Deuteronomy, the final book of the Law/Teachings attributed to Moses, looks back on the seminal history of God’s people, with the eyes of a different age. It takes the tradition and updates it to speak clearly to the children of Israel in their new circumstances, settled and gaining some prosperity in the land of Promise.   

Toward the end of the book (Deuteronomy 30:15-19) we hear the voice of Moses, sounding like an alarm bell from the past, to alert us to the vital possibilities or mortal pitfalls of our response to God’s Will. Our choices, as limited and conditioned as they are, are the key to fullness of life and true happiness, or to death, decay and dis-ease. Our way of life determines our destiny.

We can either choose to give preeminence to God in our life or to accept God as one of several reference points to guide our course. The idols of success, comfort, illusion, convenience, accomplishment and countless others, whisper to us in our sleep and woo us in our waking hours – powerful, seductive, seemingly irresistible. They are the atmosphere in which we wander through this world, manufactured to distract and claim us away from the One who desires what is truly good for us. Media, advertising, social expectations all meld their forces to capture our lives, our very souls.

The voice of Moses cries out like a trumpet calling us to put all our trust in God – to choose living in communion with others and with God over the slow, winding, but certain, path to death. We are to choose truth over all the beautiful, but ultimately empty, lies. We are to choose compassion over self-centeredness. 

Choose life, then, so that you and all those people you are interconnected with may live well.

In the Gospel according to Mark (Mark 10:32-44) Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, on his way to his anticipated suffering and death, as he just reminded his disciples for the third time. Blatantly and cluelessly, the brothers, James and John, approach him with a request. They believe that Jesus is about to triumph, through the power of God, and want him to name them as his second and third in command in his certainly soon to be established kingdom. Nice that they don’t seem to care which of them is on his right and which is on his left – just so it’s the two of them.

Since Jesus’ disciples have been arguing, on a regular basis, about who among them is the greatest, this sets the other ten off. Who do those two usurping upstarts think they are! Jesus didn’t call them first! They have no more right to positions of authority and prestige than any of the rest of us! Once again, Jesus tries to penetrate their ego-centric skulls with a very difficult lesson.

Previously, Jesus used a small child to model the attitude and behavior needed by those who would take on leadership in God’s coming Kingdom. As if that wasn’t shocking and unpleasant enough, now Jesus, referring to his own way of leading, uses the image of a servant/slave. Servants do have influence, but of a kind that stands in radical opposition to how the unbelieving wield what passes for authority among them.

These faithless bosses lord it over those they subject to their commands and their whims. They (in a phrase that captures this well) make their power over others felt. Everyone around them can feel how the world’s masters use and misuse any and every advantage, deception, alliance, imposition, coercion – every imaginable stratagem – to build and to radiate a pervasive sense of their indispensable importance and value. One can physically feel the weight of their presence and self-serving actions. It manifests itself as unyielding and oppressive. This type of power comes down crushingly on people from above.

Jesus clearly and unequivocally states that this is not to be so among his followers. They are to learn and to practice the leadership of the servant/slave. By faithfully accomplishing what is asked with all their knowledge and skill, by being carefully attentive to the needs of those they serve, by desiring what is truly good for those in their charge, by earning trust, by persuading through their genuine concern and astute observations – in all these ways they are building an unshakeable foundation through effective influence – from below. It is not important who gets the credit, the praise, the notice. It is enough that they are content to serve the building up of God’s Kingdom, and that the people they serve are well.