PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Mark 9:30-37                                                                                             GREAT  SOULS
Sermon September 20, 2009:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

            When I was a small boy my grandmother lived in a very old house near the railroad in a county-seat town in West Tennessee.  Something in or under that house was slowly rotting.  I’m sure she couldn’t smell it because she was used to it, but when we visited I couldn’t miss it.  Like my grandmother, we’ve grown accustomed to it—I mean the air of spiritual and moral squalor in our culture.  Since the times of ancient Greek philosophy the ideals of Goodness, Truth and Beauty have been held up before us as worthy of striving for; but in our time people seem to be motivated more by fear than truth, more by habit then beauty, and more by selfishness than The Good.  Others, even in under-developed countries, have remarked that America looks like an under-developed country morally.  It’s not just Osama bin Laden who holds American values in contempt—many productive, respectable Muslims do too.  The Japanese see America as a backward country because of our flabby soul.  We seem to have lost our vision of spiritual greatness, traded it in for money sex and power:  moral squalor.

            Governor Mark Sanford claimed to be a conservative while keeping a mistress in Argentina.  Coach John Calipari of the University of Memphis basketball team—now at the University of Louisville—got Memphis’ whole 2008 record, including participation in the Final Four, cancelled by the NCAA, because he arranged for a substitute to take the SAT test for a player he wanted—academic fraud.  I hope Michael Vick does well for the Eagles, but in the record books there will always be an asterisk beside his name because of his participation in dog fighting.  Rod Blagojevich, former Illinois governor, still doesn’t understand why it’s wrong to demand money from people he appointed to office.  Money sex and power.  I hope the church can rise above recent scandals and again represent higher moral ground in our society. 

            But in the Gospel today the picture isn’t so hopeful.  Jesus is leading his disciples on the last journey to Jerusalem, and all along the way he is teaching them the meaning of what’s about to happen—the meaning of the Messiah’s death; but they can’t bring themselves to believe what he’s telling them.  They’re in a denial mode—denying that when he says he will be crucified, he really will.  They still believe he’s going to be God’s commander in the Battle of Armageddon, wipe the Romans from their country and establish a divine kingdom that will rule the world.  It was when Judas saw that this vision of the Messiah would not happen that he betrayed Jesus; but right up to that moment there was no difference between Judas and the others.  So as Jesus led them southward they carried on a constant chatter, a debate among themselves.

            They arrived in Capernaum, home base for Jesus’ work in Galilee.  Sitting around the supper table that evening, Jesus asked them a question:  “What was all the chatter among you today on the road?”  Now a silence of embarrassment came over them.  Nobody wanted to answer.  One looked at the other, and each one regretted things he had said earlier—said in the excitement of finally marching south toward the capital.  Jesus received no answer to his question, but he needed no answer.  He had heard what they had said.  His asked the question to get their attention.

            Finally he broke that awful silence himself:  “Whoever would be first among you must be last of all and servant of all.”  A little girl was standing in the corner of the room, and Jesus took her up on his lap, and said, “Welcome the child, and you welcome the Messiah.”

            The same argument erupted again later in Jerusalem.  The Gospel of John says that on the night of the Last Supper Jesus demonstrated his point by washing his disciples’ feet, doing the duty of a servant, while they had been arguing about who would be Secretary of State and who would be Secretary of Defense in the new government.  He said, “As I have washed your feet, so you should wash each other’s feet.”

            Jesus’ teaching here is nothing short of a call for his followers then and now—for us to discover what it means to be “Great Souls.”  The Great Soul is the one who loses self-centeredness to serve others.

            Have there ever been any Great Souls?  Oh, I think so!  The one who comes to mind first, of course, is Mohandus K. Gandhi, who was given the title “great soul”:  “Mahatma.”  It was Gandhi, the Hindu, who said that “The only problem with Christianity is Christians.”  He himself studied the life and teaching of Jesus closely and formed his life and work around the example of Jesus Christ.

            There have been other Great Souls, whose lives may serve as examples and challenges to our moral laziness.  One was Albert Schweitzer, the medical missionary and musician.  Some look upon the Swede who became the Secretary-General of the United Nations and set a high moral tone for international diplomacy, Dag Hammarskjöld.  Few knew while he was alive that he was a deeply spiritual man.  He kept a journal of meditations.  After his death the poet W. H. Auden was asked to turn them into English poetry, and they were published as a book titled Markings.[1]  The great soul is the one who loses self-centeredness to serve others.  Two American presidents have inspired that kind of moral aspiration:  Washington and Lincoln.  But there have been ten thousand country doctors, a hundred thousand school teachers, many business executives, and you can name some people everybody sees as just plain folks, who are Great Souls.  I think of an accountant I met in Ohio who was not only scrupulously honest, but also had such depth of soul that he helped lead a Catholic retreat center.  The great soul is the one who loses self-centeredness to serve others. 

            So what makes a Great Soul?  I think Jesus puts his finger on it by asking his disciples that “soul question” in our Gospel Lesson:  What are you thinking about?  And he then states the rule, which I call the Rule of the Reversal of Values:  the soul-wisdom these people I’ve mentioned understood and lived.  Jesus said:  ”Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  Servant of all.  The great soul is the one who loses self-centeredness to serve others.

            In 1932 the German novelist Hermann Hesse published his book titled The Journey to the East, about a secret European League in the middle ages that sponsored a spiritual pilgrimage to the East—a crusade.  The knights who made the journey were led by great and wise masters of the League, but the man who attracted Hesse’s attention was a servant named Leo.  Leo was always cheerful, and he frequently whistled simple tunes with such beauty that it made the soul soar.  If a pilgrim had a problem, Leo helped.  If a pilgrim had a question, Leo answered it.  He loved dogs, and he had a mysterious ability to charm wild birds.  The band of knights shared many wonderful adventures that led them into the eastern mountains; and then one day, Leo was gone.  Everyone searched for him, but he had disappeared completely.  The pilgrim band was still intact, the leaders were still in charge; but for some mysterious reason the pilgrimage became disorganized and came to an end.  The knights spread out over Europe, took up their daily occupations, and forgot their earlier spiritual goals.  Years later one of the former pilgrims found his way back to the headquarters of the League, and what he discovered there was that Leo the servant was in fact the high President of the society, its highly honored guide and leader. The servant was the leader. 

            Now many literary critics have found in this novel by Hesse the same kind of psychological searching that appears in all his writings; but Robert K. Greenleaf, the management specialist at AT&T for many years, found in the story of Leo a symbol of all great management—all spiritual power to lead.  Greenleaf called it “servant leadership.”[2]  It is that the great soul is the one who loses self-centeredness to serve others. 

            There is a way out of the spiritual and moral garbage dump for Americans who still believe in the value of the soul.  It is the way of the servant, Jesus Christ himself, who both taught and lived the Rule of the Reversal of Values.

How?  To give, to forgive, to bless others—even those who curse you, to lend even without hope of return, to help those who face need or sorrow or fear.  And always, always to pray:  for this is the power of the servant.  The great soul is the one who loses self-centeredness to serve others.  Believe it!

AMEN