A Great Lady
Posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
I’m fascinated by God’s timing; always have been. A friend of mine use to say that it’s His signature on events. He sure signed off on the last two days of my life to teach me an important lesson.
Last Sunday our study of Mark brought us to chapter 9:30-37, a fascinating conversation between Jesus and His disciples concerning greatness. As they passed through Galilee, Jesus taught them again concerning His impending death and resurrection. This time He added the discouraging news that all of this will happen because someone will betray Him. They didn’t understand; it was just too much for them, and they were afraid to ask Him to explain further.
What they did understand were the prophecies that someday Messiah would rule and reign over His Kingdom on earth. Still clinging to their insistence that Jesus should be that Messiah—the ruling and reigning one, rather than the Messiah He was telling them He was—the One who would first suffer, die, and then rise from the dead, they did what everyone does when they are around someone they think has power and status: They postured for position in His Kingdom. They were about to learn Jesus’ definition of greatness—His radical, counterculture, counter-flesh, measure of greatness in His Kingdom: If you follow Jesus, He will ask you to serve everyone—especially the weak.
It’s an upside-down measure of greatness for most people. It’s not the number of people who serve you that matters to Jesus; it’s the number of people you serve.
On Monday I drove to my hometown of Bakersfield, California to officiate at the funeral of a buddy’s mom. If you’ve read my book, you know the story. Bobby Rader was the friend God used to guide me to Christ. On the night my desperate situation caused me to seek Jesus, I drove to Bobby’s.
Bobby’s home was a safe place for me. Mrs. Rader had always been kind to me. She hosted our Young Life meetings, invited me in even when Bobby wasn’t home, and always asked the same question when I walked in, “You hungry Eddie?”
Hers was a Christian home. Not because they told everybody they were Christians, but because they lived it out in warm hospitality. Her open home was a powerful witness to Christ to many of us who eventually trusted Christ in the Jesus Movement of the 60s.
Nobody ever served Mrs. Rader. But she served hundreds over the years. Even an angry young man who showed up really late one evening forty years ago to talk with her son about God.
She was a great lady according to Jesus’ definition of greatness.
“If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35).
