Father John McGinn, Rector
Psalm 90
verse 12 we are counseled to “Number our days.”
If you were to do that; number your days, you would come up with a
number somewhere around 27, 375. That
is assuming you reach 75 years of age. I
know for some of you, you have already reached that, and that is really good
news, but some of us still have a few more years to go. The census statistics tell us that the
average life span now for men and women is 27,375 days.
That
sounds like a lot, but how quickly they pass.
My basic interest this morning is not in counting our days, but in
making our days count. And the way we
make our days count is to determine our central purpose in life and give
ourselves to that purpose. That makes
good sense; know your purpose and you can make your life count.
Maybe our
central purpose is pleasure or self gratification. And maybe our special purpose is status
seeking and power. Maybe our purpose is
keeping up with our neighbors or raising a great family or making Dad proud or
retiring early or doing good works.
Whatever that central purpose is, whether consciously chose it or just
drift along with our desires, it is the benchmark we look to when we measure
the success or failure of everyone of those 27,375 days.
Jesus only
lived about 12,045 days on this earth, and yet History and theologians agree
that Jesus was the most influential person who ever lived. From the age of 12, Jesus demonstrated that
he knew his life’s purpose; to do the will of God. And even when God’s will was painful, even
when his friends didn’t support him, Jesus lived only to fulfill God’s purposes
for his life.
In the
Gospel passage for this morning, we read that Jesus had his disciples leave and
they passed through
Through
out the gospels, we see Jesus spending time in prayer. And through prayer he filled his mind with
the thoughts of God. He filled his heart
with the will of God and his mouth with the words of God. He pointed his feet in the pathways of God,
but what is painfully obvious in today’s gospel, is that Jesus’ friends did not
understand him. And what is worse is that to change out goals, hey did not want
to understand him, they were afraid to know the truth.
I want to
ask you a question. Have you ever been
afraid to surrender your life to God? I
suspect that many of us do not pray because, we are afraid of what will happen
if we let God into our lives. We don’t
ask God to reveal his will to us because we just don’t want to know. We want a comfortable life, not an abundant
one. And if we were to view our lives
through God’s eyes, we just might have to change from self gratification to
God’s Glorification.
That is
the challenge Jesus faced in today’s gospel.
He had use 12, 037 of his 12,045 days.
If he was ever going to teach the disciples now is the time. And how would they live if their plans and purposes
were aligned with God’s will?
Verse 33
of Mark when they arrived at the house and he asked the disciples what they had
been arguing. They did not answer
because they had been arguing about who was the greatest.
Let’s stop
here and imagine at that moment when Jesus stopped. Jesus knew what the disciples were arguing
about. He knew how shallow and pointless
their ambitions appeared when compared for the life changing mission God had in
store for them. Because they were not
thinking with the mind of God, they weren’t seeking the purposes of God.
Washington
Irving once wrote: “Great minds have purposes and little minds have wishes.”
All these
men had, was a wish. A wish for greater status; a wish to stand in Jesus’
spotlight and soak up some of the applause.
And Jesus wanted them to look beyond their own selfish wishes to embrace
the purposes of God. Jesus sat
down. It wasn’t because he was
tired. Rabbis traditionally sat down to
teach. Jesus was grabbing hold of what one might call a ‘teachable moment’, and
this was no casual conversation he was entering into. He was making it clear that now was the time
for him to teach and for them to listen.
Sitting
down, Jesus called the twelve and said “If any of you wants to be first, than
he must be the last and the servant of all.”
Here is
the central purpose of the Christian life. To serve. It doesn’t matter if you are a janitor of a
large company of a CEO, your central purpose as a follower of Jesus is to
serve. Successful people understand
that. That is what Jesus wants from his
disciples. We exist to serve not to be
served. That is the secret to happiness
in any job. This is why some people are
so unhappy in life. They want to be
served instead of serving.
The ironic thing is that people who are
waited on hand and foot ultimately seem to be the unhappiest of all. The happiest people are those who know that
life is about serving. The question
becomes, when will we learn the truth.
This is the key to a successful life.
It is also
the key to happiness, as strange as it may sound. “If any of you wants to be first, then he
must be the very last and the servant of all.”
A commitment to serving people is the key to serving God.
“Jesus
took a little child and had him stand among them and taking him in his arms,
Jesus said, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name, welcomes
me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes not
only me, but the one who sent me.
I am so
glad there are people in this church who regard serving children as a part of
their life’s purpose. Later we will
install the altar guild and the church school teachers, those people who every
week meet with our children and teach them about the love of God.
A group of
European theologians once visited Mother Theresa in
Scholars
tell us that Jesus selected a child as a way of saying to the disciples that
they were to serve those that were helpless, those who could not help
themselves. This is how we best serve
God, but serving the least and the lowest.
This is
summed up in a fable I read recently:
Once upon a time there was a knight who
wanted to serve his king and be the most honorable knight who ever lived. At his knighting he was so overcome by
dedication that he took a special oath to bow his knees and lift his arms in
homage to his king and him alone. This
knight was given the task of guarding a city on the frontier of the
kingdom. Every ay he stood at attention
at the gate in full armor.
Years passed, and one day as he was standing
at attention, a peasant woman passed by with goods for the market. Her cart turned over and spilled everywhere,
and the woman struggled to get them all back in her cart, but the knight
wouldn’t help the poor woman. He just
stood there at attention lest he break his vow by bending his knees to help
pick up the woman’s goods.
Time passed and one day a man with one leg
passed by and his crutch broke. “Good knight sir, please help me up!” asked the
man. But the knight would not stoop or
lift a hand to help lest he break his vow.
Years passed and the knight was getting old. One day his grandson came by and said
“Grandpa, pick me up and take me to the fair.”
But he would not stoop lest he break his vow.
Finally the king came to inspect the knight
and as the King approached, the knight just stood there. The king inspected him as he stood there, but
then the king noticed that he was crying.
“You are one of the noblest knights I have seen why do you cry?” asked
the king. “Your majesty, I took a vow
that I would bow and lift my arms in homage to you but I am unable to keep my
vow. These years have done their work
and the joints of my armor are rusted and I cannot lift my arms, or bend my
knees.” With the loving voice of a
parent the king replied “Perhaps if you had knelt to help all those who passed
by and lifted you arms to embrace all those who came to you, you would have
been able to keep your vow to pay homage to me, now.”
This is it, isn’t it? Here is how to make your life complete. Find a place where you can serve. It may be in your work, here in the church, in the community, but you will never be happy or truly successful until you see that we are all here to serve, and not to be served. To serve others, particularly the least and the lowest, is the best way to serve God. AMEN