle Paul so wonderfully observed, He never considered “equality with God as something to be exploited [for His own benefit]. Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a…” What? “…servant”—that is, a doulos, a slave—“taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death—even to death on a cross.” In other words, He made Himself the ultimate servant—the servant who was willing to lay down His life for the sake of those He was serving.
Yet what did Jesus say to the disciples? These people who serve are what? The least in the kingdom of God? No, the greatest. He said that in God’s kingdom service is the way to greatness. In the countercultural ethos of God’s kingdom, the greater someone wants to be, the more that person must serve. The ultimate servant, then, would be the one who achieves the most superlative greatness. Well, what else did Paul say about Jesus and His willingness to serve? “For this reason…” That is, for the reason of this service He rendered to us of laying down His life on our behalf. “For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” If you want a high position in Jesus’ kingdom, service, putting others first, is the way to achieve it.
Okay, so then, where does this leave us? It leaves us in the same place it left the disciples that afternoon as they were working to wrap their minds around this totally new way of thinking that Jesus was laying on them. If we want to live our lives in the context of Jesus’ eternal kingdom—eternal, meaning that it will persist longer than this world; it will be the kingdom that still exists when all the kingdoms of this world have come to an end—then we have to learn to live by the ethos of that kingdom rather than the ethos of the kingdoms of this world. And according to the ethos of Jesus’ kingdom, putting others first is what makes us great.
Notice that Jesus didn’t question the desire for greatness in us. As long as we recognize that God’s greatness is the greatest greatness there is, desiring to reflect more and more of His greatness is a fine thing to do. In fact, we should desire that. He made us to desire that. Jesus here is simply telling us how we can see that desire realized. If we want to be great in the kingdom that will last, putting others first is how we will achieve that. Or, to put that in the same terms we have been using throughout this journey, living with the end in mind means putting others first.
Yes, but what does this look like practically? Well, it starts with taking an inventory of what kinds of resources and advantages and leverage we have within our possession. From there, we start taking stock of what the needs are—both real and felt—in the community where God has planted us. Once we have these two pieces of information, we start to look for the ways we can put our resources, advantages, and leverage to use for the benefit of the people around us. That is, we start looking for ways we can serve them.
Getting this right also means starting the long, difficult, and often painful process of learning to say no to ourselves so that we can say yes to the people around us. Now, this doesn’t mean making ourselves into doormats. Self care is a real thing, and it is possible to burn ourselves out to the point we aren’t any good for anyone else. We have to take care of our needs. I’m talking about those desires on our part that go beyond basic needs. I’m talking about the wants that are for extra things, the plans that are about intentionally advancing our image, the desires for more simply for the sake of more. Those are the things we have to learn to subordinate to the needs of the people around us. When God has given you access to some resource of His (because all the resources are His first), the reason is so that you can use it to bless someone else. Living a kingdom kind of lifestyle means actually following through on that. Living with the end in mind means putting others first.
At first this will probably feel pretty good and it might even get celebrated. But it might also be hard and go totally overlooked. We stick with it either way because that’s what Jesus did. That’s what kingdom living looks like. That’s who we want to be if we want to be people who live lives of the kind of significance that lasts. Living with the end in mind means putting others first.
Doing this will put us right in line with Jesus’ call we talked about last week to seek God’s kingdom first. God’s kingdom is all about elevating the people around us and helping them become more fully who He made them to be. When we do that, when we put others first, we are simultaneously putting God’s kingdom first. Doing that will also tend to make us better citizens and better neighbors. As a matter of fact, putting others first puts us in line with Jesus’ command to love one another after the pattern of His own love for us. Putting others first is the way people will know we are His followers. In the long run, there’s literally nothing that can go wrong with taking this kind of an approach to life. And, in the end, putting others first will leave us more ready for Jesus’ return than not. Living with the end in mind means putting others first. Let’s commit ourselves to being that kind of people, to being that kind of church, so that the world can see what real kingdom living looks like. Living with the end in mind means putting others first. Let’s follow Jesus in doing just that.