The Rev. Roger Bower

Wisdom 1:16-2:1 | Psalm 54 | James 3:16-4:6 | Mark 9:30-37

I am teaching kid's character education. That should frighten the daylight out of you. We go over there on Monday and do education. Last week I decided I was going to take my group, kindergarten through 2^nd grade, from the school around the church into Kid's Word. It is so great. The hustle and bustle of these kids, "I want to be line leader." "No, I want to be line leader." Their enthusiasm is so great and I am reminded of that because the scriptures today I can just picture what happened. It was a long hot day, Jesus has taught, preached and healed, and he and his team of disciples are going home for some dinner. Like usual Jesus is about ten or fifteen paces ahead if them in prayer. Here is this ragtag group behind him, "I want to be line leader." "No, I want to be leader." "I want to be first with Jesus and sit with him at dinner." You can just hear Jesus saying, "You guys just are not getting it. I have been sitting here all day, talking about significance with service. You are talking and arguing about success and greatness. You just don't get it."

I think many of us come to churches, looking for significance. We come to reorder our lives. There is a wonderful book called, A Search for Meaning. I think many of us come to church looking for that meaning.

I would like to suggest for your prayer this week, I think the scriptures have got some understandings for us about how we are to move from worrying about success to living in significance. I would like to share that with you this morning. They come in four words.

The first thing that we need to remind ourselves in searching for significance is to admit that we need the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives in the first place. Admit that. Steven Coving, the great author of time management and leadership, wrote in a book recently that many of us climb the ladder of success only to find out at the top of the ladder it is leaning against the wrong building. We come to realize that it is the Lord Jesus Christ that will get us through the difficulties of life.

In the first reading of the book of Wisdom, the Bible is real strong and very point blank about this. Life will present trials and tribulations to us the scriptures tell us. The forces of darkness will argue among themselves and say, "let us test him with insult and torture so that we might find out how gentle he is and make a trial of his forbearance." How many come here today, tested and on trial with life. Week in and week out we are tested and we are on trial and feel like we are searching for something. Our friends on AA and all the other support groups will tell you that the first step to recovery or significance is to remind ourselves that we are powerless when we are centered on ourselves. It is only with divine help that we can search for significance.

The Bible continues to remind us that some people when they are tested and tried in life think to themselves, "It would be better off if I did not live at all." How many in the darkest of days think they would rather not be here? I think that is very normal. It says in the scriptures if some of us consider death to be a friend and they pine away, the Bible says. They make a covenant with death. Because they are fit to belong to his company and they say to themselves, "Short and sorrowful is our life. There is no remedy when life comes to an end." Some of us at times feel that sense of wear and burden on our lives. We come here this day to reorder ourselves and to admit we are powerless. If I do not have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ my life is not going to be significant. I could be terribly successful and have all the riches in the world if I do not have that relationship, I have nothing at all. So the first point for us to remind ourselves is to admit.

The second word that is important is to submit. To submit ourselves and our gifts to the almighty God and to the service of one another. It says in the scriptures today that we should be people of wisdom. The letter of James in the second reading says, "that we are to be first pure and peaceable, gentle, willing to heal, full of mercy and good fruits. We need to submit ourselves to God." How many have said, "Oh yea, I am going to submit one of these days after everything is done and after the kids are gone and projects done."

It reminds me of a story of a couple ninety two years of age. They went onto an attorney's office and said, "We want to get a divorce." The attorney asks, "How long have you been married?" They replied, "About sixty-five years." He asks, "Why now?" They said, "Well, we have been waiting for the kids to be gone."

I am the biggest procrastinator in the world. One of these days I will get to it. I have post-it with lists all over. We are called to have that sense of submission from God.

Barbara and I have been praying recently with the letter of Paul to the Philippians. Trying to live lives with humility and service. I saw an article in Good Housekeeping with an interview with 1996 Good Housekeeping Couple of the Year. After twenty-seven years of marriage they asked this couple, "What is the reason for you success as a married couple?" They said, "We gave when we wanted to receive. We served when we wanted to feast. We listened when we wanted to talk. We submitted when we wanted to take charge. We forgave when we wanted to remember. We stayed when we wanted to leave." I think that is a good representation of submitting to one another and submitting to God.

We are called to have that sense of peacefulness and give everything over to the Lord. When Jesus called his disciples he would say, "Come and follow me." They would leave everything and follow. We need to submit ourselves like that.

So first we need to admit we are powerless. Second, we need to submit our gifts to God. Third, is we need to exit our old patterns of behavior and sinfulness. There are times in our lives that we simply need to come to the altar and kneel before God and look God square in the eyes and say, "Look God, I have sinned." That is hard. I am not a big sin guy. Lent is not one of my favorite times, I am a Christmas guy. But every so often it is important to recognize our own weakness and exit the difficulties of our lives and say, "I am no longer going to do this, I am going to do that."

I read a story about an astronaut in the Apollo program who actually walked on the moon. We would think that all astronauts are successful, right? He walked on the moon and came back and worked for NASA for many years. Retired and then bought into a beer distributing business. He was telling some friends that his life was going well. He felt wonderfully successful. One Saturday morning he was sitting outside reading the paper and drinking his coffee. He had read an article about a 16 year old had taken her first drink and gotten into the car and killed herself and an innocent family. The next day he went into his board of directors and resigned. He said, "I am not saying anything bad about alcohol or the business but for me I had to make a change." This was no longer part of my life and I could not look myself in the mirror and say this is who I am. So he gave up everything. We are called to give of ourselves and empty ourselves. After the opening prayer Fr. Dan says, "Lord have mercy." We say, "Christ have mercy." We ask God to have mercy on us and allow us to exit from difficulties of our life and be redeemed by what we celebrate the resurrection. We need to exit our ways.

Lastly, we need to commit our lives to God. There is no better example then today's scripture. In Mark's Gospel there is no better example to committing life to the service of the Father and one another. Jesus says to his disciples, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." Jesus knew the commitment that his ministry would take. Now many of us are not called to be killed or be martyrs but we are called to commit our lives to the Lord. We are called to give ourselves completely to God and say this is what I want to do.

The story I read in a book about a school teacher in Iowa. To make ends meet you taught piano lessons. She had one student named Johnny and he was a rotten piano teacher. Every week he would come in and the boy was just tone deaf. He had no rhythm. For a year she would witness all of this. His Mom would bring him but she would always wait outside and wave. Johnny kept playing and practicing. After about a year of this Johnny stopped coming. The teacher said, "Frankly I was relieved. I was really starting to frustrated." About six weeks passed and the day before the big recital for all her students Johnny walked in and said, "I want to play in the recital. I have really been practicing every day." She knew he would probably not play well and put him last on the program. The next day he arrived at the recital dirty and messy hair. He sat down at the piano and played "Mozart's Concerto in C major." Perfectly. Everyone stood up and applauded. The teacher ran up to hug him and said, "What happened to make your playing change?" Johnny looked at her and said, "I have not been here for six weeks because my Mom has been dying of cancer and last night she died. Today because she was born deaf was the first time she would be able to hear me play."

Little Johnny committed himself to that music. What about you? What about me? What about us as a community? Are we willing to commit our lives and play the music of life? Footnote to that story, after that Johnny served our country in Desert Storm. In April of 1995, Johnny died in the Alfred Morrow Building in Oklahoma City playing the piano for children. Tell me that his life was not significant. I can only hope that my life is that significant.

I reminded my wife of that the other day and she said, "I will remind you though of one thing." (Holds up a bullet) This is a bullet. I had a guy come in my office about ten years ago very distraught. He had given in. Remember what the Book of Wisdom said that we consider death a friend and we pine away. We say short and sorrowful in our life. Well, he was the living body of that. We went and had some coffee. After that I never saw him again until one day he showed up at church and kneeled at the rail to receive communion and gave these to me. (holds up some bullets) He said he was going to use them on himself that day.

Mother Theresa said that the secret to life is not that you do great things with a small amount of love the secret of life is doing the small things with a great amount of love. I think that is the message of today as we welcome Fr. Dan back and we celebrate our life together. We celebrate with our children in our midst and we gather together to admit that we need the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives. To submit our gifts to one another and sharing our life with one another. To exit the difficulties and sinfulness of our lives and to commit ourselves joyfully to the Lord and say, "Yes I will be your disciple." And when he says, "Come follow me." You will say, "You bet! Life may be difficult but I will walk with you if you walk with me."

Today as we celebrate and come to the Lord's Table and be giving out our hands and our hearts and say, "Lord, take me. Send me. Help me to become significant not just successful." Amen.