Those who would be great 10/20/40

Scripture: John I: 35-51

A little girl who was being promoted from the kindergarten was asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Into the microphone of the movie news-camera which recorded the event she piped, "I want to be a Nactress!" The scene was well-rehearsed, but the ambition seemed genuine. She evidently had a desire (and who hasn’t had some of it?) to be great. And a career as an actress seemed to her to be great enough for anyone. Who can blame her, when we note that, through well-attended movie theaters all over the land, actors and actresses are the real heroes of the idealistic life of millions.

The ambition to be great extends to that of parents for their children (and perhaps sometimes to that of teachers for their pupils.) During the last world war, a cartoonist portrayed this human trait. His drawing pictured a rather corpulent and very intent young man sitting on a high stool, busy with a large sheet of paper on a drafting table. He could have been an architect, an engineer, or just a draftsman. In the same rooms, his young wife sat on a chair with their infant on her lap. The youngster showed about as much promise of greatness as most squalling babies do at that age. But the fond mother says, to her busy husband, "John, dear, do think our baby will ever be President? "Doubtful, my dear," was the reply. “If my invention for freezing the ocean, so that submarines can’t come to the top, is a success, he’ll be too rich for that job.”

I think there is nothing wrong with the ambition to be great. Ambition to get something done, to achieve what seems important, is the motive power of progress for the human race. Its restless presence is a gift of God. Its definition and use is a duty of man. What matters to us is the kind of ambitions we have and the way in which we attempt to carry them to achievement.

The greatness of power or of wealth, or of social prestige or popular acclaim is easily apparent. Thousands of people will gather at the docks in Honolulu to see and acclaim the President of the United States or Shirley Temple or Mr. Farley or Mr. Wilkie in person. They are recognized as great people, from great places, doing great things; excelling hundreds and thousands of others not only in the opportunity but in the ability to do the things that are in their line.

I suppose there may be hundreds who sigh for such greatness and bemoan the fact that they have never had a chance. (Popular song, “I never had a chance.) I suspect that practically all of such sighing is just rubbish; a waste to time. For no one ever has another man’s chance. The chances that come to us are our own! And often our chances come, and wait, and pass without being recognized as such because we have our eyes so intently set on the distant place that we can not see the golden opportunity at our feet. Some people tend to have a strange fascination, for instance, for the city. If they live, let us say, in Arpin, they may think that the real opportunities for greatness lie in Wisconsin Rapids or Madison. And if they live in Wisconsin Rapids they may feel that a person could amount to more if he could just get into the right crowd in Milwaukee or Chicago or New York or Washington. I remember now with what immature, condescending amusement I learned that there actually was a cross roads in my native state called Pumpkin Center.

People had similar ideas in the time of Jesus, and long before that. When Lot had his choice of country or city for his future career, he took the city as having, it seemed to him, the greater possibilities. And we remember him chiefly as a man who got into a lot of trouble in the city which he chose, and barely escaped alive to learn a few lessons over again. It happens that the great man, in that story, is his uncle Abraham, who stayed in open country.

People seemed to have the idea that those who really amounted to anything in Palestine a couple of thousands of years ago lived in Jerusalem. It was the capital. The temple was there. A great many people were there. It was the seat of the provincial government. Certainly one would look for greatness there rather than, let us say, in a little “podunk” village like Nazareth. Was there not even a common saying in the question, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” The obvious answer seemed to be, “No.” Who ever heard of anything important coming from a one-horse or no-horse town? Chariots are found in cities.

And so Nathanial might be forgiven, though he had to be corrected, for his incredulity when his brother urged him to come and meet a man from Nazareth. What good could there be in following a Pumpkin Center fellow around? Nothing could be wiser or more teasing to curiosity than Philip’s answer, “Come and see.” After all, that is the test, isn’t it? “Come and see!” When he actually went to see, Nathaniel found enough and plenty to interest him for the rest of his life.

Of course, if one wants to be a great figure in the national politics of his country he will have to have dealings with the cities. If you are ever to be an actress of screen fame, it probably means Hollywood, eventually. If you are destined to be an opera singer it means the cities where opera, so costly as well as beautiful, can flourish. But until we can be sure that our destiny lies elsewhere, we had better be alert for the opportunities right at hand, where we live, working with what we have.

Interested in the stars? Yes, but one can’t get anywhere with it, unless one gets good enough to join the staff of one of the really fine observatories. Is this true? Not at all! Leslie C. Peltier began studying the stars, when he was a youngster, in the fields of his farm home. He is still a farmer by day. But at night, he studies the stars from his little home-made observatory, through a small borrowed telescope. And he has sent to Harvard University more than 50,000 observations on variables, has discovered a new star and several comets (one now named after him), and has had high honors heaped upon him by seasoned astronomers all over the world. He hasn’t even a complete high school education. He made his early observations with a small telescope mounted on a fence post. He didn’t pray for his environment to make him great; he made his environment serve him.

Naturalists tell us that there are enough forms of life in our own back yards to keep us fascinated and busy for months, or years, just getting acquainted, so that we could recognize them all. If you should become great through such a study, well and good; if not you would have had a fascinating time of it anyway.

Probably people will take notice of your greatness, if you really achieve something worthy of note, whether or not you are in London or in Four Corners. Emerson is said to have remarked: “If you make a finer mousetrap than anyone else, but you make it better than anyone else, even though you build your house in the midst of the woods, the world will beat a path to your door.”

Success is doing; not what you would if you had a million dollars, if you had better tools, more schooling, other contacts, more talent, time or energy; but what you can do with the time, talent energy, money, friends, education, interest, ambition, and gifts you now have!

If God ever tried to encourage us in a single lesson it is this one. When he sent Jesus into the world - not by way of a palace or cathedral or capital city - but into a humble home in an ordinary village in a remote province, among a small and despised group of people; to lead a simple life, preaching and teaching without class room, church building, desk or office; helping not the notably great but the humble, the sore and distressed, the weak and the sick, the sinful and needy - when God did that He gave the best lesson in greatness which can come to those who have eyes to see, ears to hear, or minds to understand. And then another lesson followed hard after - he chose Paul, Pharisee of Pharisees, learned and influential - as a chief apostle of his son to promote the gospel.

We live today in a sick world, a world that looks for its cure in miraculous ways of faster and safer and cheaper travel, in marvelous cures for disease, in territory and fields of exploitation. Our world wants more ease and comfort and more luxury and amusement. These will not cure the world’s ills, and they offer no real security. Bryce wrote, “When the arena in the city became more important than the cornfield in the country, Rome fell.”

{Want to be a great actor or actress?

Act in friendliness among those who are near.

Want to be a great philanthropist?

Give what you can.

Want to be a great leader of people?

Your community, church, and perhaps your family, need more who will pour their talents into the common life of the Christian community.}

Our personal lives, our community and national life, the life of our world will pass the crisis of illness and turn to health only when we are willing to do what we can, and all we can, wherever we are, with what we have, as God gives us the strength and talent to do.

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dates and places delivered:

Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, July 30, 1939 AM

Makawao Union church, August 20, 1939 AM

Wailuku Japanese Church, August 20, 1939 PM

Wisconsin Rapids, October 20, 1940

W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, January 22, 1941