“THE LEAST AMONG YOU ALL”
D Andrew Burr
Luke 9: 48
Luke 22: 25-30
These two passages have just come to me, dear brethren, because of our brother’s reference to “the least”, “the least of these my brethren”, Matt 25: 40. This first passage refers to “the least among you all”.
It is very sad that the admonitions in both these scriptures arise from controversy among the men who followed Christ, as to who was the greatest. I will not go into that, except to say it is not a controversy into which our sister would ever have entered at any time in life. We have spoken of the last twenty years of that life, but I cannot imagine her ever engaging in such a dispute in her whole eighty-five years. A spirit like that is of value to the Lord, it is rewarded and it is preserved too.
In relation to the first scripture, we might wonder if the Lord is referring to Himself. I have wondered the same about the passage in Luke 14: 7-11, which has this in common with the scripture in Luke 22 that the Lord was observing a company assembling to sit at table. He saw how there was a striving over the first place. The Lord would not have had any part in that. I think it has been suggested as to Luke 14 that He might have taken the last place. That passage is very telling; I have also heard it said in the preaching that it is He who is more honourable than those who sought the first place. The point comes in the preaching when someone, we could say it is God, enjoins everybody else to “Give place to this man”. It is a wonderful point to come to when we might say, as Mr Darby wrote -
All thought of self is now for ever o’er!
(Hymn 247)
because we have given place to this Man; this Man who calls Himself “the least among you all”. How wonderfully gracious is the place that the Lord has taken; what a spirit He has shown. Our brothers have sought to show, dear brethren, that it is a spirit that others can show: they can learn it from Him. How wonderful it is that it is seen in Him, the spirit of “the least among you all”.
I am confirmed in this idea by the other scripture I read. It has been suggested that the dispute among the disciples here arose over where they would sit, even at the Supper. The idea of natural precedence of some sort had come into their thoughts. There is no little child here to set in their midst as in chapter 9, but there is the Lord who had set Himself before them. He says, “ye shall not be thus; but let the greater among you be as the younger, and the leader” - that is surely Himself pre-eminently - “as he that serves”. Then He asks, “For which is greater, he that is at table or he that serves? Is not he that is at table?”. And He adds, “But I am in the midst of you as the one that serves”. He took the ground that they were all greater than Himself. John 13 records how He demonstrated this to them. John does not record the argument; he had joined in it and no doubt he felt ashamed of having done so, but here we have the words of Jesus, and in John’s gospel we have the actions of Jesus to make the same point. He “rises from supper and lays aside his garments”, John 13: 4. He took upon Himself a service which I understand the most junior would undertake in a house where servants were waiting on those at table, to divest Himself of anything that might suggest status or anything of that sort: “he pours water into the wash hand basin, and began to wash the feet of the disciples”, v 5. Then He says, “If I therefore, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet”, John 13: 14.
Our brother has already exhorted us to take up practical services, but I also feel that we need to think about the spirit in which we take up any practical service, the spirit in which we follow Jesus. Our brother referred to the path, the good path, the path in which Jesus has been the Leader; and these blessed features are seen in Him. He “emptied himself” (Phil 2: 7), and He took a place among His own for which no status was claimed except the right to serve them.
May He bless the word.
SUNBURY
27th February 2020
(At the meeting for the burial of Miss F Linderg)