{"id":550,"date":"2009-10-18T05:33:05","date_gmt":"2009-10-17T19:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/sdo\/index.php\/2009\/10\/18\/greatness-isnt-always-what-it-seems\/"},"modified":"2009-10-18T05:33:05","modified_gmt":"2009-10-17T19:33:05","slug":"greatness-isnt-always-what-it-seems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/2009\/10\/18\/greatness-isnt-always-what-it-seems\/","title":{"rendered":"Greatness isn&#8217;t always what it seems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps James and John would have breathed a sigh of relief in hindsight after Jesus rejected their lobbying to be in places of greatness with him. Their desire to be at Jesus&#8217; right and left at the time of greatness would have had them hanging like common criminals on crosses either side of Jesus. Such is the upside-down nature of the kingdom of God. Such is Jesus&#8217; message that the first shall be last, and the last first.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus invites us to consider a different path &#8211; one that cares for others and seeks to build community. Rather than &#8216;lord it over&#8217; others, he invites us to become the servant of others in the process of building the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/sdo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/091018sm.pdf\" title=\"Sermon Sunday October 18th, 2008\">Sermon Sunday October 18th, 2008<\/a> (pdf)<br \/>\nSt. David&#8217;s Uniting Church, Oakleigh<br \/>\nRev. Arnie Wierenga<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps James and John would have breathed a sigh of relief in hindsight after Jesus rejected their lobbying to be in places of greatness with him. Their desire to be at Jesus&#8217; right and left at the time of greatness would have had them hanging like common criminals on crosses either side of Jesus. Such [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":307,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oakleigh.unitingchurch.org.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}