Are you familiar with the acronym GOAT? G-O-A-T. It means Greatest of All Time. 

Many trace its origin to the early 1960s and Muhammad Ali saying, “I am the greatest!” and his wife in 1992 creating a business called Greatest of All Time, Inc. (GOAT, Inc.) (source) In the early 2000s rapper LL Cool J released an album entitled GOAT on which he sang “I’m the GOAT. I am the greatest of all time.” 

Most consider Simone Biles to be the GOAT of gymnastics. After last week’s game in which Shohei Ohtani became the first player to ever hit fifty home runs and steal fifty bases in the same season, some are saying he is baseball’s new GOAT. 

In kindergarten when I got my first pair of PF Flyers and the promise that they would make me run faster and jump higher than others I thought I would be the GOAT at recess. (I wasn’t.) As a young attorney I wanted to be the GOAT of the law firm. I wanted to win more cases, bill more hours, and collect more dollars than all the others. (I didn’t.)

What about you? Haven’t you wanted to be the GOAT at something, anything? My guess is that we’ve all had some dream or fantasy about being the greatest. We are a people and a nation obsessed with greatness. And if we can’t be the GOAT then we give our support and allegiance to an individual, a team, a party, a country, even a religion that claims to be the GOAT or that we consider to be the greatest. 

I think we see that happening all around us. It’s everywhere and it’s every day. It’s in our sports, music, entertainment, and politics. It’s in our schools and work. It’s on the news and in our social media feeds. It’s an everyday fact of life. It’s not, however, a uniquely modern or American obsession. The disciples in today’s gospel (Mark 9:30-37) “argued with one another who was the greatest.” Each wanted to be the GOAT of disciples. 

What does greatness mean and look like to you today? How is it determined and measured? Who is worthy of being called the greatest?

For most of us, I suspect, greatness is about success and achievement. It’s about winning, being number one, and defeating others. It’s having power, strength, and dominance. It’s about popularity, approval, and recognition. It’s having prominence, place, and position above others. It’s being remembered and honored for doing what others couldn’t or didn’t do. It’s being at the top of the pecking order, sitting in the winner’s circle, taking center stage and standing on the podium – literally and metaphorically.

That’s what I was taught and for most of my life believed about greatness. What about you? It’s probably what most of us have been told to work and strive for. It’s what gets rewarded. It’s how many of us find meaning, value, and self-worth. Where do you see that today in your life? In our county? 

But here’s the thing. Jesus is messing with all of that in today’s gospel. He’s taking what most of us have understood greatness to mean and turning it upside down. He’s reversing the order of what greatness looks like.

“Whoever wants to be first of all must be last of all and servant of all,”
(Mark 9:35)

Last of all is not what I wanted when I ran out onto the playground in my new sneakers. That’s not the dream or fantasy of greatness I’ve had. How about you? It is, however, the greatness to which Jesus calls us. It’s what following Jesus looks like. 

If being number one means being last and servant of all do you still want to be great? What would it ask of you? What would you have to give up or do differently? What would it look like and mean in your life today to be “last of all and servant of all”?

I caught a glimpse of that last week. Some of you know that my dad was in the hospital last week. He was pretty sick, in the ICU for a several days, but is doing much better now. One morning a young woman came into his room. She was wearing a hospital uniform, blue latex gloves, and a mask. She left her cart in the hallway. 

I introduced myself and asked her name. With a heavy Spanish accent she said, “Brenda.” She’s a single mother from Mexico and she’s taking English classes. She began emptying the trash and then in broken English and with a Spanish accent she said, “I’ll make his room very clean and comfortable.” 

By any of today’s measures she is not a GOAT. She is an immigrant cleaning lady. By Jesus’ standards, however, she is in first place. She opened herself to welcome my dad. She committed herself to care for him when he was sick, weak, and vulnerable. 

That’s what Jesus was demonstrating and talking about when he took a little child into his arms and said,

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” 
(Mark 9:37)

We all want to hold the sweet, cute, little baby. That’s easy but that’s not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus isn’t talking about the child. He’s talking about what the child represents. We’ve so romanticized and sentimentalized children and childhood in today’s culture that it can be difficult to understand what Jesus is getting at.  

The child is a symbol for something else. The child is a symbol of vulnerability, powerlessness, and dependency. The child in Jesus’ day had no rights, no status, no economic value. He or she was often poor, sick, or hungry. The child was a consumer and not a producer, a taker and not a giver. Greatness, Jesus says, is in welcoming and receiving into our arms one like this, regardless of who she or he is and regardless of his or her age. 

I don’t think there is anything wrong with success or achievement or being good or even being the best at what we do. The problem comes when our greatness oppresses another, diminishes her or his dignity and value, or creates a discriminatory pecking order. The problem comes when our greatness is achieved through verbal or physical violence. The problem comes when, in order for us to be great, someone else has to be put down. 

Jesus is asking us to rethink what it means to be great and reprioritize what and who really matters.

What if greatness in Jesus’ mind is not found in how much we have or what we have accomplished, but in what we’ve offered and done for others? What if greatness isn’t about defeating another and gaining recognition for ourselves, but in recognizing and lifting up another? What if greatness is not about the position or place we occupy, but about the space and place we create for others? 

What if we stopped arguing about and striving to be the greatest, and we sought to discover or recover and bring out the best in ourselves and each other? What would that look like in your life today? How would you go about doing that? Who would you welcome? Who would our country welcome?

The GOATs of this world have never made much difference in my life but the Brendas have. I’ll bet that’s true for you as well. I wonder who has been a Brenda for you.

The GOATs may have their names written in record and history books but the Brendas have inscribed their names on our hearts. They let us know we mattered and they made a difference in our lives. 

I want to make a difference in the lives of others. Don’t you? I want to make the world just a bit cleaner and more comfortable for another. I hope you do too.

I don’t know who the child is that will be set before you today, tomorrow, or next week. And I don’t know what his or her need will be. But I know this. We can continue to argue about and strive to be the GOAT or we can be the Brenda. The choice is always before us. 

And the world sure could use some more Brendas these days. 

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Image Credit: By Kuebi = Armin Kübelbeck – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.