17th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 20B sermon

17th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 20B September 23, 2012 I can certainly relate to the disciples this week, as I’ve been wrestling with my own thirst for greatness. This week I got to perform on stage at the Hard Rock with some of our fabulous people dancing along side me, and for 4 glorious minutes, I got to be a rock star. People were screaming and cheering us on. (Of course, it was mostly all the St. Peter’s people in the audience…) But still, it was AWESOME! And really, we can all see where they’re coming from. They’ve seen a lot of things happen in their relatively brief time following Jesus. Peter and James and John have just come down the mountain with Jesus after witnessing his transfiguration where they encounter the rest of the disciples arguing because they have not been able to cast out a demon in Jesus’s absence. They have, once again, failed miserably, while Peter and James and John got to go off on a special errand with Jesus. Then Jesus drops the bombshell on them about how he’s going to be killed and then three days later rise again. But the disciples don’t understand and they keep silent because they are afraid to ask him. Then they all go into a house, and Jesus asks them what they had been arguing about on the way, and again, they are silent because they do not want to tell him that they have been arguing about who is the greatest. And notice that Jesus does not rebuke them for wanting to be great. Instead, he teaches them a new definition for greatness. It’s not the rock stars, those who can cast out demons, those who speak eloquently, those who have money or political clout, those….fill in the blank with your own definition of greatness here…That’s not what it means to be great, he tells them. The greatest are the ones who give themselves away in service to others. Then he brings forward a little child, an example of the complete opposite of greatness in that time, one who is completely powerless, and he tells them that whoever welcomes the powerless are also welcoming him. So much for my dreams of pursuing my career as a rock star… Our lesson from the Epistle of James is an interesting companion to this week’s gospel lesson. The writer of James is writing to remind his listeners of who they are, what are the central characteristics for the individuals and for the whole community as followers of Jesus Christ and, even more importantly for James, as people who are in right relationship with God. And what characteristics does he say should be at the heart of their community? He encourages them to be peaceable, and he praises the characteristic of gentleness. The writer of James also writes that when there is conflict, when something is going on inter-personally or even in a church community, it is because of the cravings that are at war within us. There’s an old Native American proverb that speaks to this. You may have heard it before. “An old Cherokee told his grandson: ‘My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness and truth. The boy thought about it and asked, ‘Grandfather, which one wins?” The old man replied quietly, ‘The one you feed.’” Which wolf have you been feeding lately? Has it been the one that is consumed with your own desire for power, greatness, building up your own ego? Or is it the one that is focused on peaceability, gentleness, and service to God and others? All of us have a good mix of both in our hearts and in our lives. And yet, we are called, as we gather here week after week after week together, to ask for forgiveness from God for how we have fallen short, and to get out there in that world and try again this next week, to be more of the people God is calling us to be. One way of doing this is to intentionally cultivate gentleness in our lives. So how do we do that? First of all, we pay attention to the models of gentleness that we have in God, who again and again proves to be “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love”, and we look to the model of Jesus, who gives himself over to God and to others again and again and again. Second, we pay attention to those around us who remind us of the value of gentleness. Maybe it is little children? Maybe it is your pet? Maybe it the still, quiet sound on a mild, sunny day? This week, I was reminded of this call to gentleness in a most mundane little way by my child and our dog. We have an old Golden Retriever named Izzy, and Izzy has trouble getting around on our wood floors. She often gets stuck wherever she lies down, and then she barks at me to come pick up her rear end, so she can then come lie down wherever I happen to be in the house. The other day, I was moving around a lot, and Izzy kept getting stuck and barking at me to come get her, and I just stopped doing it, because I was tired of having to stop what I was doing and go pick her up. Finally, after Izzy has been barking for a while, Jack, while still playing with his toys, said to me, “Aren’t we supposed to be nice to Izzy?” And I looked at my 4 year old child, and I remembered who I am supposed to be, and I went and picked the dog up again. Find what feeds your gentleness and pay attention to it! The calls to gentleness will not be great signs, flashing lights in the sky. That’s not how gentleness works. So we have to really pay attention to our lives. And when you forget and resume your focus on your own ambition or ego or desires, let it gently remind you of how you are called to be in this world, how we are all called to be together as the body of Christ. May we each remember this day and this week that the way of gentleness and peaceability is the way of belonging to God and in the kingdom of God and the beginnings of eternal life and something so much greater than ourselves.