25th July 2010
Matthew 20:20-28
The Feast of Jame the Great
The tradition of the Church has maintained that the mother of James and John, the Apostles was probably a kinswoman of Jesus, most likely his aunt, one of the various Marys. If that were so with James and John as his cousins, it is not surprising that she sought to get a good place for her children in the Kingdom of God.
Unfortunately for her, Jesus s not able to grant her request, even though they say that they feel able to drink the cup that Jesus is about to drink. And the fact that their mother even asks Jesus to give them a place of honour in the Kingdom causes an argument within the other apostles. Jesus feels obliged to intervene and remind them “…whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and who ever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
When you first look at that statement it makes you wonder how can you be great and yet be a servant or slave? It is one of those paradoxical statements that Jesus is prone to make, and that turns our understanding of things upside down. Jesus refers not only to his own style of ministry and leadership, but also back to figures in the Old Testament who served their people despite being their leader or king. He reminds us in his style of servant leadership of God himself, who looks after those who have no one else to care for them such as the widowed and the orphan.
Now I am not one of those people to whom humility comes easily, I am quite forceful if truth be told in my style of leadership and ministry, but less so since ordination than I was before. I have come to believe that the key to a leadership of service is love. If we love the people we lead, we serve them, because love takes the ambition and goals of leadership and put people at the heart of what we do.
It is not be accident that the first order of Ministry is that of the Deacon, diakonos meaning servant. Everyone in ordained leadership of the church must first be a deacon, and always remain a deacon, it is taking the example of Jesus in ministry that helps us to fulfil that ministry. True leadership in any form is service, there is a cost in leadership, sometimes you have to put aside personal ambition or gain for the sake of those you lead and serve, and sometimes its painful and seems to be unappreciated, but that is not why we do it. It’s when leadership is exercised to personal gain, when it is always necessary to be popular that it falls down. Jesus never sought to be popular or a great leader of men, and yet he was popular through his integrity, his love and his service.
James, whose day we celebrate today was the first of the Apostles to die, being murdered by the sword on the orders of King Herod Agrippa I. Both he and his brother John were both to share the cup that Christ partook, but in different ways. For James it was through death that he partook, as a leader of the early Church he was an easy target. His end though painful would have been swift. For his brother John it was a long life of faithful service, going from being an angry young man, to the Apostle of Love, Bishop of Ephesus, a political prisoner. When their mother, the wife of Zebedee asked the favour of Jesus, little did she know what the consequences would be.
The Revd P R Mackness
The Maenordeifi Group