“Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine” – Mine, Mine, Mine! I live with a two-year-old. We hear the word “mine” a lot. As another experienced parent once said to me, the two-year-old mentality is “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.” There’s a recurring theme at our house on everything Ryleigh’s – it’s MY mommy, MY brother, MY cat, MY shirt, MY duckie – well, you get the point.

When a young child is beginning to experience the world as her own person for the first time, it is very much an “I must be the center of this universe” kind of thing. Well, why not? A two-year-old’s independence is rather limited to say the least. She may be able to walk and talk and say “no,” and yet, we still feed her, bathe her, change her diapers, and take her wherever she needs to go. It sounds like a pretty good deal to me – though when she doesn’t get her way she has learned how to tell us that we have caused her whole world to fall apart. So as much as she would like to bake her own cookies or drive the car, that’s not happening – yet.

I dare say we’ll get to experience another stepping stone of independence over the next several years as our older child becomes a teen-ager. Tasting the real independence that leads to adulthood often brings on another round of the “me, me, me” drama. I know because I went through it. Except in that stage of development, the realization is the opposite – I am not the center of the universe. I may not even be the center of my lunch table, or the center of my parents’ existence. I remember how scary it was to become responsible for my own success or failure. My choices began to have real consequences. At that point, the teenager’s need to be loved, and understood, and appreciated increases dramatically, and at the same time, he or she may be getting less of that undivided parental attention, or have greater challenges in dealing with the complexities of friendship. One begins to ask, “What is the world all about if it isn’t about me?”

As an adult, you’d think the “all-about-me-syndrome” would be a stage we could outgrow, but sadly that isn’t the case. This story about James and John shows us that, even in the very presence of Jesus, we can’t quite put a lid on our own desires for attention and recognition. We want Jesus to love us best. Since they already had the attitude, maybe they should have bought the t-shirt too that says, “Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.”

When we get down to it - who hasn’t had an overly needy friend that went overboard at one time or another? Have you ever known someone who always had to be right no matter how much it was turning off everyone gathered around? Have you ever tried to be friends with someone who couldn’t get your attention often enough? He or she called too much, stayed too long, and frequently baited you to say how much you cared. Have you ever been around a person in search of constant praise? Every accomplishment required recognition, celebration, or acknowledgement, and the trophy case was always full. Our need to be right, to be understood, to be praised, to be loved can get skewed out of perspective and stuck in the “mine, mine, mine” mode. It becomes all about me and what I need, never turning to look outward to the greater needs of the world. Very few of us are completely immune from this type of thinking – at least once in awhile. Being right, being loved, being praised, being understood, being held in the loving arms of Jesus – those are feelings we adore and we can find ourselves wanting to go to those places time and time again. James and John were human after all.

Jesus reminds his disciples that the need to hold power over someone else and this sort of emotional insecurity often go hand in hand. In his day, the ones who had power and strength and military might held it over the heads of those without and became tyrants. They were addicted to the kind of acknowledgment and recognition that would be just like saying you had your place secured on the right hand or left hand of God. He wisely used this dispute and anger among his own disciples as a teaching moment, to tell them they didn’t need that kind of power. Among us, he said, we can serve one another without ever losing a thing. In fact, Jesus’ spiritual authority comes from giving up, from serving others, and from freeing other people to serve their neighbors without ego getting in the way.

Now if only we could do a better job of emotionally distinguishing between the good qualities of having a self and the negative qualities of being selfish. A two-year-old can be, at the same time, needy to the point of parental exhaustion and sweetly affectionate enough to make it not even matter. The teenager who is supported and encouraged to embrace both the largeness of the world and his or her own place in it can inspire us with amazing ideas and insights that adults have long since put aside in the category of unfulfilled dreams. In this scriptural conversation, Jesus is somehow able to hold his disciples close and at the same time hold them accountable for their care and concern for one another. Jesus gets the subtle nuances. Though he dismisses their request for rewards beyond what he is able to give, Jesus shares himself completely. “You will drink the cup I drink. With the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.”

Being friends with Jesus challenges our typical notions about being a friend. It’s not about being around people who think like us or hanging around with people who think we’re smart and funny. It’s not about making a list of political alliances or having our needs met. It’s not even about being understood, or loved, or rewarded. Ultimately, being friends with Jesus is about having the heart to serve others, and it’s about serving those others from a place of joy rather than obligation. Jesus reminds us that when we are complete, then we will have enough self to be able to give it away and then be left with more, not less.

The famous prayer attributed to St. Francis that we used for our Call to Worship this morning helps me more than anything else to let go of that place of need and give myself over to service. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, he says. Divine Master, grant that I may not seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood ad to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

At the end of a long, hard day, it’s so very easy to get lost in wanting what I want for me. I want someone to listen to my struggles, understand my worries, celebrate my accomplishments, love me, care for me, and serve me a hot and yummy dinner. But that’s not fair, not for Chuck, not for anybody. Jesus, who loves us unconditionally, is not moved by my inward dialogue of me, me, me. Throwing a tantrum will get me nowhere. Jesus gently reminds me to think more often than I do about others. Whoever wants to be great, whoever wants to be first must be servant of all.

It isn’t easy to be the ones that Jesus loves best. It isn’t easy to be God’s favorite. In fact, those who are called out by God will always be called to a life of service – not a cushy life of plenty where others will serve us. Ask Job. Ask James and John and the other disciples. When we befriend Jesus, he enters into our heart, he challenges our ways of being, and nothing will ever be the same.

Amen.