(This is the homily I delivered October 17, 2021. The readings were Isaiah 53:10-11, Psalm 33, Hebrews 4:14-16 and Mark 10:35-45.)

We approach life and its issues sometimes as if it is all about winning. The culture around us trains us to that. It promises us fulfillment, honor, prestige, even power, will all come to us from winning. From competing against someone weaker and taking it from them. For almost 2000 years now, Jesus has been saying it’s not about winning; it’s about serving. For almost 2000 years before Jesus, Isaiah had been saying it too. There’s an invitation in this gospel to us to try to give up our addiction to winning and try serving instead.

The Gospel does not record who won this argument between James and John. Naturally. Do you think Jesus cared about which one of these two was the greatest? More likely he was thinking, “Am I going to leave guys like this in charge of continuing my teaching? Trust these guys to spread the faith across the whole earth?”

Another version of this same story appears in the gospel of Matthew, but in that version, it’s not James and John themselves but their mother who gets in Jesus’s face, campaigning for her two sons and asking Jesus to make them important, after the big win she assumed would be coming. In both versions, the questions Jesus put to James and John, and their answers, show they don’t yet understand.

That makes me believe this story must have actually happened. We know everything in the Bible is true, and a lot of it actually happened. This story is in two gospels, with one major detail different, so that makes me think that different eyewitnesses came away with different accounts of what they had just seen and heard. To somebody, this was all about James and John and their ambition. That version comes to us in this gospel of Mark. To some other observer, it was all about their mother.

To us, who should have the benefit of hindsight and grace, it is not really all about any of that. It’s about service; that’s why it’s paired up with Isaiah writing in the first reading about the suffering servant. The letter to the Hebrews, the second reading, is about confidence in God’s mercy. None of that is about winning, or ambition or competition.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Everyone can be great because everyone can serve.” He was right: God himself gave his life to serve us, and everyone is created in the image and likeness of God. So everyone can be great.

We hear these stories at different times in our lives and we react differently. One time, we might just take it at face value, not feeling a personal connection. Another time, we may hear the story and say, “That’s just like something that happened to me at work last week. Two guys in the department were getting into it about which one was more important, and they both were making the rest of us angry. It was embarrassing.”

The same story plays out in other ways in our world, doesn’t it? Sometimes the argument is not over who is the greatest, but over who has it worst. You have probably run into someone who will listen to your problems and respond with, “Oh you think that’s bad. Let me tell you about my problems.” It’s kind of the same thing: some people want to go on about their own importance, and about being more important than you are.

One thing I think this gospel story tells us is that nobody will be acting like this in heaven. In heaven, everyone will be so full of joy and gratitude, and so full of understanding of the love of God, that there will be no occasion for any of the Saints to argue among themselves over which is the greatest. (So, after the last judgment, if you find yourself in a scene like this, where you and those around you are arguing with each other about which one is the greatest, then you can sweat.) And if you want to see how service, not winning, plays at the last judgment, re-read Matthew ch. 25.

People with insecurities, people who don’t know their role, or don’t accept their role, are the ones who start stuff like the argument in this gospel.

Can you imagine this scene playing out at a food bank, or at Turkey Sunday next month? I can’t! When we get together in a few weeks to provide food for Thanksgiving dinner to the people of North Lawndale at St. Agatha, do you think any of the volunteers are going to get into fights with each other over who’s the best volunteer? It’s almost unimaginable. The people who bring food to North Lawndale are not doing it to compete for a championship or for the best seat on the bus. The volunteers are there to serve the body of Christ, to recognize Christ’s presence in the poor and to serve him, by helping to meet people’s basic needs.

When what you’re about is showing other people the love God has for them, you don’t really care about “what’s in it for me?” You don’t care about who gets the titles and the glory. The opportunities to share God’s love with others in service are always there for us. I can claim to speak with some authority about service. The Deacon’s vocation and ordination is to service. The Greek word diakonia from which our word “deacon” comes to us is a word that means service. That’s why you will never see people arguing about who is the greatest deacon. It’s just not how we roll. Nobody becomes a deacon because they want power and prestige! When I think about what’s in it for me, it sounds like a cliche but you get more out of good ministry than you put into it. The stuff I do as a deacon always makes my life better, even though that’s not why we do it – we do it to make everybody’s life better.

That’s the essence of service and it’s what Jesus was getting at when he took James and John aside and told them they didn’t know what they were talking about. Some people are in it for their own gain, he told them, to lord it over others. “But it shall not be so among you,” he says. You’re not in this to build up your power and prestige; we’re doing this to bring life to everyone. Especially the ones who need it the most.

It turns out that John took care of Jesus’ mother, and James became the first apostle to lay down his life for our faith – something happened to transform their ambition. 2000 years later, we all think of the apostles as great; we revere them as Saints. They won, after all. We turn to them to intercede on our behalf with Jesus, kind of like their mother tried to do for them. Who knows, maybe James and John ultimately did get the good seats they wanted. But I think what actually happened was that through giving their lives to service, they stopped caring about who got to sit where. They stopped caring about rank and privilege and honors.

When we learn to dedicate ourselves to the service of Christ who is present in others, when we stop caring about rank and privilege and honors and what’s in it for me, that’s when we will be winners. Maybe then we can get seats near James and John.