“We wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy new year” – we really do. It is our genuine wish that you really enjoy the Christmas period and that the coming year is one you will look back on fondly for the rest of your life.
But maybe, “merry” and “happy” are good but rather limited aspirations for what we might experience in the coming days! Even a cursory reading of the Bible will reveal that while God has no problem with us being cheery or happy, he has far greater ambitions for us than that. In fact in one poignant moment in the gospels Jesus instructs his disciples in the pursuit of greatness. The context of his remarks is more poignant still as the disciples had been bickering about who was the greatest amongst them, in a similar conversation to the one they had when they looked for ‘best seats’ in the kingdom they were convinced Jesus was going to launch.
You can read the story from Mark 9 here.
Fascinatingly Jesus doesn’t rebuke their idea that greatness itself is wrong (he doesn’t commend insignificant useless lives) but he does tell them that their whole concept of what constitutes greatness is entirely mistaken. The disciples seem to have been thinking in terms of accumulating the kind of prestige, power, recognition and influence that allows access to this world’s goods and pleasures.
Instead Jesus did two things. Firstly he predicted his death, and in so doing reminded them that he had come to die at the hands of sinful men and then rise again. This clearly bewildered the glory-hunting messiah-followers who found his words incomprehensible. Then secondly, after telling them that he had come to die, (which we also know meant taking the lowest place, become the servant, demonstrating the greatest love, and laying down his life for the sins of the world) he told them this: “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” In other words, be like him. In fact, he says that when we welcome the least, we welcome him and the Father!
The problem with Jesus’s ethical teaching thoughis that while it is utterly compelling, morally unsurpassed and ethically beautiful – it’s completely beyond our ability to do! The truth is that as we look back over our lives, they have shown moments of kindness and sacrifice for others, but also plenty of evidence that our hearts are enraptured with the very same things that the disciples stumbled over. Some of us love money, others status, others influence and reputation, others possesions – and that the pursuit of these things controls our lives to the extent that they prevent us from ever being truly great in the terms Jesus describes! We might think that Jesus’ vision of service is the most beautiful thing we have ever read, but who of us can ever say that we have truly lived this vision out? Worryingly when Jesus then says: “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me”, hat actually means that the disciples he addressed had rejected God when they sought power, and so have we.
As we look twards the New Year, Jesus offeres us two pieces of really good news.
The first is that, he came to die for us – to redeem us from every act of selfishness, power-grabbing, and that he can do that because he alone has lived out the lofty ethics he proclaimed. The pinnacle of Jesus’ great life is his sacrifical death on the cross to redeem the undeserving. The one truly ‘great’ life is that lived by Jesus himself. If you accept Jesus’ definition of greatness, no King, Emperor, artist, pilgrim, scientist, entrepreneur, or philanthropist looks remotely close to that which we see in Christ. Though he was the king of glory he took flesh, and spent his first days here lying in a feeding trough in an obscure village. He touched lepers and outcasts, washed our feet and gave his life for the undeserving. He lived the one truly great life, fully and completely acceptable to God. And when he died, he didn’t do so as some grandiose gesture – but in order to share his ‘greatness’ with us. He gave his life, to both pay the debt for our sin, and also to give us his righteousness, to share his great life with us. We are saved by grace!
The second piece of good news, is that Jesus came to change us. In his grace he welcomes us as we are, but doesn’t leave us as we are as he instigates regime-change in our hearts. Paul would write in Ephesians that we have been “saved by grace with good works prepared in advance for us to do”. That is, in the power of the Spirit, we can bcome more like Christ, beacuse those good works are likely to be in service to the poor, the least, the undeserving, the unglamorous – and result in no recognition in this world for us whatsoever. However as we are set free from the control of the idols which once controlled our hearts, we are libertated to pursue true greatness!
The question is, as we face 2025 – will we pursue things of genuine greatness which store up treasures in heaven, or are our hearts set on the treasures of earth which rot, rust and fail?
Even in Christian ministry we can get this wrong! Greatness in ministry doesn’t necessarily mean preaching impressive sermons to vast crowds in state-of-the-art auditoriums. Such opportunities are, after all open to very, very few people. For sure, if you are gifted like Billy Graham, or George Whitfield – preach your heart out. But in Jesus’s kingdom greatness isn’t restricted to the gifted few, because serving the poor, sharing the gospel with a neighbour, praying for the lost and broken, sitting with the bereaved, being on the church cleaning rota – is available to virtually everyone.
So as the proverbial ‘man at the gate of the year’ marks out this milepost in the progression of time and points us in the direction of the hand of God beckoning on onwards, we can look at this new year with some confidence. The one true great life has been lived – for us and we are saved by his grace. Romans 8 says: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son”, which means at the very least, that God’s agenda for us in this new year is to make us increasingly more like Jesus! Jesus offers us forgiveness for every time we have settled for eternal mediocrity by pursuing the the things this world values as ‘great’; and then he calls us towards lives of true greatness, which he defines as self-sacrificial service to the least; sharing with them both physical bread, and the bread of life.
We hope that this New Year is one of great joy for you – but the truth is that we don’t know what triumphs or tragedies we might face this in it. What we can say with real certainty is that the coming year can be ‘great’, (eternally great), if we receive the love, forgiveness and greatness of Christ – and follow His call to serve others in His name. In so doing, to become more like Him.
So think, as you begin this New Year, not what you can grasp but what you can give. Who you can serve, not what you can store up. How can you take the lowest seat, not the loftiest throne? How can you imitate the humility of Christ, who though being in very nature God, did nto consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, ? How can you serve in ways that gain no recognition from men, or status in this world, but which will make you just a little more like Christ?
For this way lies greatness – according to Jesus.
Have a great New Year.
