This sermon was preached for Sunday, October 20, 2024 at St. Andrew's, Ayer. The texts for the sermon were: Job 38:1-7, (34-41), Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b, Hebrews 5:1-10, and Mark 10:35-45.
Last week on our family walk, my two year old and three year old were pointing out every huge truck that passed by - dump trucks, crane trucks, and carry-car trucks, always a favorite. “That truck is almost as big as my head!” my daughter would exclaim. “That truck is as big as my head!” my son would reply excitedly.
It’s not until four or five years old that most children are really able to understand “big,” bigger,” and “biggest” - and not until seven years old when most kids will consistently be able to order a sequence of objects by size. It’s why really little kids will try to fit their whole bodies into tiny matchbox cars. And why a toddler will often tell you that a tall, thin glass has more water in it than a short, fat one, even if they just saw you pour the same amount of water from one to the other. It takes a long time before kids realize that taller doesn’t automatically mean older either, or that bigger doesn’t always equal better.
If we are really being honest with ourselves though, I’m pretty sure that a lot of the time us adults don’t get that bigger isn’t always better, or that grander and more powerful isn’t always greater. Scale is a pretty difficult concept for adult human brains to understand, too. I’d argue most adults spend a good deal of our lives calibrating and recalibrating our sense of self based on external measurements - continually asking ourselves how competent, ethical, hard-working, helpful a person, employee, leader, parent, friend we are in comparison to others or some imagined ideal. Sorting ourselves along the continuum of great, greater, greatest.
James and John have their eye on being reckoned as the greatest. Jesus only has two hands an honored person can sit at, after all, the right and the left, and they want to make sure it’ll be the two of them in the end. Interestingly, the Gospel of Matthew’s version blames this request on the Zebedee brothers’ mother, but the resulting rebuke from Jesus is the same. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ comment about Gentile kings and God’s servants comes after all the disciples are caught arguing over which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. You may remember we read about that argument in the Gospel of Mark back in Chapter 9, just about a month ago. Throughout each of these retellings, Jesus has pretty much the same response - and one it sounds like the disciples needed to hear over and over, not just James and John. The Kingdom of God is not about great, greater, greatest - at least not judged by this world’s measurements and scales. It’s about giving and serving.
True greatness comes from service, from humility. Folks who’ve been part of the 12-step AA community for a while are pretty used to reflecting on the meaning of humility, the seventh step. In that tradition, humility is talked about as “right-sized-ness.” Humility means not being too proud or grandiose, but it isn’t about degrading or debasing yourself, either. Not strutting around all puffed up, but not wallowing in self-pity either. It’s knowing the exact right size you are, in all its strengths and weaknesses. Embracing what you can do, just as you are.
Back when I was in my classic teenage girl low self-esteem era, I was given this quote about humility, often attributed to C.S. Lewis, but really said first by Pastor Rick Warren: “Humility is not about thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.” That quote summed up what I’d already been discovering through volunteering with my church: ironically, true self-knowledge comes only when we step outside of ourselves - when we focus on what we can do for others, just as we are. Accepting both our own insignificance in the grand scheme of things and our power to make a difference in this moment right now. Learning to think on a Mia scale, not someone else’s. A you scale. That’s actually how kids first start figuring out size - just like my toddlers are doing right now - in reference to their own body parts. This is as big as my head.
Take a moment to think. What helps you right-size yourself?
Because right-sizedness is such a central question to living a faithful, humble life, our tradition has a lot of tools and stories to offer us. Take the Book of Job, which we’ve been reading snippets of the past few weeks. Now, the Book is most famous for grappling with the question: why do terrible things happen to good people? Good, faithful people like Job. Job’s friends come to help him figure out he's suffered so greatly. They do a lot of questioning whether Job is really as righteous as he thinks - so Job spends a lot of the book defending his own righteousness. Why me?
Our section today is from the climax of the book - final confrontation between Job and God. In it, God describes the awe-inspiring complexity, beauty, and power of creation: oceans, mountains, and wild animals. We catch a small glimpse of the impossible scale of the divine just by looking at the world around us.
In general, I don’t subscribe to this as an effective method of pastoral care - reminding people how insignificant their suffering is as a way to alleviate it. In fact, when folks reflexively add that other people have it worse, I inwardly cringe and sometimes interrupt it. Suffering is not a competitive sport and comparing this person’s suffering to that person’s suffering is a fool’s errand - great, greater, greatest. And yet, there is a deeper reason for why we say things like this - deeper, that is, than trying to avoid the uncomfortable sensation of another person’s well-intentioned pity. When we step outside of ourselves, when we take a deep breath and look at the vast expanse of stars, when we contemplate that there are 8.2 billion other human beings having unique experiences right now, and that there are 2.4 million ants alive for every one human - suddenly we are zoomed out of self-pity and pain and into another realm of emotion entirely, one that sits a lot closer to gratitude and wonder. We are right-sized.
This summer, the Episcopal Church elected our next Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe. In fact, the consecration of our new Diocesan Bishop yesterday was Bishop Michael Curry’s last great sacramental acts as Presiding Bishop. This new Presiding Bishop, Sean, has already been indicating quite strongly that the focus of his primacy will be on right-sizing the Episcopal Church. Right-sizing in the corporate world is a rather euphemistic term for down-sizing - restructuring that comes with budget cuts and layoffs. So it’s understandable why that prospect might be a bit terrifying for folks - especially to those of us whose livelihoods depend on the institution. For me, though, I find the prospect of right-sizing not just ourselves as individuals, but our institutions, communities, and parishes to be incredibly freeing and hopeful. Can the Episcopal Church stop pretending to be more powerful, more prestigious, wealthier, and bigger than we really are, and instead embrace, I mean really embrace, what we are now? Then we can run with our strengths, then we can be honest about our weaknesses. We let go of what we think we should be or what we used to be, and instead focus on what we can do right now. We drop all the exhausting pretenses and just serve.
In my short time here at St. Andrew’s, I believe that this parish has a remarkably healthy sense of right-sizedness. You’ve figured out how to be nimble, effective, and surprisingly impactful as a relatively smaller parish. All this has meant that we are able to focus outward, on how we serve our people, our community, and God’s mission, rather than anxiously fretting about attendance numbers. What can we do as we are right now?
Stewardship is one part of how we maintain a healthy right-sizedness. Now, our last few weeks of testimonial folks have done a fabulous job of reflecting on why we give. Haven’t they done a fabulous job? So I want to take a moment to connect why we pledge. That is, why we each commit to a particular amount of financial giving in the next year and hand it in to our leadership.
Yes, from a cut and dry accounting perspective, receiving everyone’s pledge numbers enables vestry to set our annual budget for next year. But from a theological and spiritual standpoint, gathering up all our pledges together at Ingathering next Sunday is a vital part of us embracing what size we are right now and therefore what we are capable of. Recalibrating our St. Andrew’s scale. Not according to what we should be or in comparison to other parishes. Not great, greater, greatest. But rather, a practical, informed, right-sized, humble assessment of our capacity to serve.
On an individual level, the act of pledging means that each of us get real with ourselves about what financial impact we can have in our faith community. To ask ourselves, what can I do for others? Calculating that amount isn’t just math - it’s a worthwhile spiritual exercise. Believe it or not, there is such a thing as giving too much, and such a thing as giving too little. But the scale of your giving - it’s a YOU scale. Not in comparison to others. Your amount is only in reference to you - your life, your income, your budget, your schedule. Maybe you’ve pledged before - it’s still worth your time to humbly reflect, pray, and recalibrate. If you’ve never pledged before, it can be daunting - even if you are someone who regularly puts something in the plate! But you don’t have to figure out this pledging thing on your own - a warden, our stewardship chairs, or I are here to help you discern.
I invite you this week to take a moment to right-size yourself, your level of giving. The number that emerges on the other end - that’s going to help us right-size our parish and its impact.
And then, as with everything we do, we hand all this over to God. We trust that God can and will do more with it, with us, than we can possibly imagine.
Amen.
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