2142AFC101521 – Mind your betters!
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Mark 10:43-45 – 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Belovéd, why did I choose this strange title? I did not choose it. I asked, “What do we call this?”, and there it was, so … here’s what I found out:
This regional, outdated idiom is an adage that means “Courteously submit to those who hold better status.” There are a couple of instances in literature that contain the phrase or something similar: The Beau Defeated by Mary Pix (ca. 1700) – BETTY: Peace, and mind your betters. Another close example is in The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (ca. 1589) – KATHARINA – Your betters have endur’d me say my mind, now it’s my turn to say my mind ab’ut my betters.
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and Peace to each of you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus the Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit. At the outset, I wish to salute our Pastor at St. Catherine of Alexandria Church, Fr. Nicolas Apetorgbor – Fr. Nick. In his very moving homily last Sunday, October 10th, he spoke in depth about the effects of the Sword of the Spirit – last week’s Aloha Friday Message for us. He pointed out that not only could the Word, the Sword of the Spirit, guide us in discerning good from evil, but also it helps us discern between Good and Better. Now, that lit up my brain like the Fourth of July! With some forty years in Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement Management, and also principles of management training, I have repeatedly reminded people that whatever we have or do, we can always have or do better. Eventually we hope to reach the level of “BEST,” but even BEST can sometimes be made Better. Let’s see where that epiphany takes us.
In today’s Key Verse, Jesus is reaffirming his willingness to lay down his life for the redemption of “many.” The word used here for “many” is πολύς (polys) {pol-oos’}, and in this context it means “multitudes,” in other words, innumerable. Christ died for all sinners. His sacrifice was sufficient for every created soul living in sin. The fullness of his sacrifice comes to completeness in those who persevere in faith through all persecutions in all forms (remember Mark 10:28-30). The function of his Mercy is to redeem all, but his Mercy affects all who believe in him. El Shaddai-Olam created all Life and his APP includes Salvation for all. Another example of this use for “many” or “Multitude” is found in Genesis 17:5 – 5 No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations.
Jesus willingly sacrificed his life as the perfect “sacrificial victim.” The implications of that term are wide-ranging. When we think of someone as a “victim,” we envision one who is innocent and is suffering persecution – even death – not for anything s/he has done, but rather for the nefarious purposes of the perpetrator who has no regard for innocence, Life, or intrinsic worth. If we apply the Sword of the Spirit to that sort of situation, we can clearly see we are discerning Good from Evil. Jesus, the Christ of God, submitted to being a victim to appease the pride, greed, and treachery of those who felt threatened by his radical message of Love. He carried that message with him to the Cross, to the Grave, to Sheol, to Resurrection, to Glory. We are given that same message, the message of Love, to share as good stewards of The Word. When we exercise that stewardship by “preaching to all nations (like even in our neighborhoods!), and if we do that we “receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.” Now, what could be better than that?
Indeed, what could be better than that? He said his reward for anyone “who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the Good News” would come to us “now in this age.” Are we still waiting for that to happen? Have we a hundredfold increase in our lives? How would we measure that anyway? I’ve taught for years that “What gets measured is what gets improved.” We can’t improve something we don’t know about, we can’t measure what we can’t see. How do we see what can be measured and improved? Is there any reference to which we can turn? (You’re getting warmer! Go ahead and take a guess!) YES, there is! The B.I.B.L.E. is our reference book, our measuring tool, our compass, our map-box, our direct copper-wire to God. (You already know what’s coming next.)
Where is YOUR Bible?
Pick a place, a problem, an idea, a need, a fear, a hope, an ADVENTURE!, and it’s waiting right there in the B.I.B.L.E. (Remember that’s Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) for you to find it and use it. Do we need some help with that? Let’s see, is there someplace we can go, or someone we can see, as often as we like – maybe someone who is just a few recycled electrons away, or someone who studied how to use this reference source and tells us about it at least weekly? Well, where, and who, and how, and – come to think of it – WHY? Of course we want to think of and thank our Pastors (so mahalo nui loa Fr. Nick). We have an Aloha Friday Message – primarily as a venue for Intercessory Prayer but also getting into The Word – and in those messages are dozens of links to Scripture passages. (which we hope you use). The purpose of those links is to take our readers into and through The Word of God (Yes! It is indeed God who speaks to us there and we ought to be listening!). What might we find if we are looking for something Better than Good? Hmmm. That means we’d have to see something and measure it. Just for the sake of convenience let’s go back to our Key Verse and see what can be seen. I’ll transfer part of it here for us to review: [Jesus said] whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. Wow, we can only imagine how that sounded the first 
time Jesus said it. Do we wish to become great? Is that better than being “not great?” If we are basically indistinguishable from everyone else, that’s not so great; that’s humiliating. Still, being humbled is great – God himself said so in Micah 6:8 (remember?), so to be great we must be humbled as servants of … whom? Well, of course, God, but Jesus said the one who is desirous of being “exalted” must be the servant of all – everyone we encounter in our earthly sojourn. Furthermore, if we wish to be “first among our peers,” we must be the slave of all. Go-o-o-o-o-lly! In this age of PC-MeToo-BooHoo, saying “slave” or even “servant” – “Them’s fighten words, podnah!” In the context of Jesus’ speech at that time and place, it would mean being devoted to another to the disregard of one’s own interests. Instead of “ME first!,” it must (always!) be “After you.” Where is the instant gratification in that? Surely that cannot be appealing to vast numbers of people (πολύς) in this day and age – BUT Jesus says that circumstance is the prerequisite to successful citizenship in The Kingdom. Which, then, is better? Is it citizenship in The World with wealth, fame, comfort, and the high regard of everyone we encounter? I don’t think so. It is quiet, humble, and consistent service to God, to family, to Church, to community, to Nation – in short to everyone we encounter in our lives.
Now this does not mean that we take up a new career as a speed-bump and just lie down and let people run over us all day. No, it means we spend our days looking for those “Little things done with great Love,” and then doing them – quietly, justly, mercifully (↔ Click Link). That is a better way to use our Gifts. Do we have any of those? Yes, all of us have Gifts from God, and if we accept them, he expects us to use them. And there are instructions for that right there in our B.I.B.L.E.
1 Peter 4:10 – 10 Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received, and in James 1:17 we read – 17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. God can’t help it, I suppose I would say, if he is way too generous. Just because he happens to be extravagantly loving (↔ Music Link) with you, he simply will not stop flooding our lives with gifts! So why is it that we are often so reluctant to acknowledge these gifts (and thereby honor the giver), and fickle in wanting to share them by serving others using those very Gifts from God? Think of all those questions that might arise if we are trying to do something better than being a speed-bump. Is any of that really important to know? Is any of it in the B.I.B.L.E.? Let’s go look!
Romans 12:6-8 can give us some insight into this avalanche of questions: 6 We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7 ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8 the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. So, we have these gifts so that they can (should) be given – shared – with others, and the sharing is best when it is absolute, when everything (↔ Please Click Link) we have is given. Belovéd, that is ha-a-ard work! But it is also GOOD work – in fact it is BETTER work. Take a look at what the Apostle Paul says in Acts 20:35 – 35 In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” On reflection, that definitely sounds like something Good and certainly it is a status that is Better-Than-Good. Well, based on all of that, what could we say is one really important attitude to have in order to be notable in the Kingdom of God?
Ahhh, indeed it is that ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE (↔ Music Link) about which we speak so often.
When we learn to be thankfully humble and humbly thankful then we are ready to take up the duties given to us in Christ Jesus: For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve. If we are looking for a better way to live, then what could be a better source for gratitude than to serve the One who came to Serve? That gratitude will lead us to more and more opportunities to serve, so we will be the servant (↔ Music Link) of all and soon we will find that in every moment of every day we are praying constantly to find the next thing, moment, person, opportunity, or Bible verse, that is BETTER. We will be paying attention to, giving deference to, being open to, and being mindful of “our Betters.”
Mind your Betters, Belovéd. They are another extraordinary Gift (↔ Music Link) from God.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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