Appropriate Smallness: the Practice of Servanthood
Mark 10:35-45
Martha Leahy
March 2, 2008

The name of today's sermon is "Appropriate Smallness". It is the title of a chapter of a book called The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg. There is a study group in your church reading this book with Pastor Kathie and each week a different theme is studied and then preached on. This week's theme is "servanthood" and "appropriate smallness" refers to the spiritual practice of making oneself a servant to others but in an appropriate way. The author cautions against overdoing servanthood to the point that we become slaves to the praise we crave for doing all those good deeds we do.
Yet Jesus clearly points us towards servanthood when he tries to explain to his disciples how things work in the Kingdom of God. Two disciples, James and John, have it all figured out. They are planning for their places in the new world order, once Jesus is declared Lord and Ruler. James and John want places of honor next to Jesus, one man on his right and the other on his left. I can just picture them, standing next to him on either side, chins up, boastful, just imaging how great it is going to be when their man, Jesus, gets on top. The term "proud as a peacock" comes to my mind. John Ortberg makes the claim that "the sin of pride is the oldest one in the Book, (Ortberg, 109)", and that's "Book" with a capital "B" as in "Bible". Adam and Eve certainly paid a high price for desiring to be like God. And desiring to be our own personal god - to worship at the altar of ME - gets us into spiritual trouble. We can be vain, stubborn, defensive, or prejudiced - all manifestations of pride. Pride is that inability to be honest with ourselves and vulnerable with others. When we are proud, we refuse to look at ourselves honestly and in doing so, we in essence refuse to stand honestly before God.
Well, you might say, I'm not prideful, I'm just the opposite in fact. I'm a servant. I'll do anything for anybody any time. And a servant is a perfectly good thing to be. Jesus himself is quoted as saying, "Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all (Mk 10:44)". Yet how many of us "servants" secretly compare the ways we serve with the ways others do their service. We say to ourselves, "Yes, she does a lot, but I do twice as much and what's more, I'm much more humble about it!" Let's face it, we can sometimes be prideful about how humble we are! Does that make sense? We human beings are certainly complicated creatures.
To be humble, though, is a virtue if we can serve with "appropriate smallness". In this same chapter of Mark, a little earlier on, Jesus had been pressed upon by a crowd of people bringing children to him for his blessing. These same disciples, James and John, had tried to shoo the children away. Yet Jesus said, "Let the children come to me, do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it (Mk 10:14b-15)". There is a wonderful book I came across in seminary called Seeing Children, Seeing God by Pamela Couture. The subtitle of the book is A Practical Theology of Children and Poverty. The book advises churches and pastors to look at ways we can help impoverished children make it in our world.
All children are precious gifts and a poor child even more so. We are frequently asked to give material goods to poor children - because those things are certainly needed. For most of us, this is an easy thing to do. We can write a check, or we can drop off a bag of groceries to a food bank. But we are not often privileged to meet the children behind the check or the can of Spaghetti-O's.
I will tell you a brief story of an experience I had with pride and servanthood. I have worked in the office of a busy downtown church in Newburyport for the past 10 years. Over those many years, scores of people have come to our doors seeking help: money for food, for rent, for gas, for an electric bill that they just can't pay. One day a young girl called me and asked if we gave out food vouchers. I said yes and she hung up. A few minutes later, a station wagon pulled up and out came a woman, about 40 years old with stringy, bleached hair and rumpled clothes, two teenage girls about 13 or 14 years old, and a little boy about 3. They all came into the church office and asked if they could have a food voucher. I looked at them all and saw that the two young girls were very pregnant. I thought to myself, "What is their story? Who is this woman and what is her relationship to the girls?" The woman had not just one but two pregnant girls, and a little boy hanging off her sleeve. I handed her a voucher and she looked at me and said, "We need one for each of us." Our eyes stayed locked together for a moment. I contemplated our policy of giving out only one voucher per family. But so many emotions flashed in her eyes - anger, pride, embarrassment, and even strength - that I felt all of them powerfully. I quickly dug out three more vouchers and handed them to her. "Thanks", she said abruptly, and as quickly as they had come, they were gone.
I regretted later that I had not even asked her name or the names of her children. She was just another nameless, faceless, needy person with a station wagon full of little kids, one of many I have seen over the years. I thought I was doing her a favor, doing my good deed, and giving her something she needed. But I believe she gave me something when she looked at me. She showed me the eyes of God, the God who suffers with us, who hurts when we hurt, who is angry at this world of want. I was reminded of Pamela Couture's wonderful name for the world's needy children - "God-children (Couture, 50)". What if we simply thought of these kids as our "God-children"? How deeply does that name resonate in your soul?
For it isn't so much what we "give" to these children, these needy children, in material goods or even how much time we spend being with them in "service" to them It is more about what we receive from them, whom Jesus called "the least of these". And what we receive is the gift of humility. For how humble we become when we realize how much these small persons have endured in their little lifetimes, things that most of us will never have to experience. And even more so, when we spend time with these "God-children", we indeed are privileged to see the face of God, God's "human, incarnate face" (Couture, 53).
So this phrase "appropriate smallness" takes on several layers of meaning for me. I think of pride and I think of humility. I think of small children and I think of the angry eyes of a justice-seeking God. I think of James and John. But most of all, I think of Jesus. Jesus who so modeled what the Kingdom of God could be like on Earth. Jesus, who indeed showed us the face of God. When we gather in our small groups - to study books, to serve a free meal, to pray, to sing, to listen, or just to be silent - we, too, try to model what Jesus was talking about. "Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many (Mk 10:44-45)". A clear call from our Savior about the limits we may be expected to reach when we become appropriate servants of God. Thanks be to our God. Amen.

References cited:

Couture, Pamela D, Seeing Children, Seeing God: A Practical Theology of Children and Poverty, (Nashville: Abington Press, 2000).
Ortberg, John, The Life You've Always Wanted, (Zondervan, 2002).