Servant of All: Tayt Thomas
The following homily was shared at our Sunday Evening Eucharist Service 9/22/24.
30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he would not have anyone know it; 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” 32 But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him.
33 And they came to Caperna-um; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” 34 But they were silent; for on the way they had discussed with one another who was the greatest. 35 And he sat down and called the twelve; and he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” (Mark 9:30-37)
“The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” These are words spoken directly out of Jesus’ mouth. There are multiple times in the gospels when Jesus says something, people get mad, and then they try to kill him or otherwise do him harm, and it’s usually followed up by, “but it was not yet his hour,” or some variation of that. Considering those happenings, together with this verse, I think it’s clear enough to say God prevented Jesus from dying until it was his time. When it was his time, God “delivered” Jesus into our hands, and instead of accepting him, we killed him, rejecting God and goodness and truth and love. We’ve rejected love. In 1 Corinthians chapter 13, we get a description of what love is. In rejecting Christ, we have rejected patience and kindness, we have accepted jealousy and boastfulness, arrogance and rudeness, insisting on our own way, being easily angered and keeping records of being wronged. Rejoicing at the wrong and not the right. Not protecting things, not trusting, not hoping. There is a segment at the end of this description of love that says, “love always perseveres.” These other things do not persevere. They will not persevere.
I don’t think Jesus was trying to get at all of these things. I think he was just telling his disciples what was about to happen. But they didn’t understand, and we can understand a little better than them, maybe.
The disciples were discussing along the way who was the greatest of them. That’s pretty self-absorbed of them. Obviously, they should have been talking about how great Jesus was, even before he died for them and saved them from their sins. And when Jesus asked them, “Hey what were you talking about?” they didn’t answer, because they knew they were being stupid. Jesus knew what they had been talking about, and decided to give them (us) a lesson in pride and selfishness. He says “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” There are some pretty interesting things in this; maybe the first thing is that this is contrary to common reasoning about an individual being great, but I’m not going to talk about that because I’ve heard that so many times. What I want to talk about is the fact that being a servant of all is what Jesus is, and has done, and we recognize him as being great.
This school year, I’ve been doing lectio in John, and there’s a part in chapter 8 where the Pharisees are accusing Jesus of bearing witness to himself. Even though Jesus is speaking the truth, Jesus says that it is the Father that bears witness to himself. Also, when Jesus performs miracles he does so in the name of the Father. I don’t often think of the fact that Jesus is so frequently giving the Father the glory, but he does that often. Even though we call Jesus great, he still gives glory to the Father, and not himself. Jesus does talk about himself, in ways like “I am the light of the world,” and for anyone else, this would be ridiculous. But because this is the truth, and because he’s telling it for the benefit of the world, I’d say that in this case and in other cases where he’s simply speaking the truth about his nature, Jesus isn’t tooting his own horn.
All this to say, be more like Jesus. Serve others, and give God the glory. Amen.
Tayt Thomas is a senior at Louisiana Tech majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies. Kind, patient, and easygoing, Tayt’s presence at The Wesley has been a huge source of encouragement to our community. He enjoys camping, bird watching, video games, and sci-fi media. Tayt is a tremendous blessing to us, and we love him dearly!