My Dad Vs. Your Dad – Mark 9:33-37

Text: Mark 9:33-37

Stick two boys of roughly the same age in your front yard, and within 10 minutes they’ll be arguing.

• “I’m way faster than you.”
• “No you’re not.”
• “Yes I am. Come on, let’s race.”
• “Look how far I can hit the ball. I’m probably gonna play in the big leagues one day.”
• “Wow.  Is that as far as you can throw? Give me the ball. Watch this.”

We’ve seen it happen so many times that we created a modern-day label for childish arguments like this: “My dad can beat up your dad”.

But at least we grow out of it, right?

If only that were true.

Mark is brutal in his portrait of the apostles. Here’s a quite unflattering story about one of their arguments:

Then He came to Capernaum. And when He was in the house He asked them, “What was it you disputed among yourselves on the road?”

But they kept silent, for on the road they had disputed among themselves who would be the greatest.

And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”

Then He took a little child and set him in the midst of them. And when He had taken him in His arms, He said to them, “Whoever receives one of these little children in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me.”  (Mark 9:33-37).

Incredible, isn’t it?

No wonder they were too embarrassed to tell Jesus what their subject actually was.

(paraphrasing)

“Hey guys, what were you talking about back there?”

“Oh, nothing really. Just sports and politics, mostly. Stuff like that.”

To make it worse, their silly argument happened right after Jesus had reminded them about his approaching crucifixion.

Apparently they were too busy jockeying for position in the soon-to-come Jewish Empire to focus on unpleasant things like death and crosses and tombs.

“I’ll be closer to Jesus’ seat in the kingdom than any of you guys,” one said.

“No chance. He practically promised me that I’ll be his right-hand man.”

And so it went.

It’s funny because they’re acting like playground show-offs.

It’s not funny at all because it shows they had absolutely no idea about what it meant to follow Jesus.

It’s funny because we’ve witnessed kids doing this.

It’s not funny because we act just like them.

We might be more subtle, but we’re often no less concerned about personal advancement:

• Name-dropping
• Expensive toys
• Fancy Clothes
• A car that makes a statement
• A big house with a prestigious address

We’ve got lots of ways to impress people with our success.  So often our sense of self-worth is tied to human measures of accomplishment, like position or power, instead of our acceptance with God.

Jesus wants us to know it can’t be this way in his kingdom.

Following him means sacrificing self-interest and embracing an other-focused mentality. It means radically abandoning our pride and obsession with self and learning to put others ahead of us.

Discipleship has no place for I’m-better-than-you arguments, whether stated with a playground-like bravado or expressed in less obvious ways.

In the end it doesn’t really matter who’s got the tougher dad.

What counts is whether we got serious about thinking about others more than we do ourselves.