If you’re not already having a sense of déjà vu due to the pandemic, this week’s passage should make you think that we’re repeating ourselves. We’ll be looking at Mark 10:32-45. In this passage, we find the 3^rdinstance of Jesus foretelling His death and resurrection. The last time we saw Him do this, we were in chapter 9. And staying true to form, the disciples reacted to His teaching here in chapter 10 the same way they reacted in chapter 9…by getting into a squabble over which of them will be the greatest. Since this is the last time that Jesus will touch on this subject before His triumphal entry into Jerusalem in chapter 11, we get one of the clearest articulations of how the Kingdom works.

And as many of us know, the Kingdom of God operates contrary to the way the world would expect it to. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last. Those that want to be leaders must be servants first. Our passage this week is one of the places where we get those doctrines. Jesus was tearing down the old paradigms of greatness and building a wholly new paradigm of greatness. So when the disciples squabbled about greatness, Jesus essentially told them that the word “greatness” doesn’t mean what they think it means. Instead of power, glory, and influence, it was about service, humility, and others.

This paradigm shift is pretty familiar to most Christians, and yet, I think that we tend to live in the old paradigm. What does it mean to radically be about Jesus’s definition of greatness in a culture which prides itself on giving everyone a voice to be influential? We tend to want followers, subscribers, likes, shares, and retweets. We tend to want to be the one that people listen to. We tend to be in the business of building our brand and climbing the social ladder. But Jesus confronts us with a different paradigm, one of service, humility, and grace. Let’s listen together to the Lord’s words about what it means to be great in the Kingdom of God. See you Sunday!