Frank Farrell was by all accounts a great man. He was an accomplished theologian, the first editor of the Christianity Today magazine. He studied under some of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, and traveled the world writing for various Christian publications. He had a long career as a professor of theology, and he was my grandpa. Frank never had any children of his own. He married my grandmother later in life, but there was never any question that
he was our grandpa.
As a child I knew him not for his accomplishments, but for the way he would greet me when we visited their home in Florida by lifting me up over his head with a shout and a smile, even long after he got too old and I got too big.
I knew him for the way he would lay on his stomach, well into the 70s, to play boardgames on the floor with my brother and me. We had a board game we called the Mountain Game, whose box and rules had been long lost but we’d make up new ones every time we played, and Grandpa Farrell played along as if it was the most fun he’d ever had in his life. I’m sure it was not.
I knew him for the way he’d sit in his office grading papers, surrounded by stacks of books and trinkets from his travels. And I’d sneak in and sit on the floor with my back against the door and tell him stories for what felt like hours about the worlds I’d made up in my little mind. And he listened as if it was high theology, As if I was the most important person in the world.
I knew nothing about the greatness of this man until I was much older, until just before his death. And so I never got to ask him about his career as a journalist, or theologian, or processor. But what I did get to see in my grandpa was an example of true greatness.
Anyone who knew him would know he couldn’t have cared less about being seen as a great man. His greatness wasn’t big and flashy, it was quiet and humble. It was seen in his love for my grandma, who he cared for with tenderness and gratitude until her death. It was seen in his life of prayer, as he lifted up each and every one of his students every day in prayer, using cough drop wrappers to mark his prayers. It was seen in his work as a theologian, journalist, and professor, as he moved close to the stories of marginalized Christians around the world, and wrestled with theologies that made others small. It was his simple, daily faithfulness, his genuine, unselfconscious love, his life lived in deep, consistent for others that were the measures
of his greatness.
He showed me what true Christ-likeness looked like, and I actually don’t know if I would have found the home in faith I have found without
his witness.
I wonder what Grampa Farrell would have said if he had been there on the night of this scripture text, as we find the disciples embroiled in a dispute about which one of them would be the greatest.
Now, it’s important that we set the stage for this story, because it’s even more shocking in light of what comes right before.
This debate between the disciples comes up at THE most inappropriate time, following immediately after the last supper the disciples shared with Jesus. Imagine, sitting at dinner with your friend, your teacher, the man you’ve followed day in and day out for three years. You’ve watched him do wonders and feed thousands. He has a bright future, you think. He might be the one to save you and your whole community from perpetual oppression under Rome.
He has just fed you, saying that the cup and the bread represent his broken body and poured out blood. And instead of being caught in the wonder of this moment, instead of asking what he means, you begin to bicker with your closest friends about which one of you will be considered the greatest of Jesus’ followers. Who will be most faithful, most powerful, most influential?
Even in the ridiculousness of this scene, I have some compassion for the disciples. I bet they thought this conversation was important. Which one of us is going to lead this thing? I be they thought that if they were greatest or most powerful they would do good and needed things with that influence - that power in their hands would be wielded better than those who lorded power over them, or that their wisdom and influence would bring others to follow Jesus, too.
Lots of people want to be influential, or gain some position of power, not for selfish reasons, but in order to do something good for others.
But Jesus knows that power can change us. We can start out wanting to do something good, but as we get closer to the center of things, once we get our seat at the table, we begin to forget what we meant to do when we got there. We start to worry about preserving that power, rather than spending it. We become risk averse, slow to speak on things we used to fight for, not because those things don’t matter, but because we do we’ll lose our place or upset the wrong people. Before we know it, we’ve been changed by the pursuit of something we thought was good.
Jesus tells the disciples that this concern they have with their own greatness makes them no better than heathen rulers. The Gentile kings who dominated people and called it charity.
The disciples’ imagination about greatness had been shaped by these earthly models, kings for whom there was never enough land, never enough power, never enough status to make them content. And Jesus tells his first disciples, the first leaders of what will become the church, “it must not be this way with you.”
Even if the disciples meant to do something good with their greatness, Jesus warns them that their concern with status and importance is antithetical to the kingdom he is ushering in. The more they concern themselves with greatness, the further they get from the kingdom
of God.
In Matthew 18:3 Jesus says that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven we must change and become
like children.
And here he says the greatest among us must become like children and servants. In Jesus day as in our own, Children and servants represent the most marginalized classes of people in society. They have no power of their own to speak of, and are at the total mercy of those who rule over them. They are the last, the least, on the edges of influence,
lacking in power.
And yet, these are the people Jesus says are closest to the kingdom of God. This turns our understanding of greatness on its head. God has a persistent preference for the marginalized. And Jesus makes it very clear that to be with and among the marginalized is not an act of charity, it is salvation. To be in solidarity and friendship with them isn’t a downgrade - it’s deliverance.
Jesus is calling us to something costly here - he’s saying: if you want to achieve greatness in the kingdom of God, you must lose it, you must let go of the pursuit altogether. And even more painful, perhaps, you must be willing to give up the greatness you have, your status, your influence, you must change.
Maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but I’m tempted by proximity to power. I want to climb the ladders, make connections with influential people, sit at tables of influence. I want to be great, too. I want power because I think I’d do something good with it. I think I’d wield it better than a lot of people who have it now. And maybe that is true.
But power cannot buy us keys to the kingdom. Acclaim and accolades, our accomplishments do not get our foot in the door of heaven. And in fact, Jesus said that it’s hard for those with a lot to lose to enter the kingdom of God. It’s not that these things are evil, but because they change us. We start to value them as ends in themselves, and become more occupied with the maintenance of them then we are with being
Kingdom people.
So are we willing to do what Jesus asks of us? To become like the child, the servant? Who have no greatness of their own to claim? And to use the influence we do have instead of hoarding it? To spend our power, to give it away, to hand it back to those who don’t have it yet. Instead of trying to hold on to it, to make it our own?
I find the last verse of this passage to be most hopeful. Jesus says, I am among you as one who serves.
When you look around you, where do you see Jesus? He tells us to look to the servants, the laborers, those who work for the good of others. That is where Jesus can be found. He says to look at the small, the uninfluential, those whose voices are not being heard. That’s where the power of God is at work. He says to look to the fringes of society, to people who are being marginalized, that is where the Spirit of God
is moving
Look to those living lives of daily, simple, faithfulness, not flashy faith.
Dean Spade, in his revolutionary little handbook called Mutual Aid, says, “When we get our sense of self from status we’re in trouble . . . instead we have to cultivate a desire to be beautifully, exquisitely ordinary just like everyone else. This means practicing to be nobody special. . . this is a lifelong unlearning practice.” I’m so grateful for the example of my grandpa. Who never pursued greatness for its own sake, but used every opportunity he had to return that gift to someone else. He was content with his ordinaryness, and he never lost sight of the little ones. He held his achievements with an open hand - knowing they were never for him, but for the good of others.
Perhaps this is true greatness. That we forget it, so that we can be where Jesus is - among the servants, the poor, the children, the ordinary.
Jesus told us where to find him.
Will he find us there? Amen.