The Archdeacon of Down called in the other day and returned my surplice that I had left in St. Columba’s Church the other Sunday, and he told us that he was having all his curates over that night for a final farewell get-together. It is the start of the long good-bye, having announced his retirement a while ago and by next February, there should be a new Archdeacon of Down announced. All great craic, and you’d know it if you were at the Clergy Conference in Donegal a couple of weeks ago!!

When the Archbishop of Armagh came here to Glencraig on the occasion of our 140^th Year (our 150^th is only around the corner!), we were all so careful to get his title correct! It is, in fact, “The Most Rev. Dr. R.H.A. Eames, The Lord Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland and Metropolitan”.

I was so wrapped up in it at the time, I wasn’t really able to step back from it until I had been talking to my Father on the phone, and he said, in his usual philosophical way, “Isn’t it all a load of cod, really?” And he was absolutely right. With the Archbishop on his way also, they’ll all be sniffing around and doing their net-working! At least I don’t think it could be as bad as the lead up to the election of the present Archbishop of Canterbury...but you never know!

I thought it was wonderful when the retired Archbishop of York, Archbishop Hope, returned to parish ministry after all his years as a bishop. He returned to what he had always felt called to be, and that is a parish priest. I think all bishops (and Archbishops) should be made to do that before they retire to remind them what they were initially called to be. (In fact, they should all have a good grounding in parish ministry before they become bishops!)

When James and John came to Jesus, there’s no doubt they were seeking high office. It’s very interesting that in Matthew’s account, the request to sit at Jesus’ right and left doesn’t come from James and John, but from their mother, Salome. I don’t know which is worse, the ambitious disciple or the ambitious mother. But either way, it’s only natural, and we can understand it.

Do you remember Tony Campolo recollecting his school days when the Italian mothers asked their sons as they left the house for school, ‘Tony, do you have your lunch’ whereas the Jewish mothers would have asked, ‘Do you have your books?’

I don’t think James and John really knew what they were asking. There’s nothing wrong with ambition, but within the church it seems somehow out of place.

I think it was someone like Archbishop Ramsey who once said that the Church of England should be reformed by turning it upside down; the top would become the bottom and the bottom, the top, which, Richard Bewes once said, that he thought that was always a rather dangerous thing for an Archbishop to say! But you get the point.

James and John may have been misguided or simply didn’t understand quite what all this was about, and yet there is an amazing confidence and loyalty here. Their hearts were in the right place; they never doubted Jesus’ ultimate triumph. Indeed, it was taken for granted. But, inevitably, the action of James and John aroused deep resentment amongst the other ten, and the question of greatness was raised again.

We all know well Jesus’ idea of greatness in the Kingdom of God. It is the least, it is the youngest, it is the smallest who is great in the Kingdom of God. Little Laura Elizabeth (whom we’re Baptising today) is the greatest person in this Church today; isn’t that a lovely thought?

It’s not the great and mighty. It’s not the great act that counts for more in the kingdom.

There’s a story from the States, which is meant to be true, about a postal worker, just a few days before Christmas, at a main sorting office who found an unstamped, handwritten, messy envelope addressed to God. Curious, he opened it and discovered that it was from an elderly woman who was in great distress because all her savings -$200 – had been stolen. As a result, she wouldn’t have anything to eat at Christmas.

The man went to his fellow postal workers and took up a collection for the woman. They all dug deep and came up with $180. Putting the money in a plain envelope, with no note or anything, the postal workers sent it by special courier to the woman that very day.

A week later, the same postal worker noticed another unstamped letter that had been addressed to God in the same handwriting. In it, he found a brief note:

‘Dear God,

Thank you for the $180 that you sent me for Christmas, which would have been so bleak otherwise.

P.S. It was $20 short, but that was probably those thieving workers at the post office.’

It’s not the great and the mighty that count for more in the Kingdom of God, it’s the small things that count for far more; it’s so often the small acts of kindness, even the giving of a glass of water. And for those postal workers who did a wonderful thing, a word from Galatians, ‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest.’