Jesus Worldview: The Last Shall Be First Mark 10:35-45 & John 13:1-17
Jesus Worldview: The Last Shall Be First
Mark 10:35-45 & John 13:1-17
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Abbott Blevins
July 12, 2026
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37 And they said to him, “Appoint us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39 They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized you will be baptized, 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to appoint, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”
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Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The devil had already decided that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus. And during supper 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4 got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” 12 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had reclined again, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. 14 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. 16 Very truly, I tell you, slaves are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. 17 If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
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A mother was giving dating advice to her young adult son, who was looking for tips to impress his new girlfriend. She suggested he invite the young lady to his apartment for a delicious home-cooked meal. The son thought that was a great idea. He invited his new girlfriend over, set the table, lit the candles — the whole thing.
The next day, mother and son talked. “How did the date go, honey?” The son replied: “Not too well, Mom. I invited her over for a delicious home-cooked meal — and she refused to cook.”
It seems like this young man has a lot to learn about service!
We are seven weeks into our summer series, Jesus Worldview — asking week after week what it might look like to try to see the world the way Jesus sees it. We’ve found the center: love God, love neighbor. We’ve walked the Beatitudes. We’ve watched Jesus choose the edges over the center. We’ve heard Jesus tell Pilate that his kingdom is not built on force but on truth.
Today we find out what life inside that kingdom actually looks like — in practice, on our knees, with a towel in our hands.
Mark tells us that James and John — the disciples Jesus himself nicknamed the “Sons of Thunder,” (which might already tell us something about their temperament) came to Jesus with a request. And they opened with an audacious request: “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”
Pause there. Whatever we ask. They haven’t even told him what it is yet. Just — agree first, then we’ll fill you in on the details.
Jesus, with a patience I find genuinely impressive, says: “What is it you want me to do for you?”
“Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
The seats of honor. The positions of greatest power and proximity to the throne. First and second in command of the kingdom they were certain Jesus was about to establish.
I want to be careful not to be too hard on James and John here, because I understand them more than I’d like to admit. That desire for recognition, for the seat of honor, it’s something I’m familiar with. Sure, I’ve dressed mine up in degrees and robes, but it still shows. It’s a deliciously human foible. Maybe you’re familiar with it too?
And with James and John, there’s zero pretense:
“Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
You see, the truth about us Christians is that most of us want to serve God, but we want to serve God in an advisory capacity only.
“Here’s how you should do it, God.” Maybe we want to be helpful, we just also want to be consulted. And thanked. And possibly given a title. A few extra stars in our heavenly crown.
Jesus doesn’t shame James and John. He teaches them.
“Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Notice what Jesus does not say. He doesn’t say: don’t want greatness. He doesn’t dismantle the ambition. He redirects it. You want to be great? Here is what greatness looks like in my kingdom.
It looks like a servant.
It looks like someone who has picked up a towel.
Now, every week in this series we’ve been asking: whose lens are we wearing? This week, Jesus is asking us to look at our own ambitions through his lens. And once again, the Jesus lens seems upside down to the world. The question we ask if we wear the Jesus lens is not: how high can I climb? It’s: how low am I willing to go?
Well a few chapters and a couple of years after this conversation, we find Jesus in the upper room with his disciples on the night he was betrayed. He knows what is coming. He knows Judas has already set the wheels in motion. He knows Peter will deny him before the night is over. He knows that in a matter of hours, he will be arrested, tried, and handed over to be executed.
And what does he do with this knowledge?
He gets up from the table.
He takes off his outer robe.
He ties a towel around his waist.
He pours water into a basin.
And he kneels down in front of his disciples — one by one — and washes their feet.
I want to make sure we understand what this actually meant in the first century. This was not a ceremonial gesture with symbolic water and clean feet. Roads were unpaved, sandals were simple, and the streets of Jerusalem were genuinely filthy. Foot-washing was real, dirty, unglamorous work — and it was the work of the lowest-ranking servant in any household. No one of status washed feet. Ever.
The fact that Jesus does this — on the worst night of his life, knowing everything that is about to happen, kneeling before the one who will deny him and the one who will betray him — is not a nice object lesson about humility.
It is a staggering, deliberate, world-inverting act.
He finishes. He puts his robe back on. He sits back down.
And then he asks them a question.
“Do you know what I have done to you?”
Let’s let that question linger in our hearts for a moment . . .
There’s a story about a little girl who came from the back of the school bus and offered the bus driver some peanuts. The bus driver thought — oh, how sweet. What a sweet little girl. She must think I’m hungry. He graciously accepted.
A few minutes later, the little girl came back with more peanuts. The bus driver thanked her and accepted again.
She came a third time. The bus driver said, “Thank you, sweetheart — but why don’t you share the peanuts with your friends?”
The little girl said, “Oh, we just like to suck the chocolate off of them.”
This disgusting little story might point to a difficult truth about our altruism. We want to give, to be of service, to be generous with what God has given us. But somewhere underneath, if we’re honest, maybe we’re still hoping for something back. Recognition. Gratitude. The warm feeling of having done a good thing. The sense that we earned our place at the table.
And Jesus is asking us today — gently, but persistently:
Can you wash feet with no agenda at all? Can you serve without a single hope of return?
After Jesus washes their feet, he says: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”
The last shall be first. The servant of all shall be the greatest.
Father Henri Nouwen was one of the most celebrated spiritual writers of the twentieth century. He taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard — had a résumé, as one biographer put it, that was “to die for.” Books published on three continents. Thousands of students. Speaking invitations from everywhere in the world.
And then he walked away from all of it.
Nouwen felt that his own success was putting his soul in danger — that the relentless competition and packed schedule were suffocating his spiritual life. He had spent twenty years climbing. And the higher he climbed, the more spiritually dry he felt.
So he made what looked to the world like an incomprehensible decision. He left his teaching position at Harvard — Harvard! — to become the pastor of a L’Arche community near Toronto, Canada. L’Arche is a network of homes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
As he described it himself: “So I moved from Harvard to L’Arche — from the best and the brightest, wanting to rule the world, to men and women who had few or no words and were considered, at best, marginal to the needs of society.”
He noted, with a kind of rueful humor, that since nobody in the community could read his books, the books couldn’t impress anyone. And since most of the residents had never been to school, his twenty years at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard did not provide what he called “a significant introduction.”
All of his credentials — everything the world used to measure his greatness — were suddenly irrelevant.
And he said it was the most spiritually alive he had ever felt.
Nouwen had a name for what Jesus was modeling in the upper room that night. He called it downward mobility.
“The way of the Christian leader,” he wrote, “is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.”
Upward mobility is the organizing principle of virtually every institution in our culture. The ladder. The promotion. The corner office. The seat at the right hand.
Jesus picked up a towel.
And Henri Nouwen — one of the most brilliant theological minds of his generation — followed him to a place where nobody had heard of his books, where his credentials meant nothing, and where the people he served couldn’t tell him he had done a good job.
That is what a Jesus Worldview looks like when it stops being a theory and starts being a life.
James and John wanted the seats of honor. They wanted first and second in command. They wanted to be great.
And Jesus said: I understand. Here is what greatness looks like.
It looks like getting up from the table when you don’t have to. It looks like taking off the robe you’ve earned. It looks like kneeling on the floor for someone who can’t do anything for you in return — and doing it on the worst night of your life, for people you know are about to let you down.
Most of us Christians wish to serve God. But in an advisory capacity only. Jesus asks for something harder than advice. He asks us to pick up a towel.
The question this week — the Jesus Worldview question — is simply this:
Where is your towel?
Not: where is your platform, your title, your seat of influence. Not: who is going to notice the good you’re doing and make sure you get credit for it.
Where is your towel?
Who in your life needs someone to kneel down, without agenda, without expectation of return, and simply serve them — not because you’ll get anything back, but because you have been loved extravagantly and can think of no better response than to pass it on?
The last shall be first.
The servant of all shall be the greatest.
And the one who kneels on the floor with a towel — in this world — is the one who looks most like Jesus.
In this world, may we be like Jesus.