“The Drum Major Instinct”
Sunday, January 12, 2003
Dr. Victor D. Pentz
Senior Minister
Scripture Lesson: Mark 10:35-52
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want
you to do for us whatever we ask.”
In pop culture, the rage these days is reality television. It started with Survivor and then American
Idol, then The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, The Osbournes,
and heaven help us, the Anna Nicole Show. I even
read the other day that our beloved Coca-Cola Company is coming out with some reality TV ads. In
one of the spots, the actress Penelope Cruz takes a
drink of Coke and then burps. The idea, said the
article, is to show that Coke is a part of real life.
Well, friends, we want to show the world that Christianity is a part of real life. That we have Jesus
Christ in us. What difference does he make? The
answer, Jesus tells us this morning, is that when
Christ lives in us, we will live our lives as servants.
“What do you want me to do for you?” he
asked.
They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right
and the other at your left in your glory.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus
said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
“We can,” they answered.
Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I
drink and be baptized with the baptism I am
baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not
for me to grant. These places belong to those
for whom they have been prepared.”
Last week, on the first Sunday of 2003, we heard
Paul say, “This one thing I do...I have given up all
things for my one passion: the ‘surpassing greatness
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.’” But if we know
Christ, what difference will that knowledge make?
Again, the answer is: when we know Christ, we live
in service to others.
When the ten heard about this, they became
indignant with James and John. Jesus called
them together and said, “You know that those
who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord
it over them, and their high officials exercise
Let’s look at one of the great servant passages
of the New Testament, Mark 10:35-52:
1
authority over them. Not so with you. Instead,
whoever wants to become great among you
must be your servant, and whoever wants to be
first must be slave of all. For even the Son of
Man did not come to be served, but to serve,
and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
I must confess that I have disliked almost every
sermon I’ve ever heard on the topic of servanthood,
including many that have come from my own mouth.
It seems that in sermons on servanthood, we pastors just cannot resist resorting to the guilt stick; we
end up saying to our flock, “You aren’t doing enough.
And because you aren’t doing enough, the world is
coming apart. Society is coming unglued, and there
you are sitting comfortably on the sidelines. So sign
up and get to work.” And yet the truth is that most
of us are already spread way too thin and struggling
to connect with our own families. I’ve come to believe that servanthood is not a battle we fight on
our calendars as much as one we fight up here in
our minds. In the coming year, you and I can keep
the same jobs and the same friends, volunteer for
the same organizations, and yet have a hugely more
positive impact, if only we will take on the mind of
Christ as a servant.
Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and
his disciples, together with a large crowd, were
leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that
is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus
of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of
David, have mercy on me!”
Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet,
but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have
mercy on me!”
Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
So they called to the blind man, “Cheer up!
On your feet! He’s calling you.” ?
In the Scripture passage we read today, Jesus is
heading for Jerusalem. Palm Sunday is just days
away. James and John figure it’s now or never. The
time has come to nail down their cabinet positions
in Jesus’ kingdom, which they believe is coming
soon. So they usher him aside out of earshot of the
other disciples, and they say with childlike naiveté,
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we
ask.” Have your kids ever tried that approach with
you? “Daddy, say yes.” “Say yes to what?” “Say
yes first and then we’ll tell you what.” Jesus says,
“What do you want me to do for you?”
Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his
feet and came to Jesus.
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus
asked him.
The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed
you.” Immediately he received his sight and
followed Jesus along the road.
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to
God.
“We just want one teensy-weensy favor, Lord.
When you come into your kingdom in the next few
weeks, you’re going to need a vice president and a
secretary of state. Let us take those positions.
Grant us to sit by your side, one on your right and
one on your left, when you come into your kingdom.”
Lord, what a beautiful story we find here in
Mark’s gospel, and yet what a challenging
example of how you want us to live it sets
before us. We pray that you would come
among us, Lord, to illumine your Word by
your Holy Spirit and to empower us to go
out and live out your truth in the world.
Amen.
Well, this was a bold power play by James and
John. And when the other disciples got wind of it,
Scripture says, “they were indignant with James and
John” – mainly because they all had the same idea
2
in mind for themselves. But I want to point out a
subtle aspect of this story. The other ten disciples
were indignant with James and John. But was Jesus?
Not at all! Jesus knew this question of power and
position had been uppermost in the minds of his
disciples all along. Jesus understands our human
ambition and striving for position. Instead of rebuking James and John, as our Lord proved himself
capable of doing on many other occasions, Christ
supported the cause of James and John. He said,
“You want to be great? Okay, I’ll tell you how to be
great.”
that drive within you to succeed and excel, because
God gave you that gift.
So Jesus was speaking to his gathered disciples,
“If you want to be great….” Can’t you imagine the
scene suddenly becoming like one of those old E.
F. Hutton commercials? A hush falls as the disciples listen intently. Here it is. The secret of success. Jesus says, “Whoever would be great among
you... be a servant.” And maybe a few of them
shook their heads or stuck their fingers in their ears
to clear them out. “What did he say? Drive a Suburban? A Subaru? Invest in which stock? Live in
which neighborhood? Attend which college?” No.
The hot tip was this: Be a servant.
The narrative here gives the sense that this is a
lesson of extreme importance: Jesus “calls them together” and says, “Whoever would be great among
you must follow this path toward greatness.”
James and John probably thought, “How boring. How does this make use of all the special gifts
I have to offer the world?”
One of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s finest sermons was not about civil rights; it was about greatness. In this story about James and John, Dr. King
recognized our primal human desire to stick out, to
strut our stuff and to be somebody. King called it
“the Drum Major Instinct.” The Drum Major Instinct. Every one of us has it, don’t we? Boxing
promoter Don King once said, “I never cease to
amaze myself, and I mean that humbly.”
When I look around sanctuary this morning, I
see people who were groomed for success, raised to
be number one, or at least to get as near the top as
you can possibly get.
Many of us have a value scale on which success
is up here, and servanthood is down here.
Maybe our thinking goes like this: Well, life has
sort of worked out so that I would be one of these
people up here. Oh, servanthood is important because it helps us celebrate those nice people who
work down in the trenches. But really, I’m too valuable to do mundane tasks. Why, that would be like
using a Rolls Royce to deliver the mail. I’m really
quite special; surely God doesn’t intend for me to
waste my special qualities in a life of lowly
servanthood.
Where did our Drum Major Instinct come from?
Some say from Satan. But I think it came from God.
In fact, God has within himself his own divine Drum
Major Instinct. In Genesis chapter one, on the first
morning of Creation, God stood back from a world
still wet from his hand and said, “That’s good. Oh,
that’s good.” Five times he said that. And the sixth
time, after making us human beings, God said, “Behold, it is very good!” And I’ll confess something
to you. Every once in while, not often, but every
once in a while, I’ll be driving home after Sunday
services, having given my all in the pulpit, and I’ll
tilt the rearview mirror of my Acura so that I can
see myself. I’ll look into my own eyes and I’ll say,
“You did good. Victor, you did good.” And I don’t
apologize for that! God gave us our Drum Major
Instinct. So you don’t ever have to apologize for
Oh what a misunderstanding of what Jesus is
saying! The agenda of the meeting our Scripture
describes was leadership. James and John wanted
to rule the world. Jesus said, “I want to help
you…You will win the hearts and minds of everyone you meet if you come to them as a servant.”
3
In verse 42, Jesus continues, “You know that
those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles
lord it over them, and their high officials exercise
authority over them.”
napkin on the table between us. Then he said, ‘If
you don’t eat half of these, I’m going to eat all of
them, and that’s not good for me. So start with the
yellow one.’ And any time I got nervous during the
interview, he said ‘Have another M&M.’”
We all know people who let a little authority go
right to their heads. They love to make other people
feel small and insignificant, like Lucy in the Peanuts cartoons. She lords it over Charlie Brown. I
read one theologian who thinks Charles Schultz was
trying to send us a message by naming the character
Lucy – short for Lucifer. That interpretation may
be a little harsh, don’t you think? The Gentiles lord
it over each other, Jesus says, but “not so with
you….” And he gives them golden advice: if you
want to lead in my kingdom, first of all you must
exercise power with kindness.
When it was time to leave for the campus tour,
the dean asked my daughter, “Do you like squirrels?” She wondered, “Is this a trick question?” She
answered, “Yes….” He said, “Good.” Then he
gave her a walnut and said, “When you see one of
my squirrels out there, tell them it’s from me.”
I don’t know if my daughter will be accepted
into that med school, but she has already learned
from that dean one of life’s most important lessons
for a doctor, or any person: use power with kindness.
A couple of months ago, I was getting ready to
enter a meeting here at the church when my cell
phone rang. It was my daughter Jessica calling from
the West Coast, where she was just about to go into
her first med school interview. Throughout high
school and college her dream has been to be accepted into medical school. Now she was five minutes away from her first interview, and she was
scared. So she called her dad. In her mind, her
entire future would be determined by what happened
in the next hour. I said, “Honey, let’s pray.” I started
by thanking God for her birth, for the happiness she
brought her parents when she was born. I continued, “And God, how you’ve led her and guided her
and blessed her every step of the way, preparing her
for this moment, to meet with the dean of this med
school.” (By now we were both teary.) After our
prayer, I said, “Honey, call me when it’s over.” I
hung up and spent the next hour with my hands
clenched, silently entreating God to support my
daughter.
In addition to that, to be a servant, we must
walk our talk. Today’s Scripture is one of the most
important in the New Testament and I will show
you why.
Jesus is heading for Jerusalem. He is at the peak
of his popularity. As he sweeps through town after
town, the crowds trailing him get bigger and bigger.
The air is electric with the sense of history in the
making. It is in this setting that James and John ask
their question. And Jesus says, “No it’s not about
worldly power, it’s about humble service to those
in need. For the son of man came not to be served,
but to serve.” The very next verse, verse 46, says,
“Then they came to Jericho.” In Jericho, they encounter the biggest crowds yet. And then as they
are leaving Jericho, a blind man, Bartimaeus, shouts,
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Oh no, not now, not another one of those blind
guys yelling for Jesus. I know there must have been
some part of Jesus that thought, “Oh Father, I’ve
got a world to save, prophecy to fulfill, a cross to
bear…I cannot handle one more annoying needy
person.”
An hour and a half later, I got a call. You know
how you can tell just by the tone of someone’s voice
that everything’s okay? My daughter said, “Daddy,
that medical school dean was so nice. The first thing
he did was pull out a bag of M&M’s and put a white
Someone has said that in that moment, all of
4
Christianity hung in the balance. Was Jesus a phony,
or was he for real? Was he just one more religious
leader who loved the spotlight? Or was he truly the
servant of the poor?
vants. In these moments as we sit in your
house, we surrender to you, Lord, and we
ask you to make us servants of one another
in this congregation, servants of our
spouses, servants of our families, servants
in our workplaces and schools, in our community, our city of Atlanta and in the world.
We pray that you would give each one of us
a ministry of the mundane, a ministry in
which we learn humility by being interrupted, a ministry of kindness and gentleness and grace. Lord, take advantage of that
wonderful Drum Major Instinct you’ve
placed in each of us and help us to seek
greatness through service to Bartimaeus and
those like him. Because of your example,
we know that service is love made tangible.
Amen.
We come now to what may be the two most
important words in Mark’s gospel: “Jesus stopped.”
Right smack on the center divider of the Jericho
freeway, Jesus stopped. The crowd stopped. History stopped! Our salvation went into a holding
pattern, while Jesus touched and healed Bartimaeus.
Pilate couldn’t make Jesus stop, Caesar couldn’t;
even the knowledge of impending death on a bloody
cross didn’t slow Jesus down. But the cry of a blind
beggar froze Jesus in his tracks.
That willingness to be a servant is why even
today he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And
why if any of us want to be great, we must become
the servant of all.
Do you know where this word servant comes
from? It originated in ancient warfare. In the savagery of those times, conquering armies would
slaughter their vanquished foes, only preserving the
lives of a select few, whom they would bring back
to their homes to work for them. The word for this
act of saving a few was servare, which means “to
preserve.” So originally a servant was someone who
by all rights ought to be dead, but whose life was
spared for one purpose: to serve. Friends, you and
I are dead in Christ and alive to serve. It is our only
purpose in living. So as you go forth from here, use
power with kindness, take time for those in need,
like Bartimaeus, live out your purpose. And in so
doing, rise to greatness in the Kingdom of God.
Lord, you’re asking us to live joyously in a
way that is very unnatural to us: as servants.
You know how we love to dominate and be
in control, to lord it over others. But Lord
we are thankful that this perfect life of service was once lived and modeled for us by
Jesus – and that today, Jesus lives within us,
to guide us in our struggle to become ser5
6