Lord, in our self-centeredness, keep us humble. Help us be your servants. Help us to serve you in your church. Amen.

A difficult teaching is one that takes us out of our comfort zone and puts us in a better place. James and John received such a teaching, along with the other disciples. To be first is to be the slave of all. To be great one must become a servant, Jesus told them.

Few people chose a life of servitude. We want others to serve us. We may buy their services. We may influence them to help us. But in the end we are generally looking out for Number One. That is how the world is structured. And we fit quite well within those strictures. Jesus calls us to get outside ourselves and to consider others. Zig Ziglar, the great sales trainer, makes it his 'prime directive' to say that if we serve others we will be rewarded for it. Zig is speaking of those who do selling jobs. But behind his philosophy is a Christian understanding that is quite profound. If we are of beneficial service to others God in heaven will notice our efforts and will reward us. And if we do not find all the rewards in this life, we will find them in the life to come.

• In a story told by Pastor Michael Sherer, a volunteer by the name of Martin saw the rising river poised to flood his town. He went to help by placing sandbags at the raging river's edge. He worked diligently, and the river's ferocity was ruled in. Later he was watching the news reports on television and saw a story about one place where the sand dikes were broken through. An elderly woman's house had been filled with mud. So he decided to find her and help her clear out the mud. As he worked, she noted to him that she was not a church-going type when he told her he was serving as others in his church were. She said, "You must think Jesus is the greatest." Martin responded, "He is. You bet he is." And she continued, "And you know something else? As far as I am concerned, you are the greatest. Believe me, you really are."

Our efforts to seek safety, comfort, and popularity are oftentimes supreme in our minds. But we are called to a slave ministry of love instead. It is a topsy-turvy world that the Christian message faces. The world says the biggest, richest, most powerful are the best. The call of Christ is to become the servant of all, the slave of all.

Hal Luccock noted that in an old Methodist hymnal there was a hymn entitled, "Jesus Demands My All." But the title was followed by an asterisk and a footnote that said, "For an easier version see Number 438."

We are looking for Number 438, an easier way out. Giving our all is not at the top of our agendas. Giving a tithe is often well above our plans as well.

But Jesus is challenging us along with his disciples to consider the ultimate things, the eternal things, when we live our lives. How have we served others? How have we diminished ourselves in order to make the lives of others more livable? In doing that we become greater.

One of my Sunday School students in another church had an older brother. When I was introduced to him, he said, "My name is Peter, and I am the greatest." Even Peter was joining the ranks of James and John!

How do we seek real priority and greatness? Is it not through servanthood?

Pastor Glen Morrison said in a job interview he was asked about his fluency in French. Glen remembered he had learned to order a hamburger in French and to say a few other things in the language. So he replied that he did have fluency in French. Then the interviewer switched to speaking in French, and the embarrassed Glen found he would not be getting that job.

Little children in Sunday School were asked, "Who will be wearing the biggest crown in heaven?" To which they chimed back, "The one with the biggest head!"

And indeed that is what many think. If we have a good self-esteem then we will be seen as being the greatest or best. But the reason for a secure self-valuation is how we have benefited others by our lives, not by how we have overcome lesser achievers.

Jesus' disciples James and John wanted their 'place in the sun.' They wanted to be on the right and left of the one who was turning the world upside down, their Lord. But Jesus had to call them back to the reality of his impending suffering and death. 'Are you really willing to drink from my cup?' he asked, meaning were they willing to suffer as he was. And James and John quickly spoke words that would be prophetic of the outcome of their lives, probably without knowing what they were saying. James would become the first disciple to be martyred, as we read in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. And some traditions note John faced the same martyrdom himself as well.

The pipe organ at the Pacific Ocean Studios on Clement Street in San Francisco has a special "stop" or button. By pushing this button the organ makes the sound of applause. And with the crescendo pedal the applause can be raised to the level of a standing ovation. Maybe we are seeking such a button for our lives. A little crescendo of applause would make us feel quite proud.

But let us strive for the applause of the angels, the perhaps unheard applause during our lifetimes. How can we get that applause except through following our and their Lord? By serving him through his teachings we can find the kudos of the Eternal One who dwells in heaven.

Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics said, "Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from [their] neck saying, 'Make Me Feel Important.'" "Never forget this message when working with people," she said.

A Hollywood starlet is said to have said, "Flattery will get you everything, Darling."

Our platitudes and flattery do have the desired effects sometimes. But it is our humble service that gets us the eternal rewards. Washington Gladden's well-known hymn goes, "O Master, let me walk with Thee in lowly paths of service free." Washington Gladden was for sometime the religious editor of the New York "Independent" newspaper in the late 1800's. He editorialized against Boss Tweed and the Tweed Ring in New York City, an unpopular thing for a religious editor to do. Later he became an outspoken preacher on labor-management concerns and focused on the social implications of the gospel. He took his Christianity to be essential to correcting the ills of the society of his time and place.

There is an Aesop fable of the fox and the crow. The crow had gathered up a tasty morsel of meat in his beak. The fox wanted a bite. So he said, "Crow, how beautiful is your voice. It is one of the most melodic of all the birds." The crow, bursting with pride, opened his beak and began to sing, and the morsel fell to the ground. The fox quickly gathered up the meat and ran away.

Our pride can indeed get in our way of being the servant Christians we are called to be.

Our God is one who chooses to serve, not just to be worshipped and adored. Our God serves.

How do we filter out the voices of this world from the voice of God? This is perhaps one of the most frequently asked questions in our Alpha course. How do we hear God's voice? One answer surely is that if we are hearing a call to service, it is likely God's voice. Our human tendency is to seek immediate recognition or gratification. Helping the unfortunate does not often come naturally to us. James and John epitomize the world's way of manipulative power-grasping. Some are quite adept at getting the ear of a more powerful person through flattery and compliment. So the strategy is not a new one. But Jesus berates the seekers of the 'first seats'. He is not recommending the passive acceptance of an abusive spouse or employer. But Jesus is asking us to consider for whom we are living. The other ten disciples are quite angered by the bald-faced bravado of James and John. Jesus however noted that the reason for their anger was not so much about the impertinence of James and John as it was about their own self-seeking attitude. And they had fallen into the vicious trap of seeking to gain the whole world while losing their own souls. They like us seek privilege and power, not the pain and pressure of the way of the cross.

Interestingly enough the ones who were finally given the privilege of being on Jesus' right and left were the two criminals who hung with him on crosses on Golgotha. And even there one of the criminals went to his death unrepentant. The other implored Jesus, 'Let me be with you when you come into your kingdom.' And with his dying breath, Jesus reassures that one, "Today you will be with me in Paradise."

Is that not our ultimate goal as Christians, to be with Jesus on the day of our death with our Lord and Savior in Paradise? But are we living lives more consistent with that of the other one beside Jesus. We challenge Jesus to intervene in our difficulties, and if he doesn't, we cast him away.

One of the guards at our detention center told us he was an agnostic and would remain so until he got custody of his child from his divorced wife. He had put a qualification on his faith.

But he is probably typical of many of us. If things are not going our way, we shut God out of our lives. We fence ourselves into our own closets, not ready to yield our selves to the will of our Lord and Master.

In our Alpha discussion of "Why is there evil?" we find the world is in the control of the fallen angel satan. He is for the time the governor of the world, and as such he causes much havoc for us Christians. However, for us to credit to God the evil we feel is folly. In time the satan will be cast into the eternal abyss. And what we certainly do not want to happen to us is to follow him there.

We need to give God the credit for all good, and the devil credit for all evil, never vice versa. But the reverse is one of the primary reasons those of weaker faith give up what faith they have. And as a result they sign onto the agenda of the evil one. Beware! The devil is on the prowl for us during our times of weakness. So it behooves us to keep our faith alive and well. And by serving others who are less well off than are we is certainly the key way to strengthen our sometimes vulnerable faith.

Perhaps the one person in all my high school class who would be known as the most boastful and brash was seen some years later smiling at the controls of his newest Cessna airplane pictured in the local newspaper. No more than a week later he was arrested on charges of credit card fraud. But his efforts to self-aggrandize were surely not exclusively his. We by our admiration had eased his way into the wide path that led to destruction. The applause machine is powerful, but artificial. The applause dies away. We have to be sure we remain once it does, that we have not been swept away by our fifteen minutes of fame.

The quip was heard of a person asking, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" The person on the street replied, "Practice, practice, practice!"

And so it is with us Christians. We need to practice what we preach. If we seek a higher position, we must be the ones who are servants of others, the slaves of all.

May we find Christian servanthood to be the badge of honor we seek. Amen.