How Great Am I?
Job: 38:1-7, 34-41    Mark 10: 35-45
Preached by the Reverend Kathy Peters
October 18, 2009

James and John are human beings just like us and they want to make sure that they are right there with Jesus when he is reigning in glory in the kingdom of God…. “you love us best Jesus so we want to be right next to you!”  The disciples have had this discussion before and lest we be too harsh with these folks, they really did believe that Jesus was going to usher in a new way of life, a life in which kinder, gentler and more just people would be in charge, would be the powerful, would be the rulers and they wanted to be a part of that scene.   “Yes Jesus we are able to follow wherever you lead. We are able to do all that you ask. We are able to be just like you.” And Jesus replies as he always does....your idea of greatness, the world’s idea of greatness and mine are about two very different ways of being. You are called to be servants and sometimes you will be called to be suffering servants. Greatness will be measured not by how much you have gained in possessions or prestige or power but in how you have expended your love for others. Barbara Brown Taylor calls it the “ultimate trickle –up effect. This much is for sure," Taylor writes: "whether we can make sense of it or not, serving is how we will transform the world, not from the top down but from the bottom up. “The ultimate trickle-up effect." That's the power the God gives us in abundance, "the strongest stuff in the world: the power to serve" (The Trickle-Up Effect," Bread of Angels as quoted in S.A.M.U.E.L. ucc.org 10/18/09)
Martin Luther King, Jr. is quoted as saying: "Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." (as quoted in S.A.M.U.E.L. ucc.org 10/18/09)
Now before those protests rise in your heads………I am not Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa or anyone else who comes to your mind when you think about greatness as Jesus is asking us to think about…..I want to say that I truly believe what Martin Luther King asserts….anyone can be great and it is a cop out, a dishonoring of the gift of life that God has given to each one of us if we do not aspire to serve as best that we can in the context of the gifts and talents that we have each been given.  I will never be Mother Theresa but I can be Kathy Peters….aware and open to how God is calling me to serve in my time and place.
One reflection on this passage from Mark expressed the view that Jesus is calling us to the virtue of magnanimity…that is to be a great soul or spirit “who remains resolutely focused on the utmost possibilities of life.” Not the virtue of “puny ambitions” but rather a willingness to enter magnanimously “the joy and meaning and satisfaction that come from transcending themselves in love.” (Paul Wadell as quoted in Christian Century 10/6/09 p. 19)
 Lamar Williamson, Jr., reads a challenge in this text to our modern "complacency and apathy" as we hear in the gospel a "no-risk offer" that helps us to stay on the straight and narrow. There's more to it than that, he writes: "Getting right with God by coming to Jesus is not simply a basic factor in an orderly life. Discipleship will mean more trouble, not less. True discipleship is characterized by a costly pouring out of one's life for another, whether it be an aging parent, a difficult spouse, a special child, another member of the Christian fellowship who has unusual needs, or any person whose situation elicits neighborly service at personal cost. Jesus came to serve and to give his life" (Mark, Interpretation as quoted in S.A.M.U.E.L. ucc.org 10/18/09) And we are called to do the same!
In other words, being a Christian is hard work!
But the good news is that we are not called to do it alone. We are a community of folks gathered in God’s name to hear God’s word and to work together to see what that might mean for our lives as individuals and as a community.
Secondly God has this wonderful history of calling weak and wounded folks just like us to “embody divine compassion for those in need.”(Au and Cannon in “Urgings of the Heart” Paulist Press 1995 p. 150)  God invites us to serve and then answers our objections with the promise that we will be provided with what we need and we will be upheld by God strength and love.
Our reading from Job offers us a caution however lest we get too virtuous or tempted to believe that all this depend upon our service. The passage reminds us that God is God and we are not. God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, out of the chaos of Job’s life and as Walter Brueggemann writes "No one can stand in the face of the whirlwind on a soap-box of virtue…Being right is no substitute for being amazed." How neat and approachable God is rendered by our good works and good lives! If I do this, God owes me that. Many of us were raised in just such a system, with an accountant God who tallies up our good deeds and compares them to the ledger of our sins, while we wait and hope the balance works out well for us.” Brueggemann urges a very different way of living, a life of praise,  (as quoted in S.A.M.U.E.L. ucc.org 10/18/09), a recognition like the psalmist that God is the great one here and we need to live our lives in the truth of that belief.
Yes we are upheld by God in love. Yes we are God’s beloved creatures. And because of that belovedness, not to earn that belovedness, we are called to great things. We are called to serve as Christ has taught us to serve. God loves us enough to challenge us to be all that God has gifted us to be.
This is not a call for you to feel guilty about all that you do not do.  Nor is it a call to be a martyr and give with no thought to your own well being and sense of balance……..the call after all is to love God, love your neighbor and to love yourself…..
This is a call to answer the question “how great am I?” in the light of Jesus observation that we are called to be servants of all…just as Jesus was.   This is a call to ask ourselves if our ambitions are “too puny” and are we willing to do the hard work of looking at how we in our own lives might “expend our love for others.”
I give you no formula here.  This is between you and God.  Some of us in our listening will indeed hear……..you are doing what I need you to do in this time and place but let’s keep checking in with one another, others might hear I love you but…..you are so much more than you give yourself credit for, you are able to do so much more with the gifts I have given you and still others might get a not so gentle wake up call to examine the direction that our lives have taken and how it is that we view “greatness”.
Helen Keller is quoted as saying: "Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within. It is not what we see and touch or that which others do for us which makes us happy; it is that which we think and feel and do, first for the other fellow and then for ourselves."
Might we dare to open ourselves to the awareness of the service God intends for us to do in our own lives.  Amen