University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

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A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham

University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

25^th Sunday in Ordinary Time     September 20, 2009

            His parents named him Abel Head Pierce, but everyone knew him as Shanghai, Shanghai Pierce. He was born in 1834, not in Shanghai, but in Rhode Island, of all places. At the age of 17 he decided to stow away on a ship headed for Galveston, Texas, to seek, as it were, his fame and fortune. He had 75 cents in his pocket. When he arrived in Texas, he decided to promote his childhood nickname of Shanghai, given to him because of his resemblance to a Shanghai rooster, with his gangly six-foot-four frame like that of the long-legged breed of roosters.

            Soon after arriving in Texas, Shanghai Pierce began to work in the cattle business, bartering a year’s work for $200 worth of cattle to begin his own herd. After the year, he began branding stray cattle and building his herd on a ranch some 70 miles west-southwest of Galveston. In a short period of time, he had built a herd large enough to entitle him to the title of cattle baron. He was quite a sight on the Texas plain, wearing brocaded vests, broad-brimmed, high-peaked hats. He even ordered a statue of himself for his own gravesite prior to his death so that he could enjoy looking at himself. Reportedly, at sunset he would lift a glass to toast himself as he regaled, “Here's to old Shanghai!” If there is truth to the legend, his substantial ego would make Donald Trump look as if he had an inferiority complex.

            In time, he decided to build a city around his ranch with everything needed by his employees. In an act of surprising piety he said he planned to call the town Thank God, Texas, until some of his more refined friends (and the United States Postal Service) convinced him that Blessing, Texas, had a better and more acceptable feel.

            In his later years, Shanghai invited some of his friends from New England to visit him on his ranch. He took them on a tour of the complex, all the while bragging shamelessly about his considerable accomplishments in developing this virtual city. As they rode through the dusty streets in a buggy driven by two white horses, Shanghai would point out the various landmarks. “Well, over there's the commissary. Best in the territory. And over there's the school. Two rooms, not one. And over there's the livery; it has the best blacksmith in the state of Texas. And over there is the saloon, with the finest whiskey on this side of the Mississippi.” And the list went on and on, as Shanghai puffed out his chest like his namesake rooster. Everything was the best or the greatest.  Clearly for him greatness had to do with superlatives like best… most… finest.  And in looking at himself, the word that seemed to please him most was the word, “my.”

            That became clear during Shanghai's tour, when one of his guests spotted the steeple of a church set in a group of mesquite trees. He asked his host, “Shanghai, do you belong to that church?” Shanghai spat out some tobacco juice and bellowed, “Hell, no! That church belongs to me.”[1]

            It is a funny story, in a way. But it is also sad, for it bespeaks a worldview that is not limited to one oddball rancher from the nineteenth century. I think I’ve been immersed for so long in the life of this church, with its wonderfully generous and thoughtful servant leaders, that I have almost forgotten that there are people like Shanghai Pierce in other places, people who have such proprietary attitudes and such skewed understandings of leadership when it comes to the church, to the faith… or, for that matter, to the town, to the nation in which they live.  It is sad, because it closes one off to such wonderful experiences of grace. It is sad, because it closes one off to the mind of Christ.     

            Having discerned that his disciples were arguing among themselves about greatness in our passage from Mark’s gospel, Jesus says, “If anyone would be first, that one must be last of all and servant of all” (9:35). And then in a deft pedagogical move, he sets in their midst a child.  Now this may be a bit difficult for us to catch, given the fact that we live in such a child-centered culture, but the culture of first century Galilee was anything but child-centered. Children in Jesus’ time were often cast to the margins, and not infrequently were abandoned. They were silenced.  They represented the very margins of the culture of that time. Jesus holds a child before them. “The move is to disclose, unmistakably but without ridicule, the gap between professed beliefs and enfleshed actions. The one who aspires to be first must serve, and must be the servant of all – servant, even, of society’s least powerful, least important members.”[2] They and we will remember the child. And if we remember the child, we will remember the teaching. And if we remember the teaching, we cannot help but be transformed. And this is the teaching, lest we forget: that the greatest among us is the servant of all…that we, indeed, are called to be servants of all.

            In a sermon on the Day 1 radio broadcast this morning, Atlanta pastor Stephen Lewis notes the profound need for such servant leaders in our land.  He says:

Our society suffers from a debilitating addiction to a “greatness” understanding of leadership. Families feed this addiction to their children. And an addiction to being the best or greatest in ministry, whether it is about leadership or building institutions, is a pandemic virus in the church. The earliest strand of this deadly addiction can be traced back to the church’s origin. It is the very question the disciples are arguing about in this text.

Fortunately, Jesus has a response: he provides some answers about how we might break free from our addiction to unhealthy forms of greatness by re-imagining church leadership. This re-imagining is a necessary revolution, an insurrection, a rebellion, an uprising against our traditional understandings of greatness.  It is a revolution that invites us to embrace counter-intuitive forms of leadership and practices that we find modeled in the life of Jesus. And what is at stake is our alienation and access to the presence of God in our individual and communal lives. 

In [today’s] lesson, we find Jesus schooling the disciples on what greatness looks like in his ministry. He says to the disciples, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all.” Notice, he does not say do, but be, which raises two questions regarding identity. Who must we be as a result of our participation in Jesus’ ministry? Jesus says that we must be last. How do we live deeply into this collective identity of being last of all? Perhaps the answer requires us to wrestle with a familiar saying …  that has less to do with one’s position or station in life. Being last has more to do with the idea that we have an opportunity to learn from those who have gone before us in hopes of building upon their efforts and perfecting our collective efforts over time. In Jesus’ ministry, the community of disciples practices greatness by being observant learners of all. 

Jesus then tells his disciples, “Whoever wants to be first must be servant of all.” Notice that he does not say servant to all, but servant of all, which suggests that the disciples are called to be servant leaders regardless of what other people seek to be. Servant leaders practice greatness by being givers who serve together through shared leadership, responsibility and accountability.[3]

            Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with striving for excellence in life – in one’s studies, in one’s work, in one’s capacity for leadership. But to the students who are here today, I want to encourage you to distinguish the aspiration for excellence from the aspiration for “greatness.”  The most excellent leaders at every juncture have not been those who sought greatness, but those who have been willing to be servants of a greater good, who have sought not to advance themselves so much as to help their church or community or nation flourish and grow and broaden efforts toward peace and equity and justice.

            I do want to take a moment to say that I truly believe what I said earlier about this congregation – how blessed we are to have had a generation of leaders who have not been at all proprietary or self-focused, or who have understood their role somehow as being gatekeepers or protectors of God.  In fact, I have been struck instead by our leadership’s gracious, generous spirit and by the quality and compassion of their servant perspective.  I have been deeply moved by their willingness to take seriously and work to improve the lives of all God’s children, including those at the margins, like the child Jesus held close in order to teach his disciples.  Says Stephen Lewis,

Jesus welcomes the child to the center of the community and wraps his arm around her – the voiceless one – and suggests that if we want to be great, then we must practice welcoming the voiceless to the very center of the community. Expand the community’s center to include those people at the margins. Make the margins the new center of the community because this is where the welcoming presence of God dwells. Otherwise, we alienate ourselves from the very presence of Jesus and the One who sent him.  This is what greatness looks like in Jesus’ ministry. It is an insignificant greatness.

So what does this mean for us? We who love our churches, denominational bodies and traditions, [need to] re-imagine our ambitions and concepts of greatness. We [need to] adopt new practices of insignificant greatness. We [need to] cultivate the next generation of church leaders to exhibit these practices. Why? Because, ultimately, what is at stake is the church's future, its witness and its relevance in the world. A church that fails to be the welcoming presence of God ceases to be the church.[4]

            And then Jesus says one thing more.  He says, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (9:37).  I remember, early during my first year of college, attending a meeting of an evangelical student organization at which I was challenged personally, in front of others, to “welcome Christ into my heart.”  I was a Presbyterian; I’d not heard discipleship put quite that way before, and I found the challenge unsettling. So later that night, I talked about that challenge with my resident advisor, a pretty savvy upperclassman; he said, “Just remember, Bob: Christ often comes to us in disguise.”  He suggested that if I wanted to welcome Christ, I would do well to extend myself to people in need.  He invited me into a student tutorial program that worked with disadvantaged children from a neighboring town who were struggling in school.  There I met Andre, a fourth grader, and for a school year, at least, I welcomed Christ into my heart by welcoming Andre into my Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.  Only it took years for me to realize that was what I had been doing.  The invitation of my R.A. to join a tutoring program because Christ often came to us in disguise transformed my life – and eventually my understanding of the church and ministry – even though I didn’t realize how much at the time.  His urging was, I believe, an echo of the powerful teaching Jesus offered his disciples in our Gospel lesson for this morning – a teaching about kindness and hospitality and humility and service as the keys to true greatness.

            Jesus was the kind of leader who looked at the world around him and wanted his students to see what he saw. He wanted them to notice the details of their daily procession, to notice the people who comprised the great story unfolding before them instead of getting mired in their own self-interest.  All the people – the weak and the strong, the curious young and the frail elderly, the regal rich and the pauper poor, the lovers and the grievers, the sinners and the saints – all of them were precious in his sight. He wanted us to see them that way, too.    

            Now, there are some who will say that the Shanghai Pierces of this world are the people who made this country great.  I would say it all comes down to how one defines greatness. Jesus, of course, had his own take on such matters. And so, Jesus placed a child before the disciples. The disciples didn’t care much for children, but Jesus said, here is the true measure of greatness. Do you want to be first of all? Then you must be servants of all. “Whoever welcomes one such child welcomes me,” he said.  “And whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me but the One who sent me.”