Whosoever wants to be great among you

Why not pick a rando?’

The question comes from one of the thirty-eight statements which were published this week, along with the names of the candidates who have put themselves forward to be elected as the next Chancellor of the University of Oxford. It is twenty-one years since Chris Patten, the current incumbent, took up the role, and this new election is happening in a world which has changed. This will be the first time that voting takes place on-line, dramatically increasing the possible participation in the vote. It is also the first in which candidates were able to put themselves forward, rather than having to be nominated by fifty graduates of the university. And so the astonishing variety of applicants, from the entirely predictable to the very unexpected. The account the statements give of the candidates demonstrate an extremely various set of credentials which they believe might fit them for the post: from scuba-diving to teaching Zumba; anti-woke credentials to mentions in the Ruhr Valley local paper; a track record in entrepreneurship to competing in University Challenge and achieving a distinction in Prelim examinations – or indeed, just being a ‘rando’, an unknown quantity or leftfield candidate whose election would shake up tradition. Reading through the statements, it is frequently tempting to think that, in proposing themselves to be elected Chancellor, the candidates know not what they ask – not least because the Chancellor of the university is not, as some seem to think, the executive leader of an organization, but a ceremonial figurehead, whose role is advice, fundraising, and public representation, rather than executive decision-making. But in their wild and bewildering variety, they forcibly pose a set of questions about the motivations behind those who seek power, what qualifies someone for it, and how they should be chosen.

This is also the problem at the heart of today’s gospel reading. James and John come to Jesus with the request that he give them the honour of sitting at his right and left hand, placing them above the other disciples, and participating in his glory. When the other ten disciples hear about James and John’s request, they are – perhaps understandably – annoyed, and begin ‘to be much displeased with James and John’. The text doesn’t make it clear exactly what has frustrated them. Is it because they want the positions of power for themselves? Or that the brothers’ request might seem to circumvent fair procedure? That the roles had not been somehow properly advertised? In the very closely parallel version of this story in the twentieth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, it is the mother of James and John who comes to petition Jesus for positions for her sons: it is, it seems, not necessarily a better model of election to begin with nominations of preferred candidates. One way or the other, what annoys the other disciples seems to be a sense of the temerity of James and John in putting themselves forward for a position in the first place.

In one of the Bibles which I consulted in preparing this sermon, this passage was given the heading ‘Ambition rebuked’. ‘Ambition’ derives, etymologically, from the Latin verb ambire, which means to go about on foot, to walk around. Since, in the Roman Republic, achieving office required obtaining the votes of the people, which were to be gained by going about on foot to persuade people to give their voices, ‘ambitio’ came to mean canvassing for votes and running for office; and from there, to mean a desire for honour, power, display. The Oxford Chancellorship election is – apparently! – not the only election to be happening in this year. We have had plenty of recent cause to notice that this kind of ambition does not bring the best out of people. It requires making promises which it might be impossible to keep; showing different faces to different constituencies; cruelty or dishonesty about opponents and rivals; bargaining with one’s principles; accepting the support of people whose own priorities one might not share; the projection of a self one knows not to be real. If Jesus rebukes ambition, then, the passage suggests that putting oneself forward for position, or trying to persuade people to vote for you, is intrinsically not to be trusted, or not compatible with Christian ethics.

Jesus’s response to the other disciples’ anger might seem to confirm this, as he explains how power will be distributed differently among his followers than it is among the Gentiles. ‘Whosoever will be great among you’, he says, ‘shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.’ In the Greek, it is clearer that the word ‘will’ – whosoever of you will be great, whosoever will be the chiefest – is about desire: whoever wants to be great [ὃς ἂν θέλῃ μέγας γενέσθαι]; whoever wants to be first or chiefest. This does make ambition itself – the desire for position – a problem. And to say that such a person will end up as the community’s servant – more strongly, the slave, the ‘δοῦλος’, of them all – starts to sound like ironic punishment for that inappropriate desire. Ambition rebuked, indeed. Taken in this way, the very wish to be a candidate, to put oneself forward for a position, would be a disqualification from it: and only those who do not desire power would be appropriate for it. In that case, indeed, why not pick a rando.

But the final verse of our reading makes it clear that something else is at stake. ‘Even the Son of man’, says Jesus, ‘came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ The ‘Son of man’ is a phrase, derived from the Hebrew Bible, which Jesus uses frequently to refer to himself. In the Hebrew Bible, it is a name of exaltation. In the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel, which tells of Daniel’s night-visions, he sees ‘one like the Son of man [who ...] came to the Ancient of days, ... And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him.’ Yet here in Mark, the Son of Man comes not to be served, but to serve.

This verse also connects the gospel to our other reading today, the passage from Isaiah which describes a character known as the Suffering Servant: a figure who, through taking on the griefs and sorrows of others, and being punished for their transgressions and inquities, is humiliated, rejected, and ultimately killed. The word the passage uses for ‘servant’ in Hebrew is ‘ebed: a word which also means ‘steward’ and ‘agent’: someone who acts on behalf of another. He is a double substitute: both acting for God in the world, taking on his purposes; and in taking on the sin and sufferings of others, to justify and intercede for them, and thereby heal them. The task is thankless: ‘Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows’ says Isaiah, ‘yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.’ And yet through this suffering, Isaiah tells us, the Suffering Servant is divided a portion with the great, and shares a spoil with the strong; not in spite of his death and humiliation, but, as Isaiah tells us, precisely because of it.

This is a harder kind of power to try to want; and a harder route to it than James and John’s straightforward request to Jesus that he ‘should do for us whatsoever we shall desire’. And indeed, Jesus does not give the brothers what they want. The positions of being at his right and left hand, he tells them, are not available, or at least not in his gift. Instead of inviting them to share his power, he invites them to share his suffering. Immediately before this passage, Jesus tells the disciples, as prophecy, a compressed version of the Passion narrative: that, when they go up to Jerusalem, he will be condemned to death and delivered to the Gentiles, who ‘shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again.’ And shortly after this passage, Jesus and the disciples set out for Jerusalem, and what has been foretold comes to pass. It will not be long before being set at Jesus’s right- and left-hand will mean not being enthroned, as James and John seem to imagine; but being crucified beside him, like the repentant and unrepentant thief. The brothers do not know what they are asking for, in asking to participate in Jesus’s power: to partake of his glory means to suffer with him, and to endure with him the bitter cup of his fate. But, to give them credit, they accept Jesus’s inverted terms, even if they do not yet grasp what they mean. When Jesus asks ‘can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’, they reply that they can. In the book of Acts, we read of James that he was killed ‘by the sword’, the first martyr-apostle.

The point, then, is not ambition rebuked, but ambition reoriented. The extremities of the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus, or of the Suffering Servant, or of the disciple James, are more than are necessary for most earthly positions of power, and certainly – I hope – more than the university will be asking of the next Chancellor. But nonetheless, in that and in other elevated positions, the leadership we should look for should be undertaken not for personal glory, or in order to be served; but on behalf of the community, and in order to serve. ‘Being a rando’ is not, on its own, sufficient qualification; and this passage gives us an alternative criterion. ‘Whosoever wants to be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all’: someone for whom service is undertaken not as the punishment for a desire for place or leadership, but as its fulfilment.