Party games.

Just the phrase gives me the shivers.

[You may want to get out some party games here and help people relive their horror. You could get some volunteers to do a quick party-game in front of everyone.]

Whether played at a child's birthday or an after-hours office shindig, party games are designed to make us look ridiculous and act silly. The rationale seems to be as follows: now that we've been silly together, the ice is broken, people can get comfortable, and we can begin enjoying one another without pretensions and protocols.

Party games are supposed to put people in a party mood.

If there's one party game that truly does an outstanding job of making all participants look ridiculous, it's the dreaded limbo contest. The limbo is far worse than the bunny hop because you have to go one at a time (no hiding in the crowd). The whole point of the contest is to make you fall on your backside in front of a group of onlookers.

Unfortunately, the better you are at bending over backwards and coming back up again without falling flat, the more sensational and embarrassing will be your eventual failure. Even if you manage not to fall, the more obtuse the angle of your back, the more convoluted and comical your body is going to appear. Face it. Even if you win a limbo contest, you've lost . . . you've lost your dignity and made yourself a laughingstock.

Outside the limbo party atmosphere, nobody ever wants to know how low can you go.

How much further can your family income drop? How much more dismal can morale get in your work place? How much more strained can the relationship get between yourself and your teenager? How far down can you drop into depression? How much more stupid can you feel at school? How unprepared can you be emotionally, mentally, fiscally for retirement? We spend our whole lives, and huge amounts of energies, clawing our way UP. Especially in the USA we live to pride ourselves in our classlessness, our up-by-your-own-bootstraps culture. What parent doesn't hope that their kids will be better educated, have more fulfilling careers, make more money, have more opportunities than they've had. Our conviction is that it can happen. And if we work hard enough it WILL happen. When the banker's son becomes a house-painter, or the lawyer's daughter works as a waitress, we may say nothing . . . but who among us hasn't whispered to themselves, “failure.”

A nice family TV-movie demonstrated just how angst-inducing it was to be parents and siblings of such underachievers. Did anyone here see "A Walk in The Park?" It was about a young man who was perfectly happy and fulfilled in his work, which provided a necessary service for Manhattanites.

He was a dog-walker. His embarrassed mother introduced him as an animal behaviorist. His financier brother kept trying to get him to join his brokerage company. At the movie's inevitable happy ending, the family finally accepts the dog-loving son. But only because he now owns and runs his own thriving dog-walking/dog-sitting/dog-training/dog-grooming business.

He's no longer a servant. He is now redeemed as an entrepreneur.

People still choose class over community. As Daisy says in The Great Gatsby, "Rich girls don't marry poor boys." Didn't then. Don't now.

Jesus' words here in Mark, especially his passion prediction, show how ill-conceived the disciples' dreams actually were. Their anticipation of greatness is exposed as foolish and flawed. Their quarrel over who would be the greatest and get heaven's glory seat is dismissed by the looming reality of Jesus' inglorious death. But Jesus doesn't just dash ashes on the classist ice-cream hopes of his disciples. Jesus shows them, gently at first but more firmly as he goes along, how they must learn to redefine greatness, how radically they must realign their concept of success and achievement, how totally they must rid themselves of ideas of class.

Jesus turned upside down everything the disciples thought about what making it means, everything first-century and 21st century men and women have been taught about becoming upright and upstanding. Instead of glorying in his leadership, assuming sweeping authority, flexing his messianic muscles, Jesus lauds servanthood and insists that, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all" (verse 35).

When Jesus said to be a servant to all he really meant ALL.

To demonstrate allness he swept onto his lap one of the children in the household and instructed his proud disciples to welcome and to be a servant to society's leftovers and left-behinds like children the most powerless, prestige-less, wholly insignificant members of society. In this servanthood to the lowly and the left out the disciples would be judged as the lowest of the low. But it was precisely at this low point, Jesus declared, that disciple-servants would encounter Jesus himself and "the one who sent me" (verse 37), God the Father himself.

How low will you go to meet your Savior and your God? How low will this church go to right the left the left out, the left over, the left behind, the left standing?

Could you give up the corporate security blanket for the insecurities of a seat-of-your-pants existence? Could you pinch back profits in order to free-up funds for more significant charitable contributions? Could you live to serve others instead of living for the next paycheck? Could you open your home and your heart as well as your checkbook to those left behind by our economic system? Could we stain our carpets, and risk damage to our furniture, to let in those left out?

Here is Christ's Last Will and Testament. Compare it to your Last Will and Testament.

Jesus left . . .

His purse to Judas; His body to Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus; His mother to John the Beloved disciple; His seamless robe to the soldiers; His peace to His disciples; His last supper to his followers; His baptism to new believers; His love to the children.; His healing to the sick; His teachings to the hungry in mind and spirit; His church to society; His Gospel to the world; His hope for the hopeless. His presence with all of God's children (quoted by Robert Strand, Fascinating Facts about Jesus (Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press), #50.)

How low will we go? Where are the lefts that need to be made right?