In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Malvolio comments: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” There is a large measure of truth in this observation, but it falls short in any discussion of greatness from the Christian point of view. True greatness is neither born in you, nor achieved by you, nor imposed upon you. It is, rather, the byproduct of the deeper qualities of our human nature.
[Mark 9:33-37] is a tiny, yet significant, vignette from the course of Jesus’ ministry, particularly related to his instruction of his disciples. On an itinerant mission to Capernaum, Jesus overheard the disciples carrying on a rather heady and stealthy discussion of their own. When they arrived at the house (presumably Peter’s), he asked them what was the subject of their tete-a-tete out on the highway. Obviously they were somewhat ashamed of themselves, for they met Jesus’ question with an embarrassed silence. Apparently Jesus suspected what had been the thrust of their clandestine debate and he broke the silence with this apt comment: “If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” (v. 35) Then, Mark reports, “He took a child [maybe one of Peter’s children], and put him in the midst of them.” Amiel, the nineteenth-century Swiss philosopher, once commented: “Blessed be childhood; it brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.”
The issue here was not that the desire of greatness could be sinful in the eyes of God, but concerned something more basic – ambition. This was the underlying and ruling passion with this coterie of disciples. Ambition, however, can be neutral. It is good or bad depending upon what a person is ambitious for and why. Being ambitious for greatness for one’s own or for greatness’ sake can be destructive of the best within us and of our usefulness to others. Often, as William Barclay said, ambition is, for some, a matter of “How can I shine?” rather than “How can I serve?” Jesus took the concepts of “ambition” and “greatness” and put them into the framework of human conduct, and showed how this ambition to serve alone produces a type of greatness that claims our enthusiasm and contributes mightily to the common good.
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Know The Way, Keep The Truth, Win The Life , Donald MacLeod, C.S.S. Publishing Company, 1987.