Who’s the Greatest?
Who’s the greatest? It’s one of our favorite questions. We ask it across all spheres of life. Sizing things up. Evaluating. Comparing. We all had a blast watching the Summer Olympics this year, and “who is the greatest?” is the primary question to every event. Who would have the best day and win? But it wasn’t limited to the particular event on a particular day. We were watching the likes of Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, and Lebron James. Each already living legends in their respective sports. All of them have been in the never-ending conversation of the GOAT: Greatest Of All Time. Are they the greatest at their particular sport? If not, who is? Lebron is amazing, but is he better than Jordan? I would have loved to see them play one on one in their primes. Ledecky is clearly the best female swimmer of all time. If it weren’t for Michael Phelps, she’d be the greatest swimmer of all time, period. Simone Biles is without question the greatest gymnast of all time. Some have made the argument that she’s the greatest overall athlete of all time.
Greatness. We want it. We strive for it in different ways in our different arenas of expertise. We want to be associated with it even if it is only on the level of fandom. I confess I am still so relieved that Tom Brady left the Patriots when he did so that they would not be able to break the Steelers most Super Bowl wins record. The Patriots tied it, and that’s quite enough, thank you very much. I, along with every other Pittsburgher, derive a sense of pride and importance from the Steelers overall greatness.
The same is true about even more subjective areas like music and art. We turn it into a competition of who’s the greatest selling artist? Who’s painting sold for more at auction? Who was the most influential with their work? Even though they may be from completely different eras or use different mediums. And of course there’s the question: Who is the greatest rock band of all time? That one is easy though, it’s Led Zeppelin. Who’s the greatest vocalist, Freddie Mercury or Robert Plant? The greatest guitarist? Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Jeff Beck, Tom Morello, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Clapton, Prince, Chuck Berry, etc., etc.?
We’re obsessed with this question. Who’s the greatest? So, it’s no surprise that in between the heightened moments of listening to Jesus preach and teach, healing people, and performing miracles this is what was on the mind of the disciples too. Mark tells us that as they walked from place to place with Jesus the disciples debated and argued about which one of them was the greatest (9:30-37). The disciples are us. They are glory seekers like the rest of us, even if that glory is only by proximity as followers of the true GOAT. We can say with confidence that Jesus being the Son of God is truly the greatest of all time. The disciples have at least some understanding of this at this point in Mark because the Transfiguration has just happened. Jesus took Peter, James, and John up the mountain, and they witnessed a glimpse of his full glory. Mark, having heard this account most likely from Peter himself, describes it this way: [Jesus] was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them” (vv. 2-13). I’m surprised no one has named a laundry detergent “Transfiguration” yet. Talk about whiter whites!!!
Then they saw Moses and Elijah, the great heroes of Israel, talking with Jesus in all his glory, and if that wasn’t enough…the voice of God the Father speaks directly to them saying, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him” (v. 7). They are getting the message that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the true GOAT, and what do they do with this information? Mark says they obeyed Jesus’ command not to tell anyone about it until after the resurrection, which they had no idea what that meant (vv. 9-10). But later on, they are fighting with the rest of the disciples about who was the greatest. Now, the text doesn’t say what inspired this argument, but I’d put money on the fact that the other 9 disciples were a little more than jealous of Peter, James, and John. And I bet those three struggled to act as if no big thing happened up on the mountain. They probably tried their best to play it cool, but I bet the others could tell they had witnessed something pretty dramatic. I know I can tell when something big has happened to my close friends even when they are trying to keep it a secret for whatever reason.
At the very least, if I had seen what Peter, James, and John did, I would certainly be feeling pretty good about myself, that Jesus chose me to go up the mountain with him. It’s not surprising then that the conversation would turn to favorites and who was the greatest. From their perspective at this point they still think Jesus’ main mission was to come and deliver Israel on the geo-political level. He was going to kick the Romans out and establish his literal earthly Kingdom in Jerusalem, and they were going to be his inner-circle, his main advisers, his cabinet as it were. And so, they started jockeying for position. Who gets to be his second? His right-hand man?
And this is put into high relief by Jesus himself. First, he is not hiding anything from them. He tells them right before this that he was going to die and rise from the dead after 3 days (vv. 30-32). And this is not the first time he has said this to them, but they don’t get it. They don’t understand and are too afraid to ask probably because they don’t want to the idiot that doesn’t know what Jesus is talking about. After all, each of them is trying to prove that they are the greatest of the group. You know that old saying, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
Jesus knows what’s going on and when they arrive to their destination, he asks them what they were talking about on the road. And he gets crickets. No one says a word. Mark recounts,
And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me” (vv. 35-37).
Jesus exposes their theology of glory, their thirst for greatness, and he blows it up. It is important to note, he is not correcting behavior here. He’s not simply saying, “You’re doing it wrong. Be the last so that you can be first.” That wouldn’t actually do anything to their heart, which is where the real issue lies (Matt. 15:16-20). He is pointing to himself. What he says is impossible for them to accomplish, but it is indeed what they need. Jesus is the one who would become last of all and servant of all. He would take the sin of the world upon himself. He leans in more on what he has been telling them, what they are too afraid to ask about. He takes the disciples to the cross. Jesus would become sin itself for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). He is first in the Kingdom of God, but he laid down all that glory they saw on top of the mountain to save them and us from our never-ending obsession with our own greatness (Php. 2:1-11).
Master of illustration, Jesus points to a child as a picture of the fruit of his work for us. a picture of helplessness, of need, of dependence. Someone that the disciples would look at as lesser than, unimportant, a distraction from the real important stuff. They will do this very thing in the very next chapter of Mark’s gospel (Mark 10:13-16). He contrasts their thirst for greatness, their love for comparison with a child who has no illusions about his dependence. A child knows it needs love and care to survive and thrive. It needs someone outside of itself to provide for it. This is the theology of the cross…a life defined by the grace given to it. Jesus shows that our thirst for greatness and glory sets us against our neighbor. They become someone we are trying to compete against, to rise above. But the theology of the cross puts us in the same boat with our neighbor. When you understand yourself as a child, as dependent, as needy you have compassion on others. You want to share the grace you have received with them. Jesus is telling his disciples and you and me, “This is who you really are. You need me this much, and this is why I have come, to be for you all that you need. To do what you cannot do for yourself. To put an end to your thirst for greatness, and to set you free to just be who you actually are, my child.” Amen.
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