The Difference Between Serving and Being Seen

There is nothing wrong with ambition. I think sometimes we hear that word and assume it means pride, selfishness, or somebody trying to climb over everyone else to get ahead. But ambition by itself is not the problem. A business does not grow unless somebody cares enough to build it. A church does not reach people unless somebody is willing to lead. A family does not move forward unless somebody takes responsibility for the people in front of them. The issue is not whether we have ambition. The issue is what our ambition is attached to.

That is one of the things that stands out to me in Mark 10. Jesus asks the same question twice, but He asks it in two completely different moments. James and John come to Him with one kind of request, and later Bartimaeus cries out from the roadside with another. The question Jesus asks is simple: “What do you want me to do for you?” At first, that sounds almost strange, because Jesus already knows. He knows what James and John want, and He knows what Bartimaeus needs. But the question is not really about giving Jesus information. The question brings what is hidden in the heart out into the open.

James and John come to Jesus and basically say, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask.” I do not know if your kids have ever done that to you, but it is like when a child says, “Promise you’ll say yes before I tell you what it is.” And you already know the answer is no. You are not agreeing to something before you know what is being asked. That is a bold way to come to anyone, much less Jesus. But Jesus lets them say it. He asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” And then it comes out. They want the seats of honor, one on His right and one on His left.

What makes that request so striking is where it happens in the story. Jesus has just been telling them about the road He is walking and how He will suffer. Jesus keeps talking about the cross, and they are thinking about position. He is talking about sacrifice, and they are thinking about status. He is trying to show them the mission, and somehow they are still asking where they will sit when everything works out.

Before we are too hard on them, I think we need to admit we understand that more than we probably want to. We may not say it the same way, but we know what it is to want to be noticed. We want our work to matter. We want people to appreciate what we have done. We want the promotion, the opportunity, the recognition, the sense that what we are giving ourselves to is actually making a difference. None of that is automatically wrong. The question is what happens in us when being faithful is no longer enough unless somebody sees it.

Ambition becomes dangerous when it starts to drift away from the mission and back toward ourselves. It usually does not happen all at once. Most people do not wake up one morning and decide to make life about themselves. It is quieter than that. A leader starts out wanting to help the team, but over time begins measuring everything by whether the team appreciates him. A business starts out wanting to serve customers, but slowly becomes consumed with attention. A church starts out wanting to reach people, but eventually becomes more concerned with being known as the church that is doing something impressive. It can happen in ministry, business, government, family, and anywhere else people are trying to build something that matters.

Jesus does not ignore the request. He uses it to teach them what greatness actually looks like. He tells them that the rulers of the Gentiles lord their authority over people and that once someone gets power, they tend to use it to remind everyone they have it. But Jesus says, “It shall not be so among you.” In other words, if you are following Me, you cannot define greatness the same way everybody else defines it.

According to Jesus, greatness is not climbing over people to get to the top. It begins with serving. Whoever would be great must become a servant. Whoever would be first must become slave of all, which runs against nearly everything in us that connects greatness with visibility, influence, authority, and recognition. Jesus connects it with humility, sacrifice, and service.

I love the story of Albert Lexie because it gives such a different picture of greatness. He shined shoes at a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh for years. That was his work. He was not doing something that most people would have considered impressive. But over the course of his life, he gave more than $200,000 to help children and families who needed care. He used what he had, where he was, for the good of other people.

Most people would have walked right past him and missed it. We are so trained to recognize the loud kind of success that we sometimes miss the faithful kind. We notice the person on stage, but not always the person who stayed after to clean up. We notice the title, the platform, the position, the name on the door, and we can miss the person quietly carrying a weight that nobody else wanted to carry.

Then Mark gives us Bartimaeus, and the contrast is hard to miss. James and John are close to Jesus and ask for position. Bartimaeus is blind, sitting by the road, and asks for mercy. The disciples have access, proximity, and religious language, but in that moment they still miss the heart of Jesus. Bartimaeus cannot physically see, but he sees enough to cry out, “Son of David, have mercy on me.”

It is possible to be close to the work and still have the wrong motive. A person can be close to ministry and still make it about themselves. A person can be close to leadership and still crave recognition more than responsibility. A person can be close to a good mission and still quietly use that mission to build their own name.

The same action can come from two very different places. One person wants influence because they want to serve more people. Another person wants influence because they want more people to notice them. From the outside, those two things can look very similar. Inside, they are completely different.

Maybe one of the better tests is what happens when someone else gets the seat we wanted. It is one thing to talk about humility when nothing is on the line. It is another thing to celebrate someone else being recognized for something we hoped would be ours. That does not come naturally. At least, it does not for me. But it does reveal whether the mission matters more than the attention.

You see what selfish ambition does among the disciples. James and John make the request, and the others become indignant. They are upset, and maybe part of the reason they are upset is because James and John said out loud what some of them may have been thinking quietly. Selfish ambition turns teammates into threats. It makes someone else’s success feel like our loss. It makes the room smaller because everyone is fighting for the same spotlight.

Jesus offers a different way, and He does not merely teach it as an idea. He embodies it. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” No one had more right to the throne, to honor, to being served, than Jesus did. And yet He picked up a towel instead of a scepter, and He gave Himself away instead of demanding what He was owed.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to lead, wanting influence, even wanting to be ambitious. The question is whether we've surrendered all of it to the mission of serving people. Otherwise, even good things can begin to bend around us. We can take something that started out as service and slowly turn it into a way to be seen.

So I think the question from Mark 10 is worth carrying with us: “What do you want Me to do for you?” Not because Jesus does not know, but because we may need to hear our own answer. We may need to let the Lord show us what is underneath the request.

Because at some point, every leader has to wrestle with this: am I asking for a place to sit, or am I asking for eyes to see?