Sermons

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The Fear of Being Insignificant
October 14, 2001
Second in a series on "Facing Our Fears"
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Mark 10:35-45

We started last week to talk a bit about facing our fears. Last Sunday we talked about the fear of being alone. Today I want us to think about a very different kind of fear…the fear of being insignificant. Maybe this is particularly poignant for me, since at age 42, I am the epitome of what the researchers would characterize as “mid-life.” And one of the prime features of mid-life? A search for significance.

But as I have thought about it this week, I think this is a much more universal fear, and whether you are 18 or 80 or you join me in mid-life…many of us fear being insignificant. And we’re not alone. Apparently there were some disciples who did as well. At least 2. Maybe 12.

Those Zebedee brothers. James and John. The third and fourth disciples Jesus called, brothers working for their father in the family fishing business…who promptly and instantly followed Jesus when he called them. They’ve followed Jesus for some time by the time we arrive here in chapter 10…and I suppose maybe they were beginning to wonder…maybe THEY were in their 40s…“will I ever be anyone significant?”

What does being significant really look like, anyway? One odd place I noticed this week was to look in the obituaries. Check it out some time.

Most of the time, the events and associations of a person’s life are listed out, and if they are abundant enough, or prestigious enough, we might judge the dearly departed to have been a significant individual. What college did they go to? Did they go to graduate school? What did their career track look like? Did they get promoted? Own their own business, or run a sizable one? Did they publish a book, or create something original? Did they belong to the Alumni Association, the Rotary, the Community Council? Did they make some money? Did they donate any of it?

… What would your obituary look like?

James and John thought they’d tackle this issue before they became an obituary.

And so they came forward and asked Jesus, boldly and up front: “Jesus, will you grant us one thing, just one measly thing that we ask?” And Jesus, wiser than any parent approached with a similar question, gave a good answer: “I don’t know. Tell me what you want, first…then I’ll decide.” And they shuffled their feet, hemmed and hawwed a bit, but eventually came out with it: “Cabinet positions in your administration … When your kingdom takes shape … Seat us at your right hand, and your left hand.”

James and John were no fools. They knew that these were the places of honor, of power and prestige at any gathering. We still have vestiges of this today. Go to a wedding and see who sits with the bride and the groom at the reception. Go to a board meeting, and see how the seating is arranged. Go to a fundraiser, and see where the featured speaker is sitting. It’s very important who sits where, and with whom. I can hear them talking: “Jesus, we left a respectable family business to follow you, and this trekking around doesn’t seem to be doing great things for our image in the community…we’re not sure we’ll make the Who’s Who list anymore…so tell us we’ll be significant in your kingdom…give us the positions of power. Make sure we’ll be significant.” So what does significant look like?

In the secular world, it’s our careers that most often define our significance. Our titles, our career track, our earnings, our recognition in the community. Sometimes you see it reflected in a person’s business card. What’s the title? I remember when I worked in business, I had a salesman call on me one day. As he left, he gave me the card that had his name on it and the title “District Sales Manager.” I said, “If we want to make a deal, who else do we need to involve?” He said “The VP of Sales.” And he proceeded to hand me another card, also with his name, with the title VP of Sales. And as long as he was digging that one out, he grabbed one additional card … this one also had his name on it, with the title: “President and Owner.” He was ready to be significant, in whoever’s eyes he ended up talking to! … Significance isn’t ALWAYS career oriented, of course…maybe significance for you has to do with educational pedigree, or what your kids accomplish.

We attach some of these same values to give significance to people in the church, don’t we? Ever heard any one name-drop in Christian circles? “Oh, I was talking to the Lt. Governor the other day…he goes to my church, by the way.” Or “oh, yes, she’s a neat Christian person…runs a very successful advertising agency.” We tend to think that people are more significant if they are a Christian…AND they do something prestigious in the eyes of the culture.

Nor are Christian leaders immune. Pastors in particular. You should go to a conference of pastors sometime. I have a little game I play that makes me track how much time elapses in a conversation before someone asks me if I’m the Senior Pastor…or how large my church is. As though being an Associate was somehow less significant…as though pastoring a church of 600 or 3,000 was somehow more significant than a community of 100.

Significance always seems to have to do with how we are perceived in the eyes of others. Whether we deny it or sheepishly affirm it, I think we all struggle with that. As we are now in the midst of turbulence in this country, in the Middle East, with all of the heightened tension…I find myself praying for the leaders of various countries. I pray for President Bush. And one of the things I pray is that he will not be misled by worrying about how he is perceived, because I know that is a huge draw as a president. I pray he will not be distracted by wondering what legacy his presidency will have, or how significantly he will be remembered in the line of presidents…I pray that instead he will be consumed with doing what is right.

“You want to be significant,” Jesus asks John and James? “You do not know what you are asking. You want to sit at my right and my left hand?” He might have answered, “those seats will be taken by two thieves…on crosses on a hill…not long from now. You want glory…but you do not want my kind of glory…you must share in my fate for that. You must drink my cup, be submerged in my fate. And that lies in what you would currently find insignificant. Despised, beaten, humiliated…death. You do not know what you ask. You think of significance as having power, prestige, honor…I am turning significance on its head.”

The other 10 disciples were angry with James and John. Why? Because they asked for the places of honor? No…probably out of a sense of competition. They ALL wanted the seats of honor…James and John had beat them to the punch.

And so Jesus calls them all together. “You know that among the Gentiles …their rulers lord it over them, and the ones they call great are tyrants.” Now who was Jesus thinking about? What rulers of the Gentiles would they have been concerned with? Most likely the Romans, who pretty much ran the whole Mediterranean world. Jesus’ listeners would have needed to look no further than the coins in their pocket. One coin was the denarius, used for paying taxes. Who was on the front? Tiberius, the Roman emperor described as “the semi-divine son of the god Augustus.” Or there was a copper coin… with the head of Augustus, whom the coin labeled “he who deserves adoration.” Rulers who wanted recognition and significance…and exploited many people to get it.

BUT IT IS NOT SO AMONG YOU, Jesus says. If you want to be great…James, John…Peter…(Sally, Fred) you must be a servant.

Herman Hesse, the great German novelist, wrote a book called "The Journey to the East," that I read again this week. It concerns a group of travelers who belong to an ancient league or fellowship, who embark on a mysterious quest. Within their group are musicians, poets, writers of some repute. And then, joining the group late…is a simple servant named Leo. Leo is, in fact…an ideal servant. Submissive, wise, interesting…and it is only after Leo disappears…that the group begins to realize it was actually Leo that has held the group together. Without him, the group falls apart. And then years later it is discovered…Leo was actually the President of the entire League, the Fellowship. But they had known him only as a servant, only by his person and actions…for he had revealed nothing of his identity. “He who wants to be great among you…must be your servant (tablewaiter)…must be slave (footwasher) of all.”

I can hear the disciples: “How could a slave be significant? How could a servant be anyone of significance? No power, no prestige, no ability to influence, no reputation.” We want to sit at your right hand, your left hand…to lead cabinets, departments, to leave a legacy.” “Then, Jesus said…you need to serve.”

Jesus, if we will allow him, totally redefines what we view as significant.

You, the mid-lifer…you want to be significant. What will you do? If we listen to Jesus, we will look differently at what matters. How significant are these things: befriending a child in your neighborhood without a healthy family, including them like one of your own children? Or investing in a person you immediately recognized as needy, or at least not at all like you, someone you would not normally be drawn toward? Giving yourself to your family…relishing the opportunities left to be with an aging parent instead of enduring it? Coming to the Wednesday Night dinner…just to talk, to listen, to love, to serve food? Nothing that will get you on the front page, or even the back page. Nothing that people will lift up in your obituary, nothing that will allow you to change the face of human life. But the fact is, life is NOT just about YOU...or me. We are called to ministry, and often to a ministry of insignificance. Except, perhaps, to those who receive. Except to God.

I have resisted talking much about the stories which have come out of the World Trade Center catastrophe…but there is one which caught my eye the moment it was published. Perhaps you read the story of the employees of May Davis, an investment company on the 87th floor of the first tower struck.

The newspaper story follows several men as they tried to make their way out of the building. One of the men was Harry Ramos. As a group of them made their way down staircases filled with people, they encountered a heavyset man whom they had never met or seen. It was apparent that he did not have the strength or endurance to make it all the way down. Harry and another man tried to walk him, to carry him, to shove him…but it was no use. He couldn’t do it, and they couldn’t lift him. A fireman sprinting by shouted at them to get out of the building…he knew they had very little time to go 39 more floors. Others left. Harry looked down at the heavy man on the stairs and made a decision. He said, “I’m not going to leave you.” I’m not going to leave you. And he didn’t.

And they didn’t make it. A year from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now, few will remember Harry Ramos. No statues, plaques, pages in history books. Insignificant?

Jesus said, “The Son of Man (he himself) came not to be served but to serve…and to give his life a ransom for many.” Jesus did not come just to SAY things that turned the world upside down…but to DO them. No greatness, no rank, no power. He modeled servanthood. He embodied insignificance. Arrested, humiliated, scorned, killed. An insignificant blip on the radar screen of history…which did not go away, which WILL not go away. The Son of God…who would even give his life away as a ransom. As a substitute for others who could not free themselves. Jesus the Ransom takes the place of others…and there happens to him what WOULD have happened to them: death so insignificant it is the end of the human story.

But that does not happen. Marlene read it earlier: “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11). He has born OUR sin, taken OUR place and through his resurrection we are no longer facing death as a permanent ending of life. All of it done on our behalf, the “many,”…yet there are still so many who would look upon him would say “insignificant.” It makes you wonder what real significance is.

Only Jesus could take on the sin of the many. Our sin. And yet, clearly we are to model ourselves after him in some way. In I John (3:16), probably this same John, son of Zebedee writes “he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for others.” It’s not power, it’s not prestige, it’s not a cabinet position. It is the call of followers of Jesus Christ…to invest, to give our lives away.

Are you afraid of being insignificant? We perhaps need to revisit what insignificance is: If it means giving our lives away…if it means acting in ways that history will not record or remember. If it means being a servant, behind the scenes, if it means treating people the same regardless of whether the world calls them successes or failures, if all THAT is insignificant …then it seems to me that we are not to fear insignificance. In fact…we are to pursue it. Amen.