Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called it the “drum major instinct.”
He said it was basic to fallen human nature, “this quest for recognition, this desire for attention, this desire for distinction.” It “is the basic impulse, the basic drive of human life,” he said.[1] It’s also what’s behind so much of the personal and even national arrogance of racism, classicism, violence, and war, King thought: a virus in the personality of each of us. This “drum major instinct,” an elemental force within our fallen psychology: it’s just who we are this side of Eden, King said, an ancient bitter trait.
Augustine saw it in our original story. The very meaning of the name “Cain” (the first murderer in human history), Augustine mistakenly thought, was “Mine!” The “lustful domination” responsible for all the evil of the “city of the world” began, he said, with the sinful fantasy that we can replace God.[2] And it’s a fantasy Saint John Paul II, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, said was “rewritten daily, with inexorable and degrading frequency, in the book of human history.”[3]
The Greeks called it “hubris,” Christians, “pride.” It has corrupted even good Christian people for two millennia. Paul, for instance, begged the Corinthians: “in the name of Jesus…that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” Belonging either to Paul or Cephas or Apollos empties the cross of its meaning, he said.[4] He begged Euodia and Syntyche, two head-strong women in Philippi, to get over themselves and “come to a mutual understanding in the Lord,” making their own the “mind of Christ Jesus.”[5] But such appeals likely did little. Empires and nations have fallen because of it, families too, destroyed by damnable pride. Over the centuries, it’s scattered Christians into countless denominations. These days it’s made us all mad at each other, worn out by the pandemic and all its attending conflicts. The cause of so much weariness and destruction, it’s the ancient tragic flaw that has contributed our impatience and rudeness and overall (borrowing another phrase of Dr. King’s) to “man’s inhumanity to man.”[6] If we’re not too far gone in bitterness, we see it. We see ourselves.
Not surprising then we find it even the among the Twelve, even in the presence of the Lord. If anything, we learn here that being near Jesus, being a Christian, does not automatically erase arrogance. Giving up everything to follow Jesus, as they had, still they were riddled with pride.[7] Earlier in Mark’s gospel after Jesus again spoke about his passion, the disciples didn’t listen. Or, if they did, they didn’t understand what Jesus was saying, too caught up arguing among themselves who was the greatest.[8] In today’s gospel we learn the disciples still haven’t learned a thing at all. Again, Jesus speaks of his passion—that he’ll be condemned, mocked, spit, upon, beaten, and killed before rising on the third day—and again the disciples fail to hear. The disciples have accepted Jesus as the messiah, but clearly, they don’t know yet what that means. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, perhaps harbor some false political or wildly apocalyptic notion of what the messiah is and what he’ll accomplish. We know Peter failed to grasp what manner of messiah Jesus was. “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus said to him in rebuke.[9] In John’s gospel, after the miracle of the loaves, Jesus had to escape from his followers because they wanted to take him by force to make him king; again, because they misunderstood what sort of messiah Jesus was.[10]
But we should take note that the disciples’ failure isn’t just theological ignorance, a failure to grasp Jesus intellectually. Rather, it’s also willful ignorance, sinful ignorance: pride and arrogance, the “drum major instinct.” Arrogance prevented James and John from hearing Jesus at a critical time, he whom they claimed to love. So focused on themselves, they couldn’t even hear Jesus. They asked their selfish question as if they weren’t even listening to him talk about his death. Think about how rude the question is. Jesus talks of his death, and James and John ask about status. These are Jesus’ closest disciples, and yet they don’t even see it.
And how very human. You and I have no room to judge the sons of Zebedee. We’re like them in our own ways. I mean, have you ever been impatient with someone? Has your elderly neighbor, or your elderly parent, ever wasted your time with some idle conversation? Wasted our time, we say, because we’re too caught up in our own stuff: “I’ve got to get to work…I’ve got to get to the store…I’ve got to get the kids to practice.” Have you ever thought someone, whom you really should value, was wasting your time? Have you looked at your watch instead of listening? If so, then you too are a “son of Zebedee.” Has someone close to you been sick or in the hospital, and instead of visiting or calling, been too busy? If so, then you too may be a “son of Zebedee.” Have we been uncaring when we needed to care, insensitive when we needed to be sensitive? These are the sins of the sons of Zebedee, and they’re our sins too.
But what does Jesus say? One might guess he’d shame us all into submission, humble us, banish us as he once banished Adam and Eve. But remarkably, he doesn’t do that. Rather, he invites us to share in his sacrificial priesthood, each of us. Listen to this, because I’m telling you something true: In response to our pride and arrogance, Jesus invites us to share in his priesthood, his sacrifice. Answering James and John, Jesus talks about his “baptism” and asks if they’re able to be baptized with his baptism.[11] We know Jesus is speaking about his death. In Luke’s gospel, for example, Jesus speaks about his death clearly in terms of his baptism.[12] And whenever Jesus speaks about his death, he is speaking about priesthood, describing his passion sometimes explicitly in the cultic terms of the priest. “I consecrate myself for them,” Jesus prayed the night before his death, speaking like a priest.[13] This is what he’s offering James and John: his sacrifice, the exact opposite of what they asked for; or perhaps, it’s the perfection of what they asked for. Because that’s what was good for them, sacrifice not status. And good for us.
He also gives them an example. We are not to lord it over anybody; rather, “whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant.”[14] This ethic of messianic humility is found in all the teachings of Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount they are the “poor in spirit,” the “meek,” the “persecuted,” those who turn the other cheek who are “blessed,” not the boastful, proud, and easily-offended.[15] Paul said we ought to have the “mind of Christ Jesus,” doing “nothing out of selfishness.” Instead, we are to regard others more important than ourselves.[16] This is the ethic of the saints. Saint Thérèse, for example, spoke of the “little way.”[17] This is the way of the Lamb, the way of the Lord Jesus. And it should be our way, if we’ll just let go of that ancient vice: our pride, that which keeps us from Jesus, the humble one.
This should be our path. But many misunderstand Jesus here, thinking all this talk of humility only serves to keep people down, oppressed and depressed. Nietzsche criticized Christians on just this point, for what he called their “slave morality.”[18] Jesus is so often misunderstood here. He tells us to be humble, a servant. “[W]hoever wishes to be first among you,” he even said, “will be the slave of all.”[19] This is radical talk, but Jesus is not humiliating us here. Rather, if we’re to see the wisdom of Jesus’ teaching, we must understand that by inviting us to take the lowest place, the place of the servant, Jesus is inviting us to share in his sacrificial priesthood. We are to serve because of the Son of Man came to serve, to “give his life as a ransom for many.”[20] This is the language of sacrifice and priesthood, language we ought to speak, a sacrifice and priesthood we ought to live. Jesus doesn’t shame us for our arrogance; he redeems us and consecrates us. He invites us to be like him.
This is the spiritual truth of the priesthood, the one priesthood of Christ in which we all share, belonging either to the priesthood of the lay faithful or to the ministerial priesthood.[21] Each one of us, in the manner appropriate to his or her vocation, is called to live out this priestly gift and character. Those in the ministerial priesthood participate uniquely in the service of the altar, and in governance and teaching. And we ministerial priests must certainly beware of the dangers of pride and arrogance. But the lay faithful are to beware of pride as well. In daily life and work, we’re to be dedicated to Jesus Christ in imitation—“even in the hardships of life…patiently born,” the Church teaches.[22] We are to be priests in the world by imitating the lowliness of Jesus. And this is no “slave morality,” no sort of spiritual self-hatred; because in imitating the lowliness of Jesus we’re doing our part in the “ransom for many.” We’re priests of Christ, all of us, when we become humble servants, because that’s one of the ways Jesus is made visible in the world. And this may be, by the way, what in this pandemic we all forgot a little but what we must remember—me and you, all of us: the humility of Christ. If you don’t think this applies to you, almost certainly it does. And so, then, the question: Do you want the baptism of Jesus, his humble cross? Or, do you want the arrogant crown? The choice is yours; the heaven or hell of it is entirely up to you.
Many people will look at a crucifix and see nothing. They won’t see the humility, the obedience, the love, the sacrifice. They won’t see any of that because they’re blind and hardened by sin. But they may be able to see you, a living crucifix. They may be able to see in your humility, obedience, love, and sacrifice something that moves them, touches their conscience. You may be the person where and in whom Jesus is found. Jesus just might be visible in you, and Jesus just might save souls through you: but only if you live out your priesthood, if you’re humble, a servant to all. The Talmud says that the messiah will not appear until pride has ceased among men.[23] And so may we be humble, and may the messiah once again appear. Amen.
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct” (1968). In I Have a Dream: Writing and Speeches that Changed the World, 182
[2] Augustine, City of God 15.17; 15.7
[3] John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 7
[4] 1 Corinthians 1:10, 17
[5] Philippians 4:2; 2:5
[6] Ibid.
[7] Mark 10:28
[8] Mark 9:31-34
[9] Matthew 16:16, 23
[10] John 6:15
[11] Mark 10:38
[12] Luke 12:50
[13] John 17:19
[14] Mark 10:43
[15] Matthew 5:3,5,10,39
[16] Philippians 2:3-6
[17] Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Ch. 9
[18] Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
[19] Mark 10:44
[20] Mark 10:45
[21] Catechism of the Catholic Church 1546
[22] Catechism of the Catholic Church 901
[23] Madison C. Peters, Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud, 121
© 2021 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield
