Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Five star general and U S President, Dwight D. Eisenhower tells a story of a horse he once “owned” named Blackie. Eisenhower had been stationed in Panama and as he was a cavalry man at heart, was allowed to choose a horse. He chose a gelding that was large and strong but also looked mulish and stubborn. The horse had not been trained and so he taught the horse its various gaits and commands. As Eisenhower worked with the horse, he also established trust to the point that the horse became completely obedient. And it was in that complete obedience to Eisenhower that the horse saved his own life.
Eisenhower and Blackie along with a few other men were working to try and find a place to cross a stream when they began to sink in black mud. The horse went down suddenly and without warning, but Eisenhower reacting quickly was able to leap from the haunches of the horse on to the bank. Blackie began to thrash violently and sinker deeper in the mud. Eisenhower shouted, “Blackie, halt!” and the completely obedient horse suddenly stopped and did not move. As Blackie lay quietly, Eisenhower and the others were able to figure out what to do. They took rope and lashed it around the horse, using long sticks to wedge the rope under the pommel. They couldn’t pull him backwards so they went upstream until they could safely cross and came back down to where Blackie was. They began to pull the ropes but noticed the horse was still sinking albeit much slower. Blackie had remained still all this time and Eisenhower now began to quietly call for his horse to “come” repeating the command with a strong, yet gentle, voice over and over again. The horse pushed his head forward and began to move like a horse trying to swim. It took time, but within a half hour they had pulled the horse up on to solid ground.
That obedience to his master, saved Blackie’s life. Had he continued to thrash, he would have sunk deeper into the mud and smothered to death. And Eisenhower’s respect and concern for his mount, moved him and his men to act with strength and not panic for they knew the horse depended on them. This is how ordered relationships work—they build trust because each not only understands his or her responsibility to the relationship, they also know and respect the duty to serve one another.
In the letter to the Hebrews, the organizational structure of heaven is charted out with the Trinitarian God at the top of the org chart. Below that are the angels with humanity made a little lower than the angels. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is made lower than the angels while on his earthly sojourn. But this is only for a little while. Yet, in that brief time on earth, Jesus brings vision and an ordering of life that helps us begin to understand God’s desires for us through his ordered world. God nor Jesus nor the angels desire our subjugation. Instead as subjects of the kingdom of God, their desire is servant leadership. The divine ordering is meant for us to be in relationship with one another. God is a leader who gets what he wants done in this world not by telling us to go do it, but by inviting us into his vision of the kingdom. The only way we can enact God’s desires is through shared vision. That shared vision is offered to us through the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ enters the world and makes himself lower than the angels. He allows himself to be demoted, so to speak, in order for the vision of God to be shared with humankind. It is this humility with which God leads—not power or domination but servanthood. Jesus doesn’t come simply to save us, but also to serve us. He is not put into subjugation under the angels though he allows himself to become lower than the angels. Think about the ways the angels serve him in his incarnational form—Gabriel prepares his mother for his birth, the angels tend to him after being tempted by the devil in the wilderness, even at his death there seems to have been an angelic presence in his tomb. Though Jesus is made lower than the angels, their authority over him as a human is grounded in servanthood. That seems to be consistent with the human experience of angels—they aren’t here to boss us around as much as to build us up.
It is as if outlining the heavenly hierarchy and humanity’s place therein, we are to understand it as an inversion of power and servitude. We are not subjected to the power of the divine beings, but cared for by them. This mighty host of angels is not here to subdue us but help us. In this ordering, we discover the inversion of power and authority—our God is not an totalitarian dictator, he is a servant leader made known to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
Servant leadership is not about subjecting things to our power and control but lifting them up. In the Old Testament lesson from Genesis we read how the man gave every living creature its name. In so doing, the man now had a sense of empowerment and responsibility for all that he named. That responsibility grows so large, man requires a partner in order to care for every living creature. God creates woman as that partner—and as such, the partnership between man and woman includes a partnership with God. This partnership is not about ruling all things and putting them under subjection to mortal or divine power, but in caring for all creatures we care for all creation—we are stewards building up the kingdom of God.
God does not order the world so that he or the divine beings might subjugate humanity—the world is ordered so that we might find our place and purpose in creation. How we care for creation—land, waters, plants, and animals—is part of a well ordered life. General Eisenhower, only a captain when he and Blackie got into trouble that day, understood this. He would joke that calvary men believed that most horses were better than most humans and he noted that when teaching skills to a horse and helping it develop confidence, you need the same patience and kindness as when you are teaching humans. That is servant leadership and it is a reflection of a well ordered life because it understands a well ordered world. When we understand our place in the order of creation is a place of servanthood then we can embrace God’s call to us as stewards with humility and trust
Amen