Whoever would be first among you must be a servant to all

Let’s read a little bit from this here in just a moment. So today we celebrate, we commemorate St. Mary of Egypt, and we hear this gospel—this gospel of Mark, this dialogue between our Lord and His disciples.

This is the fifth Sunday of Great Lent, the Sunday on which we always celebrate St. Mary of Egypt. And if you were with us on Thursday, we read the complete life of St. Mary. I am not going to read the life again—it would take about 30 minutes. But we will talk about St. Mary of Egypt just a little bit this morning.

It’s not surprising that the Church, in her wisdom, offers this gospel teaching today—there’s a connection between this gospel and what we learn from the life of St. Mary. So I want to talk a little about this gospel teaching and pull that connection together.

This morning, our Lord begins by telling the disciples what is about to happen. And He’s doing this for the third time, if we’re keeping count in the Gospel. And not unlike us, they’ve heard this many times and still don’t understand. I’m sure we’ve heard this story many times, and if we’re honest with ourselves, we still don’t completely understand what all of this means—what it truly means for the Lord to go through His Passion. What does that mean for us?

I want to pick out one part of this gospel teaching—not the back and forth between James and John and the Lord, but His response as He pulls all of the disciples together. He says to them, “Whoever would be great among you must be servant of all. Must be slave of all,” is another translation.

I want to read you an excerpt from what St. John Chrysostom has written for us, called On the Incomprehensible Nature of God. There’s a section specific to this passage in the Gospel titled, What Lowliness Accomplished.

St. John Chrysostom writes:

“He made our first fruits mount to the royal throne. He accomplished so many good deeds that neither I nor all humanity could set them before your minds in words. Before He humbled Himself, only the angels knew Him. After He humbled Himself, all human nature knew.

You see how His humbling of Himself did not make Him have less, but produced countless benefits, countless deeds of virtue, and made His glory shine forth in greater brightness. God wants nothing and has need of nothing. Yet when He humbled Himself, He produced such great good, increased His household, and extended His kingdom.

Why then are you afraid that you will become less if you humble yourself?”

That’s an amazing question—why are we afraid to humble ourselves? We see all that God accomplished for us by humbling Himself to take on the form of a man in the Incarnation, and to humble Himself to go to His Passion. Yet often in our own lives, we’re afraid, over and over again.

So hold that thought for a moment.

Let’s think about the life of St. Mary of Egypt. If you were with us and listened closely to what we read on Thursday evening—it is such an amazing story. An amazing story of repentance. An amazing story of humility.

St. Mary of Egypt, prior to going into the desert, lived a life, as she describes, of debauchery and wickedness. She lived a life enjoying the pleasures of the flesh and leading others into sin. One day, she follows the crowd into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. But she is stopped at the door.

As she describes it, she was physically unable to enter. Though the crowd was pushing in, and by all accounts she should have just been swept forward, she is stopped and finds herself off to the side—moved out of the way by some force.

She tries again and again but cannot enter. Then she sees a vision of the Theotokos. And in that moment, she becomes convicted of her entire life—everything she has done. She makes a vow to repent, to change. Repentance means to change.

She is told she will find joy beyond the River Jordan. If you know the geography, you’ll know there’s nothing but desert—nothing but death—beyond the Jordan. But she enters the church, sees the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, and then leaves. She crosses the Jordan and spends more than three decades alone in the desert.

Eventually, she is encountered by Father Zosimus, who tells this story. She knows him by name—though they have never met. She had spent years in repentance, battling temptations from her former life, glorifying God in solitude.

There are just a few amazing details I want to point out.

When they meet, she is burned from the sun, withered, clothed only in Father Zosimus’ garment. She knows him by name. He’s terrified. He even thinks she might be a demon—he went into the desert to find holiness, not this encounter. And then she reads his thoughts and says, “Why are you thinking these things? I’m not the devil. I am a lowly, wretched woman who came here to repent.”

At one point, they ask for each other’s blessing. Both insist the other give the blessing first. The story says they lie prostrate on the ground, refusing to rise, each begging for the other’s blessing. My wife and I chuckle when we think about it—“No, you first. No, you first.” It’s a beautiful expression of mutual humility.

Father Zosimus, who had entered monastic life out of pride, thinking no one was more pious than he, now lies in the dust before this woman, amazed by her holiness. And she, still seeing herself as wretched, insists on his blessing. True humility.

At one point, she quotes Scripture, and he asks her, “How do you know these things? You’ve been in the desert for decades.” She replies, “I’ve never read them. But God gives the Scriptures.”

Eventually, she receives the Holy Mysteries and reposes. The next year, Father Zosimus returns and finds her body. He realizes that the journey that took him 20 days, she had crossed in an hour.

So this story of St. Mary of Egypt, which we read on the fifth week and commemorate on the fifth Sunday of Lent, is a story of powerful repentance and humility.

And I return again to the question from St. John Chrysostom:

Why are we afraid to humble ourselves?

Why, in this world, are we so afraid to humble ourselves, when we see all the Lord has accomplished for us? When we see what He has done, and when we see in St. Mary an example of what can happen when we repent—when we change?

Now, I’m not suggesting we all move to the desert. Though, maybe for a short time, we could find a quiet place to be still. But that’s not what the Lord asks of us.

What we must remember—what I must remind myself of constantly, just as the Lord told the disciples for the third time—is that everything in our lives is a gift from God. Our job, whether we enjoy it or not, is a gift. Every dollar we earn, our children, our health—it’s all a gift.

When we forget that—when we begin to think that we’ve accomplished all of this by our own strength—we fall into pride. And the devil rejoices.

The humility shown by Christ in His Passion, the humility shown by St. Mary in her repentance, is what we are called to imitate. “Whoever would be first must be servant to all.”

So as we push toward the final weeks of Great Lent, let’s ask ourselves:

Have we remembered to care for others?

Have we remembered that all we have is a gift?

Have we remembered what true repentance means—to change, to acknowledge our sinfulness, to humble ourselves before God?

And when we fail, when we fall into the same struggle again and again, we recommit. We struggle again. Because this is what it means to be a servant to all. To humble ourselves. To love one another. To give alms, to care, to reflect Christ.

To humble ourselves as Christ did. And to see, through His example and through St. Mary’s life, what grace and beauty God can accomplish in us.

May God give us the strength.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.