{"id":5650,"date":"2026-08-14T08:18:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T12:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5650"},"modified":"2026-08-14T08:18:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T12:18:40","slug":"master-and-servants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/14\/master-and-servants\/","title":{"rendered":"Master and Servants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
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Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God.<\/em>


“For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves?\u00a0But I am among you as one who serves”<\/em> (Luke 22:27).

Jesus’ Last Supper \u2013 his final opportunity to spend uninterrupted\u00a0quality time with his closest friends\u00a0and spiritual apprentices \u2013 would surely be an occasion in which those 12 men would want to be on their A\u00a0Game.

The Gospel accounts tell us that the disciples were arguing about something.\u00a0What was it?

“A dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be the greatest (Luke 22:24).\u00a0

Seriously?\u00a0<\/em>The Son of God is on the verge of sacrificing himself to\u00a0save the world and you’re quarreling\u00a0over job titles and who gets\u00a0the corner office?

Very little has changed after 20 centuries.\u00a0

From time-to-time people ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s the worst sin in the Bible?\u201d\u00a0When you look at the Murderer\u2019s Row of human failure that medieval theologians came to call the Seven Deadly Sins, is it possible to say that one of those seven is deadlier than the others?\u00a0

Truthfully, it\u2019s not even close.\u00a0Pride is without question the worst sin in the Bible.\u00a0That\u2019s because we cannot simultaneously be convinced that we are the most wonderful person we know and that Jesus is the most wonderful person we know.\u00a0

Author and theologian C.S. Lewis wrote, \u201cThe essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.\u00a0Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison:\u00a0It was through Pride that the devil became the devil:\u00a0Pride leads to every other vice:\u00a0It is the complete anti-God state of mind.\u201d

It turns out that pride is one of the easiest sins to spot in other people.\u00a0It doesn\u2019t help that our culture virtually exalts it.

Self-adulation\u00a0is often\u00a0on display in online personal profiles.\u00a0Here\u2019s a “personal ad”\u00a0from the pre-digital age posted by a woman in New York<\/em> magazine:\u00a0

\u201cStrikingly beautiful.Ivy League graduate.\u00a0Playful, passionate, perceptive, elegant, bright, articulate, original in mind, unique in spirit. I possess a rare balance of beauty and depth, sophistication and earthiness, seriousness and a love of fun. Professionally successful, perfectly capable of being self-sufficient and independent, but I won\u2019t be truly content until we find each other.\u00a0Please reply with a substantial letter describing your background and who you are.\u00a0Photo essential.\u201d<\/em>

The good news, as author John Ortberg points out, is that this woman is definitely living out the second part of Jesus\u2019 command, \u201cLove your neighbor as you love yourself.”

A sense of self-importance may be easy to see in other people, but it’s notoriously hard to spot\u00a0within ourselves.\u00a0

Lewis points out that the more prideful we are, the more we hate to see pride on display in another person.\u00a0If you had expected to be the center of attention at the party \u2013 to receive the lion\u2019s share of the laughs, the raves, and\u00a0the thoughtful nods \u2013 it\u2019s almost too much to take when you realize that most of the attention is gravitating toward somebody else.

That was at the center of the disciples’ dispute.\u00a0Which of them deserved to be Jesus’ vice-president?\u00a0Who ought to get the rose at the end of the apostolic beauty pageant?

When all is said and done, pride turns out to be a neck problem.\u00a0Pride is what makes us look down<\/em> on other persons, fancying ourselves to be their superiors.

If we think that we deserve to be saved, or that God must be amazingly impressed with us and would be a fool not to welcome us onto his team, or that God has somehow come to be in our debt because of the good things that we have done, then we don\u2019t understand Redemption 101.\u00a0The first and most important act of faith is to look up<\/em> and say, \u201cYou are the Lord, and I am not.\u00a0My life is all about you, not about me.\u201d\u00a0

That\u2019s why pride is the deadliest of the Deadly Sins.\u00a0Rigorously pursued over the course of a lifetime, pride erases\u00a0our\u00a0chance to know and love God, and to\u00a0know and love others.

In the midst of their idiotic and prideful quarrel, Jesus taught a crucial lesson:

“Who is greater in the world’s eyes?\u00a0The person sitting at the table having dinner, or the person who is serving him?\u00a0 It’s the one at the table, right? That’s how the world works.\u00a0But I’m starting a whole new movement, one in which the ‘greatest’ person is the servant.\u00a0For even though I am the Messiah, God’s Chosen One, here I am among you as one who serves\u201d (Luke 22:26-30).

Having spent the better part of two weeks pondering the \u201clower end\u201d of the metaphor spectrum \u2013 the realm in which we are assigned the identity of rocks, clay, salt, branches, chicks, and sheep \u2013 we\u2019ll spend the rest of this month exploring metaphors in which we are cast in various human roles.

We begin with a relationship that was assumed to represent Square One in the ancient world: master and servant.

That automatically raises what is arguably life\u2019s most important issue: Who gets to be the master of my life? Am I the captain of my own soul, or does that job belong to someone else? To what person or ideal should I grant authority to determine my agenda for the rest of my days?\u00a0

More than anything else, my answer to that question \u2013 not my well-rehearsed, got-my-Sunday-clothes-on religious answer, but the answer that is revealed by my actual behavior \u2013 is what will determine the outcome of my life.

There is no ambiguity in Jesus\u2019 teaching. He is the master. We are the servants \u2013 but only if we say Yes to his call.\u00a0

But here\u2019s the monumental surprise: Jesus himself embraced the servant\u2019s role. \u201cI came not to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many<\/em>\u201d (Mark 10:45).

What, in the end, is the antidote to pride?\u00a0It\u2019s servanthood.\u00a0What’s the pathway to humility?\u00a0Do the jobs no one else wants to do, without complaining or hey-look-at-me.\u00a0What’s the secret to true greatness? Make the needs of others your first priority.\u00a0\u00a0

Only through a Spirit-powered revolution of the heart can such realities ever become ours.

I recently read\u00a0about a man who encountered a little girl carrying a huge mass of cotton candy on a paper cone.\u00a0He asked her playfully, \u201cHow can a little girl like you eat all of that cotton candy?\u201d\u00a0\u201cWell, you see,\u201d she answered, \u201cI\u2019m really much bigger on the inside than I am on the outside.\u201d\u00a0

May God give us the grace to stop anguishing about our outsides.

Inside<\/em> \u2013 cultivating a servant\u2019s heart \u2013 is where the action really is.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God. “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves?\u00a0But I am among you as one who… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5651,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1159,1065,350],"class_list":["post-5650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-metaphors","tag-pride","tag-servanthood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5652,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5650\/revisions\/5652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}