Servant of All - Mark 9:30-50

I’m sure you will agree that we live in a culture that feeds our self-centredness. Social media – all about you projecting your best image of yourself. Consumerism – pressure to buy more stuff that is supposedly meant to make us happier. It’s as if our happiness and self-fulfilment is the most important thing, which must be attained at any cost. We’ve been increasingly conditioned to think that if anything gets in the way of achieving our happiness, that must be eliminated, no matter what it is.

This is the reason why we so easily justify all sorts of sins – if living with my girlfriend makes me happy, then I must be justified to do so. If my marriage makes me unhappy, then surely I must be justified to abandon it. My feelings and sense of happiness come first, before what God’s Word says, and any kind of pain or sacrifice must be avoided at all costs, as it surely can’t be good for me. This all feeds into a self-centred, narcissistic and prideful existence.

It’s really nothing new though. It’s a deeply rooted part of our fallen sinful nature. Even Jesus’ disciples struggled with this. We’ll see in this evening’s passage that all they seem concerned with is their self-fulfilment – who is the greatest, their sense of elitism and self-importance as one of Jesus’ disciples. Jesus exposes their sinful hearts here and shows them that whoever wants to be first, must be a servant of all. This gets to the heart of Jesus’ identity and what he’s come to earth to do. He’s come as the Suffering Servant, who laid down his life for us on the cross.

What we will see in this text is that because Jesus is our Suffering Servant, we are called to crucify our self-centredness and serve others.

Preacher: Rev. Antonio Coppola.