A few weeks ago, at the 9:30 service I believe, I was right in the middle of a story when I forgot the punch line.  Do you remember this?  I did eventually remember it, but I think I got the biggest response I’ve ever gotten from this congregation (meaning you all laughed your heads off) when I had that momentary lapse and forgot the punch line.  It reminded me of the story of this young preacher who was so nervous as he got up to preach, and he forgot what he was going to say.  So he said, “When I first got up here both God and I knew what I was going to say, but now God only knows what I’m going to say.”           

I think most of you know that even though I forget what I’m going to say every once in a while, I do love to preach, I do love to do whatever it is you’d call what I’m doing up here.  And, as a preacher, you can’t help but appreciate a few words of affirmation now and then.  We all like to be affirmed.  I remember this one dear woman at our first church who just loved my preaching, she couldn’t get enough of my preaching.  I was very fond of this woman.  One day after church she came up to me and said, “You know Rev. Thompson, I think you must be one of the great expositors of your generation.”  Well I told her I appreciated her comment.  And on the way home I told Brenda what she’d said, I said, “Mrs. So-and-so just told me that I must be one of the great expositors of my generation.”  Well there was no comment, there was just dead silence in the car.  So I said it again, “Mrs. So-and-so said that I must be one of the great expositors of my generation.”  And again there was silence.  I wanted some sort of reaction, so I asked, “How many great expositors do you suppose there are in my generation?”  And Brenda said, “One less than you think, dear.” 

It’s kind of silly, I know, but it does raise the issue of greatness, of striving for greatness, reaching for greatness, thinking that greatness is even possible for you, that greatness is something desirable, that God might be calling you to greatness.  What does it mean to be great?  What does it mean to be great in God’s eyes, not in our own eyes, but in God’s eyes?  Is God calling us to be great?  Is God calling you to be great?  Is God calling Christ Church to be great, to be something beyond where we are right now?           

Now, of course, you have to be careful with this idea of greatness.  Doesn’t it smack of pride and arrogance, we might think, putting a priority on the wrong things?  Doesn’t the Bible talk about being humble and meek, being the servant of others, “the last shall be first”, and that sort of thing?  And it does, and you can get your priorities all wrong, and yet you have to be careful too that you don’t allow yourself to settle for less than you might be.           

I heard of this couple who were married, only it was not a particularly happy marriage at times; they fought a lot.  And the husband later on would admit to himself that most of it was his fault, he was too controlling of his wife.  But they fought a lot, and after one particular fight, the wife suggested that their marriage was unhappy.  Well the husband, despite all the fighting, had never really thought of their marriage as unhappy; he was deeply offended by her comment and said, “How can you say that?  There are plenty of marriages that are worse than ours.”  But his wife said, “Well of course, there are marriages worse than ours.  But I was hoping for something better than that, something better than just not that bad of a marriage.”  And when he heard those words, he realized something, he committed himself to something better in his marriage.           

It was Peter Marshall, the great preacher from some years ago, who in speaking to the young people of his day, would often say, “Never be ashamed, never be ashamed, of high ideals, and dreams, and beautiful thoughts.” 

Every once in a while in the Bible we see this thought of striving and reaching beyond ourselves.  There is this passage in Matthew, for example, where Jesus says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”  And he is not just saying this to the disciples, he is saying this to us.  We are part of this now.  And here is this ginormous task (I heard this word the other day from our waitress at Max ‘n Erma’s, don’t bother to look it up in the dictionary, it’s not there), there is this ginormous task we are being asked to do, this gigantic, enormous task that we are given by Jesus.  The whole world is at stake.  The salvation of other people is at stake.  There are those who need to hear the gospel message and know of the love of Jesus.  There are those who are in trouble, those who are in need, those who don’t know where to turn.  There is this ginormous task, this ginormous opportunity, and good enough is not good enough when it comes to this “Great Commission” from Jesus.             

So the question becomes, not whether we are called to greatness with our lives and with our church, because we are, I think, we may not like it but we are, we may not feel qualified for it, but we are.  The question is how are we called to greatness?  What does God want from us?  What does God want us to do?  How does God want us to live?           

I like this quote from Abraham Lincoln.  You know I like Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln once said, “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.  I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to whatever light that I have.”  Greatness is not striving to win or succeed, greatness is being unwilling to settle for anything less than being true to that light that God has placed in our hearts. 

We might look at this familiar passage from I Corinthians 13 for some further ideas on what it means to be great, we are to be great in faith, great in hope.  Have you ever thought what it might mean for you, for your family, your community, for the world, to be great in hope, to be hopeful when everyone else is saying that it cannot be done, there is no way, there is no hope, for you still to be hopeful, to allow the light of this truth of hope to shine through you?  To be great in faith, to be great in hope, and yet the greatest of them all is love, to be great in love. 

How does one even begin to get your mind around how you might be great in love, to strive with all our being, with everything we have in us, to love God and love other people?  I think we really have to break it down into the small, simple acts of love that we might do each day that might eventually, ultimately accomplish great things.  It was Mother Teresa who said, “We can do no great thing only small things with great love.” 

It was said of Ernest Hemingway that in his younger years as a journalist, he wanted to be a writer, he wanted to write novels, but he just couldn’t seem to get started.  So one day he kind of thought to himself, now do I have a whole novel in me?  And he had to admit that no, he didn’t have a whole novel in him.  So he asked himself, well do I have a chapter in me?  And again the answer was no, I don’t have a chapter.  Well what about a page, do I have a page in me?  No, I don’t have a page.  What about a paragraph, can I write a paragraph?  And that answer too was no, I don’t have a paragraph.  Well what about a sentence, can I write one true sentence?  And he thought to himself that he could, that he did have a sentence inside of him.  And so he began to write, one sentence at a time, and before long he was making his living as a novelist. 

So many times we just never quite get started because the task looks too big, it looks too daunting, it looks ginormous.  But we might ask ourselves: Can I take one true step toward loving God at a deeper level, can I take one true step toward loving humanity at a deeper level, can I take one step toward making a difference in the world by loving the people around me, loving that person next to me, loving that person I really don’t like? 

In his most recent book, John Ortberg tells about a 19-year-old young man named Johnny who had Down syndrome.  Johnny worked as a bagger at a grocery store, he would bag the groceries for the customers.  And Johnny went to a seminar one day where the speaker was talking about making a difference.  He really liked the seminar, but when he got home, at first he couldn’t think of any way he might help to make a difference.  Then he had an idea.  He decided that every night when he came home from work, he would find a “thought for the day” for his next shift.  It would be something positive, some reminder of how good it was to be alive, or how much people matter, or how many gifts we are surrounded by.  If he couldn’t find a thought for the day, he’d make one up.  Then every night his father would help him enter the saying six times on a page on the computer, then Johnny would print fifty pages, then cut out 300 copies of the thought for the day and sign each one. 

Johnny would then put a copy of the thought for the day in each person’s bag of groceries as they went through the checkout line.  And then he would look each customer in the eye and say, “I’ve put a great saying in your bag.  I hope it helps you have a good day.  Thanks for coming here.”  A month later, the store manager was making his rounds, and he noticed that Johnny’s checkout line was three times longer than anyone else’s.  The manager got on the loudspeaker to get more checkout lines open, but he couldn’t get many of the customers to move.  They said, “That’s okay.  We’ll wait.  We want to be in Johnny’s line.”  One woman came up to the manager and said, “I used to shop in your store once a week.  Now I come in every time I go by – I want to get Johnny’s thought for the day.”  John Ortberg’s comment is this, that “Johnny is doing more than filling bags with groceries; he is filling lives with love and hope.”   

What is that ginormous task to which God is calling you?  What is that great thing you might do to make a difference?  The temptation is to just settle for not really attempting anything, or to be intimidated by how big this thing is.  But perhaps you’ll take that first step, this month, this week, today, that first step, in love, to strive, to reach beyond yourself to where God is calling you.  Remember those words of Mother Teresa, “We can do no great thing, only small things with great love.”