Sermon Archive

One Up
© by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers, October 22, 2000;  29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B;
 Invite-a-Friend Sunday)
Job 38:1–7 (OT, p. 533);  Mark 10:35– (NT, pp. 47–48)
(Some illustrations are taken from Homiletics, October 22, 2000.


This morning the Yankees are “one up” on the Mets, having beaten them last night in the 12th inning of the opening game of the World Series.  But Met fans—how many of you are Met fans?—Met fans are praying that by tonight the Series will be tied “one up.”

It has always fascinated me that the expression “one up” can mean both “one ahead” and “one apiece,” that “one up” can have the sense “one better than” and also the sense “equal at one.”

It was way back in 1952, the year I graduated from the 8th grade, that Stephen Potter published his very humorous book called “One-upmanship.” Does anyone else remember reading that book? 

In theory, Potter could have built his book “one-upmanship” on the second sense of “one up,” that is, on “existing in balance, in equilibrium.”  In that case, “one-upmanship” could have meant something like “the art of living in equality with one’s neighbors.”

But Potter, of course, was not interested in that sense of “one up.”  He was interested in tapping into our competitive, American psyche and in satirizing the lengths to which people will go to stay one step ahead of friends and competitors alike.

I no longer have a copy of the book, and I haven’t read it in 40 years, but I still remember vividly the suggestion-for-keeping-ahead that Potter offered us not-very-good but enthusiastic tennis players, of whom I was one then!  Potter’s staying-one-up suggestion for the likes of me was: “If you can’t serve, wear velvet socks.”

“One-upmanship,” or, as we might perhaps more sensitively call it, “one-uppersonship”—“one-uppersonship” describes the human drive to keep ahead of other people, including our best friends, and even our closest family members.

That drive seems to take root in the human species early in life.  A psychologist was studying patterns of dominance and subordination among young children and observed this play session: 

A dominant 5-year old girl and a subordinate boy were pretend-fishing with a toy fishing rod.  The girl went first; then the boy.  As he was taking his turn, she managed to take over.  “Should I help you?” she asked, leaning in and taking back the fishing gear, then swiftly landing a fish, after which she exclaimed, “Okay, we’ve caught your fish.  Now it’s my turn again.”  The two children smile and remain friendly, but throughout the play session the girl stays more than “one up” over the boy by controlling the fishing 80% of the time.

So children, too, practice “one-upmanship,” and so do even animals!  Watch the peacocks fan their tails and preen.  Observe as male elks butt their heads and lock their horns.  See the African fish compete by turning splendid colors.  For those who “go one up” in  the animal world are given priority when it comes to food, resting places, and mates.

Today’s Gospel Lesson offers a particularly bald example of human one-upmanship at work.  The brothers James and John are two of the inner circle of Jesus’s disciples, the group known as the Twelve.  James and John try to go “one up” on the other ten by hustling Jesus into granting them an extra measure of the glory they’re sure the Twelve will receive.  “Teacher,” they say to Jesus, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.…  Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”  Which is to say, “Jesus, when you receive your full measure of honor, give the two of us the most prestigious positions next to you.”

James and John are doing something here that’s quite human.  They’re jockeying for position—something all of us know a lot about, whether from school, or from the office, or from church, or from life in general.

But Jesus tells James and John that their goal in life ought not to be “one up over others,” “better off than anyone else,” Rather their goal in life ought to be “one up with others,” “at one with others,” in a state of balance and equilibrium with others.

Jesus counsels people to surrender our drive for honor, power, and status and to choose instead to serve others—without even the advantage of velvet socks!

Jesus’s words to James and John are often misinterpreted to suggest that, in becoming servants of others, we are to render ourselves less than others.  But Jesus calls upon persons not to be servile, but to be of service, to use our power to minister mutually to one another as equals.

All of the Twelve are, by definition, leaders, for among Jesus’s followers, they are the inner circle.  But Jesus has chosen them not for being exalted leaders, but for being servant-leaders, and the Greek word used in the New Testament for “servant-leader” is “diakonos,” “deacon,” a term quite familiar to us Presbyterians.

Jesus in his own ministry has been demonstrating deacon-power, the power of servant-leadership. 

In Jesus, we see that when the Creator God who spoke to Job so magisterially in this morning’s First Lesson—when God came to earth in Jesus, it was to use power not for glory, but for service.  Jesus did not been spend his time cultivating relationships with the rich and famous.  Rather he went about healing the sick, welcoming the outcast, and loving those whom others would not love.

Jesus’s style of service to others was not at all passive or submissive.  He showed initiative, as when he called to the man with a withered hand, saying, “Come forward.” (Mark 3:3)  And he showed power, as when he took the hand of the recently deceased girl and proclaimed, “Talitha cum,” “Little girl, get up!” (Mark 5:41)

What Jesus rejected is the power that’s used to lord it over others, not the power that’s used to help persons in need.

So Jesus calls his followers not to privilege but to service.  He calls us to become effective servant-leaders, effective diakonoi, “deacons,” like those of our members who feed the hungry here every Thursday evening, like those of our members who shelter the homeless here every Sunday night, as you heard in this morning’s Moment for Mission.

Servants in the mold of Jesus are not persons focused on “going one up over others.”  They are persons focused on “being one up with others,” persons focused on leveling life’s playing field and lifting others toward equality.

Few stars in professional basketball have “gone more one up over”other players than the 7-foot-2 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a Superstar if ever there was one.  The official NBA website says of him: “The basketball world might never again see an athlete dominate the sport for as long and as thoroughly as Abdul-Jabbar did.”  When he retired in 1989, after 20 seasons of professional basketball with first the Milwaukee Bucks and then the Los Angeles Lakers, [a] he was the NBA’s all-time leader in no fewer than nine statistical categories, [b] he’d been the league’s MVP six times, and [c] he’d led his team to six championships.

Then, nearly a decade after retiring from professional basketball, Abdul-Jabbar, a devout Muslim, heard a speech by Colin Powell in which Powell urged accomplished Americans to volunteer their talents to help level life’s playing field, to help lift others toward equality.  And Abdul-Jabbar proceeded to volunteer his services as an Assistant Coach for the Alchesay Falcons, a high school team on the White Mountain Apache Indian reservation in Arizona.  Abdul-Jabbar describes this experience in his book A Season on the Reservation.

Abdul-Jabbar found his year of service difficult, as he worked with people from a culture so totally different from his own, as he struggled to relate his lifetime of basketball experience to the skill level of the particular players he was coaching, and as he encountered the alcoholism and lack of opportunity  that are so prevalent on the reservation.  But gradually he began to learn from his students, and then they began to learn from him.

Abdul-Jabbar taught them to push beyond their comfort zone and to try new things.  And they taught him something he didn’t quite expect: a way to reconnect with his passion for basketball that had nothing at all to do with the desire “to win,” the drive to “to go one up.”  Abdul-Jabbar concludes that on the reservation he probably learned more than he taught.

It would have been so easy for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, as an NBA Superstar, to lord it over those high school players he was helping to coach.  It would have been so easy for him never to get to know them, never try to learn from them, and forever to remain unable to help them.  Instead, he humbled himself and established a relationship of “being one up with “them on a leveled playing field in life.  He related to them as people of equal worth and sought to learn from them.  And thereby he came to be able to help them.

On the court of life, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will never have need to wear velvet socks, for he has learned how to serve.

This powerful graduate of New York’s Power Memorial High School has come to learn the use for power that pleases God: its use not to dominate others, “going one up over,”  but rather its use to elevate others to equal status, “becoming one up with.”

It is my belief that Abdul-Jabbar found true greatness in his place of humble service, that in becoming an effective servant-leader, in cultivating the art of living in helpful equilibrium with others so different from himself, Abdul-Jabbar became a truly great person.  For true greatness moves beyond what we are able to achieve for ourselves to what we are able to do for others.

Jesus exhorts those in positions to wield power relative to others—which includes almost all of us here today and all of those running for elected office—Jesus exhorts those in positions to wield power relative to others to act as servants who help to bring to others wholeness, well-being, and equal status.

It’s late in the game, but the score needs to be “one up with.”

Let us pray:

O God, the next time we find ourselves jockeying for greater power and glory, remind us that whoever among us wishes to become great must use whatever power we have to be a servant for others.  This we pray in the name of Jesus, who embodied Your power in service to humankind.  Amen.

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