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On Dreams of GreatnessSeptember 24, 2006 Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Former President Bill Clinton had quite a successful time with philanthropy this week. Concluding the second year of the Clinton Global Initiative, he announced 7.3 billion dollars worth of commitments had been raised for a host of vexing problems. The largest pledge from a single individual was 3 billion dollars, given to address global warming. Of course, that amount is dwarfed by the 40+ billion Warren Buffet has committed to the Gates Foundation, which is already worth in excess of 30 billion. Earlier this summer, Buffet’s largesse was announced which assured the Gates foundation’s place as the largest private philanthropy by far. Surely all this giving is good. I notice, however, that the superlatives gush with words like largest, biggest, billions, and so on. True to American spirit, we’re even competitive when it comes to giving money away. Clinton’s announcement was accompanied this week by the publishing of the Forbes 400, which lists the 400 wealthiest people in the United States. I have no idea if Clinton’s announcement was meant to be an ironic prod to those who made it to the list, but I noted this was the first year every member of the group had at least a billion dollars in net assets. I also learned that the number 400 was chosen some 27 years ago because Forbes decided that was the largest group of well-heeled guests that Lady Caroline Astor could accommodate in her ballroom during the Gilded Age – the supposed crème de la crème of American success in a giddy, exuberant time of capitalist expansion. Truth is, there wouldn’t be much interest in money if everyone made the same amount. Money would be pretty boring. If that were the case, though, certainly we’d elevate something else to the status of the great unequalizer, because much of what we dream about is to be or to have the most or the best, in comparison to at least one other person. To be human seems to lead us to want to be superior to someone. We can get quite subtle with this, quite clever in our comparing, but underneath, we deeply worry that if there is nothing that elevates us above another, our personal value is at risk. If we don’t have money, well then, we could have beauty or physical prowess. In the church, we could have piety or good works or more noble intentions. This very human weakness is what lies behind many of our most vexing prejudices. Part of the maturation of our character is the on-going discernment of what motivates our life dreams. Do I dream primarily to establish my superiority over some others, or to maximize my fullest potential? Or to do good? Or some combination thereof? Dreams drive us into the future. Most often, we bumble our way into the thick of life, not quite certain what’s possible or not, but we step out hoping that if one dream fails, another will arise to take its place, even if it’s a bit singed around the edges, a little shopworn, and maybe not quite so dramatic as the first we had in mind. I want to say a word on behalf of dreaming here, even dreaming big. If I were in education, I surely would encourage my students to dream big. But, I would also want to say that big dreams require big commitments. Big follow through. Big preparation. Big work. For instance, as we hear the writer of Mark’s Gospel tell the story, the disciples have been following Jesus for almost three years. They’ve heard his teaching and witnessed some remarkable things. Through the course of the story, these disciples are presented as average types. They stumble about in their following after Jesus, but they have clearly hooked into both the man and the message as best they understood him. They’re loyalists who claim they’re ready to follow Jesus into glory. To the best of their ability and understanding, they’re ready to do whatever it is he asks of them, and though this may lead to dangerous confrontations with the powers of the day, they’re prepared to go the distance. And from today’s passage, we learn they’re equally prepared to reap the rewards of this glorious mission. They’re caught arguing about who was the greatest among them. I imagine that includes bickering about who will eventually have the most power, authority, fame, money, etc., etc. Same old, same old. They were loyalists who were dreaming big. They knew they had attached themselves to a rising star and their own fortunes were bound to rise with his. So, Jesus gave an object lesson concerning true greatness. He embraced a small child and said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” If anyone would be first he must be last and servant of all. [1] You want greatness? I’ll tell you how to be great: You must be humbly receptive, able to receive an innocent child with all of her vulnerabilities. By the way, scholars tell us that “childhood in antiquity was a time of terror. Infant mortality rates sometimes reached 30 percent. Another 30 percent of live births were dead by age six, and 60 percent were gone by age sixteen. Children had little status within the community or family. A minor child was on par with a slave, and only after reaching maturity was he or she a free person…” [2] In other words, Jesus picks out of the crowd the most vulnerable person present in order to make his point about greatness. Now, it’s tempting here to moralize about human vanity. For instance, I could bewail the slowness of the disciples to catch on to the real purposes of Jesus’ life and ministry and how like them we all are – selfish and foolish, unable or unwilling to dig deep into the meaning of things – how we skate along the surface, hoping that our lives will find unfettered arrival at our dream goals that set us up in some superior position. And, I could analyze how our petty, personalized, prosperity-driven religion supports our fantasies of how life ought to be versus how it is. How we imagine and give praise to a God who should dispense nice things to nice people. How we like to enter into contractual arrangements with a god of tit for tat. I do this, you do that. I give a little money away, you reward me with much more. I listen to my spouse every now and again and you give me an uncomplicated marriage. I provide my kids with some material things, you form them into remarkable persons who reflect shiningly on my good name. I give you my surface allegiance and I am bequeathed great spiritual rewards. And surely, gracious God, I can be better, greater than my peers. It’s tempting to moralize in this way because there’s a lot of truth there. That’s right, isn’t it? Maybe I should give a good finger-wagging about our narcissistic, self-indulgent religion and priorities. There would be cause enough to do so. But then, part of me wants to let us off the hook, if just a bit, by acknowledging how natural it is for us to plunge ahead into life without much of a notion of what we’re really getting into. Most often we operate from a position of greater or lesser ignorance when it comes to the marshaling of our commitments to our dreams. And, I want to let the disciples off the hook too. How could they have understood what was going to be asked of them at this point in the story? Moralizing about their failure clouds an appreciation of their virtue. Up to this point, I imagine they’ve grasped what they could. The fact is, their journey doesn’t end with the little vignette read today. The end of their story is that, eventually, they do get it. Not without a lot of fumbling and bumbling along the way, petty squabbles, sibling rivalries, even out-and-out abandonment of Jesus during the crisis of his arrest and brutal death. That’s not so unlike us, either, is it? How could we know what would be asked of us when we marry, or when we have children, or when our parents begin to age and fail physically and mentally, or what the new job will really demand, or what our dreams might lead to when we first set out in life? It’s only in plunging ahead despite our ignorance that we learn anything. In risking failure, even experiencing it big time, our lives are chiseled into something better, something closer to what God had in mind. Assuming, of course, we’re willing to learn. That is a very big assumption in my logic here. It’s the linchpin, really. I’ll grant you that, if we’re not willing to learn from our experience, even the obvious moralisms embedded within our lesson today won’t do much good. Still, one of the most important things the Gospels reveal is that along every step of the way, we are greeted with if not approval, at least with acceptance and forgiveness. Every step; every ignorant step, acceptance and forgiveness. And, we can learn. That’s really the point of our being here after all, isn’t it? Yes, of course, we have come to join our voices together in praise and prayer to the Sovereign of the Universe. And that is a very good and necessary thing to do. But then, beyond that, don’t we come hoping we’ll leave with a bit more than what we came in with? And not just a motivational pump-up on our next rung to greatness, but something really substantial, something we can sink our teeth into during brunch, something that will stir us and change us in the week ahead, something that will make us better than we were when we first walked in. Hopefully that’s part of what we dream about – being chiseled into a closer version of the original design specifications. By walking into this place and by throwing in with this crowd we’re placing our life dreams into the refining fire of God’s acceptance and forgiveness. This is an act of courage. Why? Because coming here with serious intent, we will be changed. And many of the changes will very likely not conform to our own current opinions. We’ll find the values we’ve taken for granted tipped upside down and shaken around. We’ll hear Jesus say stuff like this: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” I mean, we’re all hearing the same thing, right? Those words were attributed to the glittering man in the golden field up there. What do you make of that in a world of Largest! Biggest! Billions!? That’s what we’re all working on together. Previous sermon: The Razor's Edge • Next sermon: On Fundamentalism All past sermons |
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