True Greatness

A Meditation on the Daily Readings for August 24th.

What constitutes true greatness ?

The world of men judges greatness by externalities. A big job: doctor, lawyer, engineer, executive. A big house. Stereo. A stylish car — or cars. Gourmet living, élan and chic. Things, without exception, that perish.

God judges greatness by altogether different things. By looking into hearts and seeing potential riches, strength, staying power.

Look at I Kings 19. God wanted someone to succeed the great Elijah, someone who had the potential for being even greater, upon whom He could place and entrust a double portion of His Spirit. Where did He look? Where did He tell Elijah to look ? Royal Samaria? Jezreel the winter capital ? The colleges at Ramah and Bethel ? Among the rich priests of Dan ?

He sent him to the obscure village of Abel-Meholah in the Jordan valley, to call a countryman, a farmer. “Elisha was plowing” (v 19).

But the reason He sent Elijah to that village is soon apparent. Elisha was a young man of total commitment, and he made an immediate and irrevocable decision (v. 21). He was a man of potential strength, a pillar of God’s house, a man of true greatness.

Next look at Jeremiah 45. Baruch was Jeremiah’s secretary. He wrote out Jeremiah’s long prophecies in longhand, probably over and over. He wrote out one and then was told to drop it into the river! Another was chopped up with a penknife and had to be laboriously written out again. He was a very faithful colleague and friend.

But Jeremiah and Baruch lived in times like ours, when the whole fabric of society was crumbling and the Israelite nation was facing unprecedented catastrophe. What was the point of seeking worldly greatness when everything around them was soon to crash about their ears ? “Seekest thou great things for thyself ?” says God to Baruch, “seek them not”. But God had a future far greater for Baruch: “thy life will I give unto thee for a prey”–life eternal! What could be greater than that?

Meditating on I Corinthians 4 and 5 there is an expression which Paul uses several times concerning some brethren in Corinth–“puffed up.” The Greek word is a typical mimic sound word, phusioo. Just to say it aloud gives an idea of the meaning! These people in the Corinthian meeting had an altogether wrong idea of greatness. They were spiritual windbags, balloons in the ecclesia full of hot air. Just prick a balloon and it bursts. Paul tells us that in ecclesial life, greatness is not measured by ability to impress a crowd, or by how uncompromisingly we can champion our own viewpoint, or how vigorously we can wave the big stick, but –notice carefully—by “love in a spirit of gentleness” (v. 21).

We recently read of a million people at a certain man’s funeral. To human eyes he was a world figure. In another recent case, thousands followed the cortege of a well known gangland figure to the graveyard.

Do you know how many people attended the funeral of the greatest man who ever lived when he died ? The answer is in Matthew 27: 59-61. It is startling! One man, with two women observing from a distance! The funeral of the greatest human being ever born was attended by one man — and he was the mortician. What a commentary on divine and human values !

Indeed, when that same Son of Man was born, there was no doctor and his mother’s maternity home was a stable. Even his so-called ‘triumphal entry’ was on an ass.

True greatness then is a matter of divine perception. God sees not as man seeth. As Hannah knew it: “He (God) raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifeth up to the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory.”