You can tell from some of the stories I use in my sermons that I collect stories about ministers and the little situations in which they find themselves sometimes.  Depending on how it turns out for the minister, I kind of like these stories.  I heard about one minister who was in a large city and he had an appointment with someone, probably the Bishop or someone important, and he could not find a parking space.  He drove around and around the block, but he just could not find a parking space on the street with a meter.  So he decided to park in a no parking zone.  And he knew someone might possibly come along to give him a ticket, so he left this little note on his windshield.  It said, “I am a minister and I’ve been circling this block for ten minutes looking for a parking space.  If I don’t park here, I will miss my appointment.”  And then he wrote, “Forgive us our trespasses.  Matthew 6:12.”           

So he went to his meeting, and when he came back to his car, sure enough, there was a ticket that had been left there on the windshield.  But there was a note with the ticket, from the police officer, and the note said, “Glad to see you’re out doing the Lord’s work, but I’ve been circling this block for ten years, and if I don’t give you a ticket I will lose my job.”  And then the note said, “Lead us not into temptation.  Matthew 6:13.”           

It’s easy to get all wrapped up in ourselves, even as a minister, like the minister in this story, to think that the work we’re doing is just so important, that we are so important, that others ought to make allowances for us, make room for us.  We all do this.  We all sometimes have this “Me, myself and I” kind of attitude.           

It starts, I suppose, when we’re children.  Children can be awfully centered on themselves.  Am I the only one who’s noticed this?  Not your children, of course, but other people’s children, can be awfully self-centered.  I heard about this little boy, maybe five years old, who got lost at the YMCA and he found himself in the women’s locker room.  He was left unattended for only a moment, and he just walked right in to the women’s locker room, and the women were in various stages of dress and undress, and when they spotted this little boy some of them shrieked, and they tried to cover themselves or run away to get out of sight.  And this little boy is just standing there taking this all in, and finally he says, “What’s the matter?  Haven’t you ever seen a little boy before?”           

Children don’t always understand the bigger picture of things, the bigger picture beyond just themselves.  And neither do most adults frankly.  Let’s be honest.  Our lives can be so overwhelming, so involving, we carry so many burdens some of us, it’s hard, it’s really hard sometimes, to take the focus off of ourselves.           

Eugene O’Neill, the great American playwright, he wrote such classics as “The Iceman Cometh” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”.  He said this about his plays, he said, “What I am after is to get an audience to leave the theater with an exultant feeling from seeing somebody on stage facing life, fighting against the eternal odds, and not conquering necessarily, and perhaps even inevitably being conquered, but nevertheless being made stronger by the struggle.  The individual life is made significant by the struggle.”           

The individual life, he says, is made significant by the struggle.  The individual life was the focus of so much of his work.  The individual life is the focus of so much of our thoughts and dreams.  The individual life is the focus even here in Isaiah, where he describes what God is doing for him, and what God will do for you.  God is my comfort and my salvation.  “The Lord,” he says, “is my strength and my song.”           

I love those words of Eugene O’Neill, the individual life is made significant by the struggle, and I certainly love the words of Isaiah.  But I think where we lose our way sometimes, is when we make everything about us, everything about me, everything centers on me, everything revolves around me.           

I heard about the pastor of a struggling, inner-city church.  Just picture this big old church that has seen better days, it’s a small congregation now, in the heart of a bad neighborhood, with more bills coming in than they can possibly pay for, and they better keep the church locked up or someone will break in and steal something or vandalize the place.  You know, they’re trying to do ministry, they really are, but they’re pretty limited, and they’re somewhat limited in their thinking.  And on one side of the church building outside there was a little water spigot, and the minister noticed this shabby-looking, grimy, homeless man who would just sort of hang around out there and use the spigot sometimes to get a drink of water.  Well the minister didn’t really like that, it wasn’t so much that he was getting a drink of water, the minister just didn’t want this homeless man loitering around, he didn’t know what he might get into, what he might do.  So he told him to leave, but the man kept coming back.  So the minister turned off the water for this spigot, and this, of course, got rid of the homeless man.           

But a few days later when he was reading the Bible he read a passage that he had forgotten about temporarily, where Jesus is separating the sheep from the goats, separating those who will go to heaven from those who will not.  And Jesus says to some, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,” but he says to others, “I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.”  And the minister thought about that, and the next day the water was back on, and the homeless man was there getting a drink.  The minister had gone out and searched for him and found him and invited him back.           

We as individuals and even as a church can get so focused on ourselves and on what we need, and the needs are many and great, but we can lose sight of the bigger picture, we can lose sight of the rest of the world.  I remember very fondly something that happened in our former church a number of years ago.  We were starting a youth group.  There had been no youth group for a number of years, but there were some young people around the church, and so we started a youth group.  And one time, we wanted to see how the youth would react if we had a homeless man sitting out in the parking lot as we all arrived that evening for our meeting.  So we had one of our members dress up as a homeless man, just kind of dirty and shabby, and sat out in the parking lot as all the youth arrived (I think they did something like this last week at the 11:01 service).  No one knew it was this church member, and as the youth arrived and saw him and then came inside for our meeting, we stood there and talked about this and wrung our hands over what we should do.  And I remember so clearly the comment of one of our young people.  She just kind of blurted out and said, “We really should go out and help him.  This is a church.”  This is a church.  Being the church makes us different than other organizations in dealing with those who are in need.  Being a Christian makes you different somehow in how you respond to other people, in how you respond to the world.           

There has to be some balance, I think, between the individual and the world, some balance between satisfying our needs, our goals, our dreams, and doing something to help the needs of the world, insatiable needs I know, needs without limit almost.  And the church is right in the middle of this.  And Isaiah, the prophet, seems to have an answer for what we must do.  Isaiah says, let’s take this salvation that God has given to us, let’s take this strength and this comfort and this song that God has placed in our hearts, let’s take what God has given to us, and now let’s share it with the world, let’s proclaim it to the world, let’s offer it to the world.  Find some way as an individual to give this salvation that comes from God to the world.           

This is why the various mission ministries of this church are so vital to the central focus of who we are as Christ Church.  Nyadire Hospital and Orphanage in Zimbabwe, and the Eighth Avenue Church in Homestead, and the work teams that go to Mississippi and other places are central to who we are as Christ Church.  And the Food Bank, the Alternative Giving Mart, and the White Gifts service this afternoon, and Prime Time, and the Northside Feeding Program, and Fill-a-Truck, and the Prayer Shawl ministry, and the work and fund-raising efforts of the United Methodist Women, and the special offerings, they are all central to who we are.  And I haven’t even mentioned everything we do, I’m sure, I don’t know everything we do.  Isaiah is saying that it is so important to nurture a soul that gives, nurture the soul of a church that gives, nurture a life that thinks beyond just itself.           

Woodrow Wilson, the former President, once said this, that, “You are not here to make a living, you may think that’s what you’re here for, but you are not here to make a living, you are here to affect the world, you are here to improve the world, you are here, in some small way, to change the world.”  Oh I know, you can kind of drift along and take care of your own needs mostly, and those of your family.  You can get up and go to work, go to a job you may or may not enjoy, and come home and eat dinner and watch “Desperate Housewives” or whatever it is on TV, and go to bed, and retire eventually, and die ultimately surrounded by all the stuff you’ve accumulated.  That’s one way to do it.  That’s the way most people do it.  Or you can wake up each day, at whatever stage of life you find yourself, whatever age, you can wake up each day, you can take each moment and say, “God, this is yours!  This is yours!  Tell me what you would have me do.  Show me what you would have me be.”  We can take each moment and say, “God this is yours,” and see where it might lead.           

If you go down into the crypt of Westminster Abbey in London, I don’t know if you can still do this with all the heightened security, but if you were to go down into the oldest part, the deepest part of the crypt, you will find there the tomb of an Anglican bishop who lived in the 11^th century.  And on his tomb you will read these words, this is a translation from the old English: 

When I was young and free my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world.  As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.  But it too seemed immovable.  As I grew in my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.  And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realized: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family.  From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may even have changed the world.