Harvest ambition
Christ Church and
St Mary’s, 22nd September 2000
Mark 9:30-37
James 3: 13-4:3.
Passing through a farm
the other day I was sad to learn that Bo Peep had lost her sheep. But as the farmer told me, she should never have
had that crook with her. I saw that his
foal had a nasty cough. "Yes, he's
a little horse," he told me. On
the way out we passed a crowd of pigs on their way to the ballet. They were off to see Swine Lake.
There, you can't have a
harvest service without some farm jokes.
But now, to get a bit more serious, I want to start with three little
pictures which say something about the flavour of the society we live in, and
the kind of expectations that are put upon us.
Firstly here are some job advertisements: young dynamic rapidly growing
recruitment sectors are seeking ambitious, outgoing, money hungry
graduates. Or..A career in the city-we
are looking for determined, successful and ambitious people, aged 25 to
35. Or...You will need to have a proven
track record, to be ambitious and willing to work hard to be the best.
Somebody has said that
you can tell what a society values the most by who gets paid the most. So in a world where celebrities and
footballers are so near the top of the pile here are the lyrics from a song
from the Seventies, which you might recognise - I'm not going to sing it!: I'm gonna live for
ever, I'm gonna learn how to fly, I'm gonna make it to heaven, I can catch the
moon in my hand, Don't you know who I am?
Remember my name, People will see me and cry. I'm gonna make it to heaven, Light up the sky like flame.
Thirdly a
quote from Damon Hill: "Winning is everything. The only ones who remember when you came second are your wife and
your dog."
So it's a dog
eat dog world out there, for the ambitious, the famous, the winners. It's a world of fifteen minute glory for the
lucky ones. A world for those who
succeed. And here we are in a town
which has a reputation for being the mecca for a lot of these values:
money-grabbing and materialistic. Here
is a town for people who want to succeed.
Well, I know this is a bit of a caricature, but maybe you recognise
something of this culture in your own work environment. There isn't a lot of room today for those
who feel dependent on something other than their own energy or something else
for their life's meaning. There isn't a
lot of room for failures, for those who can't cope.
Of course, we
know that ambition, success, fame are really false idols . We read about the tragic life and death of
Paula Yates, and even Robbie Williams sounds doubtful about the significance of
his success. Just this week he has
given an interview in Vogue magazine.
It roughly says this: at 26, he
is one of Britain's biggest rock stars, with the money and lifestyle to
match. His flat is like every young
boy's dream: remote control zappers everywhere, a giant TV screen, shelves of
fluffy toys, a Homer Simpson cushion and a copy of the new Harry Potter novel. But despite all this he is not a happy boy. After months without drink or drugs, he
recently fell off the wagon-and he hates himself for it. "I'm battling, I'm in the
trenches," he says. To make
matters worse he's full of worries about his forthcoming Australian tour, his
weight, and the fact that after 10 years of fame, with staff to care for his
every need, he doesn't have a clue how to look after himself.
We know in
our hearts of hearts that winning, earning loads of money, being known doesn't
produce the goods. But more importantly
than that we know how much Jesus emphasised that to be the greatest was to be
the least. That real success was in
being able to welcome children i.e. those who were unable to give us much in
return compared to what we could give them.
Even the disciples knew they shouldn't have been talking about who was
the greatest-they only admitted it to Jesus when he asked them. They instinctively knew that to be a
follower of Jesus was not to be concerned about such things. Perhaps it was because Jesus had been
hinting that the road he was travelling down was to his own death, his own
degradation, his own service of others.
And James says to the Christians he writes to that they should do
nothing out of selfish ambition, nothing out of competition-this only serves to
create bitterness and tension between them.
For a wise person he says is not the one who is driven by the need to
succeed or to be the winner: "For where there is envy and selfish
ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind." To go after the wrong things for our own
pleasure, James says, only means that we miss the blessing of God in our lives.
Ambition: lofty ambition, naked ambition, blind ambition, driving ambition,
consuming ambition, is a dirty word for the Christian. Those who are greedy should get their just
deserts.
Walking up to a department store's fabric counter, a pretty girl
asked, "I want to buy this material for a new dress. How much does it
cost?"
"Only a kiss a yard," replied the smirking male clerk.
"That's fine," replied the girl. "I'll take ten yards."
With expectation and anticipation written all over his face, the
clerk hurriedly measured out and wrapped the cloth, then held it out
teasingly.
The girl snapped up the package and pointed to a little old man
standing beside her. "Grandpa will
pay the bill," she smiled.
Wanting more,
being ambitious, is not a Christian quality.
So the Christian leaves his or her ambition, his or her desire to
succeed, to be the best, at the door.
The Christian ideal is seen in the story of two old monks decided that,
having lived together for years, they should try to have an argument like the
rest of humankind. One asked the other how to do it and he replied, "I
will put something out on the floor and say, 'It's mine' and then you say, 'No,
it's mine.' And then we'll argue about it"
"All right," answered the first monk.
The other did as was planned and said, "It's mine."
"All right. Have it," said the first.
And that was the end of their argument.
And when we come to thinking about harvest, isn't what it is meant to
remind us that we are dependent on God for our very lives? Food is a gift, and we can't take anything
for granted. As we sit in petrol queues
and realise how quickly the things we need can disappear, we realise that our
lives are indeed very fragile. We are
not powerful enough to be the masters or mistresses of our own destinies in the
way that job adverts would have us believe.
The Jews had a good reminder of this in their festival of Sukkoth -
thier harvest festival. They would
ccelebrate it by sleeping out under the stars for eight days in booths which
they had made from sticks and twigs .
There under the night sky they would look and be reminded that yes
everything came from God. Any tiny
ambitions they might have found were simply dwarfed by the reality of his
greatness and their need of him.
So we are dependent - our ambitions are futile and misplaced. And yet, and yet. Isn't harvest also a time when we celebrate the fact that God has
made us farmers? Hasn't he made us
inventors, producers, developers, experimenters, teachers, artists, economists,
chefs, accountants? Doesn't he want us
to bring out the goodness of his creation and to work with him to make the
world yield its fruit? Doesn't he want
us to make things better? Is my
discomfort with ambition more to do with the fact that I am British than a
Christian? Is it just the age-old
British cynicism about success that's in operation here? Shouldn't, for example, church leaders be
ambitious to have a bigger church?
Shouldn't we be ambitious to make our worship the best possible worship
that can be imagined? Shouldn't we be
ambitious to preach good sermons?
Maybe it's not so much being ambitious that is the issue, but what we
are ambitious for that matters.
There can be a wrong ambition and a right ambition. Edmund Burke said that ambition can creep as
well as soar. Of the nine times that
the Bible uses the word ambition, six of those uses have a negative
meaning. And on those occasions to have
ambition means something like to do things only for what you can get out of it,
only for the money that you can earn.
That's a bad kind of ambition, when we harvest or live only for what we
can take and grab. But what about if we
have an ambition like Paul had when he wrote that we make it our ambition to
please him? Or to translate it a bit
more poetically, what if our ambition is to be the kind of people who in
whatever we are doing bring real pleasure to God? God said of Jesus that he delighted in him and his work. What if our ambition is to make God delight
in what we do? Eric Liddell, the famous
athlete from "Chariots of fire" told his wife, "God made me
fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure."
What has God made you able to do?
Can you do it in such a way that you begin to feel his pleasure? Can you be ambitious is not to see your name
in lights, or to be recognised as better than anyone else, but to aim for
excellence? Can it be that our desire
to succeed does not need to be thrown away, but only converted, to be lined up
with what God cares about?
Harvest calls us to humility but also to excellence. And we can look to excellence not because we
need recognition but because we ourselves are Jesus' ambition. When he set himself on the road to death, he
had you and me in his sights, as his ambition.
So let's live to feel his pleasure.
If you are ambitious to feel God's pleasure in your work , then pick up
your ambition as you leave the church door.
If you are ambitious for the kingdom of God coming in your family
relationships, then pick up your ambition as you leave the church door. If you are ambitious for the love of Jesus
to be shown in your community, then pick up your ambition as you leave the
church door. if you are ambitious to
see Christ Church being ever transformed by the work of the spirit in our
lives, then pick up your ambition as you leave the church door. Amen.