What the Bible says, God says, for the Bible is God preaching. If the Bible says something once, then that is a surefire guarantee of its importance and the need for the church to see it in its context as written in order to determine its relevance for today. God's Spirit, who "caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning", is committed to illumining for the church the Scripture that he himself inspired. Thus, if the Bible repeats teaching in different ways in different situations for different people, then that teaching is inescapable in its importance and application for both then and now.
Readings in the Epistle of James recently, and in the Gospel of St Mark tomorrow, have focused over and again on the issue of precedence. In James, it was the ugly habit, presumably in the Jerusalem congregation where James was a leader, of rich people being given preferential treatment. In Mark, the scenario is on the smaller scale of the 12 disciples arguing about which of them was greatest. Mark deliberately places this chilling behaviour in the context of the Transfiguration, then a powerful healing incident at the foot of the mount, followed by ominous words from Jesus about his death (Mark 9:3032).
The tawdry wrangling, doubtless arising from the privilege Peter, James and John had been granted as the only witnesses to the Transfiguration, must have dismayed Jesus, who was coming to terms with the greatest humiliation of all time: the obliteration of God's Son, bloodily crucified, indistinguishable from criminals, despised and rejected by all, bearing in his own person the sin of the world. In the shameful silence when he asked, "What were you arguing about on the road?", Jesus took the posture of a rabbi and gathered the disciples around him as needy learners.
If they were going to continue to be his disciples and carry through their apostolic ministry, they would have to learn well the lesson he was again going to drive home: "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all" That was a radical, counter-cultural statement. The German scholar Schlatter says contemporary Jewish culture was immersed in questions of procedure and rank: "At all points in worship, in administration of justice, at meals, in all dealings, there constantly arose the question of who was greater, and estimating the honour due to each was a task which had constantly to be fulfilled and was felt to be very important." The radical Jesus attacked this cultural preoccupation and effectively rubbished it.
The natural human instinct, then and now, is to dominate. In living out Jesus's words, in not seeking pre-eminence but seeking to serve, we shall be cultural radicals all our days. Our life will come as a gift to many, and as a huge threat to some.
Folk in business, commerce, medicine, politics, education, technology, who confess Jesus as Lord, are all called to this radicalness with no exceptions. Executives who spend their days telling others what to do, top brass whose every whim is met by others, are to be servants. This does not mean an abdication of that authority, rather a disposition of heart, since Christians are called to serve theirs "superiors" and "inferiors" as a distinctive tag of their obedience.
The church, with its full-time servants the clergy, is in constant need of deliverance from preoccupation with precedence. There is a mind-set that defines ministry as a kind of lordship. Sitting in the honoured seat, being the feted guest at luncheons, speaking to the crowds, photographs in the newspapers and church magazines, collecting honorary titles and a wardrobe of gaudy robes and baubles, adds up to an attitude that values being served. Go to any church council or synod and the pecking order, though unspoken, is well defined. The important people are easy to identify - busy, busy, busy, giving and shuffling the papers, being verbally fawned over by the chairman, subtly and not so subtly getting their way in debate. St James, embracing the radicality of his brother, Jesus, whom he has already adored as Lord and God, is blunt in condemning this kind of behaviour in his fellow church leaders: "My brothers, this ought not to be so."
G.F.