Servants, Everywhere and Always (Mark 10:35-45)

Ambition is a human quality and at times it can be an admirable trait.  After all, if someone does not strive to better themselves they become stagnant or slide back into oblivion.  But when it comes to the Kingdom of God, ambition, Jesus tells us, is not a characteristic to be desired.  In today's reading we meet James and John, two brothers who were fishermen, who took their ambition to great heights whey they aksed to sit at Jesus' right and left hand when he comes into his kingdom.  But in the upside-down structure of God's kingdom, the person who humbles himself is the greatest.  For when we seek to make ourselves more important, what we are really doing is diminishing God in our lives.

Recorded at Ebenezer UMC on October 18, 2015