Not For A Million Dollars

The chief personnel officer of a major commercial airline company was describing the difficulty of recruiting and training new employees-especially for jobs requiring the employee to give direct service to the public. He said, “Service is the only thing, really, that we have to sell. But it is the part of the job that is hardest to teach. Nowadays, no one wants to be thought of as a servant.” He is right, I think. Nowadays, nobody wants to be thought of as a servant. But it presents us with a serious problem, because the Gospels make it perfectly clear that Jesus intended for each one of His followers to be precisely that: a servant.

Have you ever noticed in the Gospels the power play that is going on among the disciples? It’s that same old thing that we are into today: jockeying for position, angling and scheming for special privilege. The power play! In the tenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, the sons of Zebedee,…