Some newspapers carry a little cartoon called ZIGGY. Ziggy is one of those for whom life never seems to work out right. For instance in one cartoon, Ziggy sits in his chair and contemplates the week that has just ended. "Sheesh! What a week!!" he says.
"MONDAY morning, my horoscope in the newspaper told me to go back to bed!
"TUESDAY, opportunity knocked while I was out back taking out the garbage.
On WEDNESDAY, my new bedroom set was diagnosed with Dutch-elm disease!
"THURSDAY, my phone rang three times with obscene bird calls for my parrot!
And FRIDAY! I had to pay the library an overdue fine for a book called, "How to Improve Your Memory!"
"And then on SATURDAY, something really exciting happened!! The doorbell rang and right there on my front porch was Ed McMahon with a giant million dollar check. Naturally, he was asking for directions to my NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE!"
You've known people like Ziggy, haven't you? Good people, nice people, people you like to have as best friends, next door neighbors, buddies on the job. They're good hearted folk but they never quite get their lives together. They are always on the outside looking in ” watching life go by but never having any aspiration to lead the parade.
I thought about Ziggy as I wrestled with the question suggested by today's lesson from the Gospel, "Is it wrong to be ambitious?"
Certainly the mother of James and John didn't think it was wrong to be ambitious. She wanted her boys to sit on Jesus' right hand and his left when he came into his kingdom. We have to wonder with a chuckle if she didn't fit the stereotype of the good Jewish mother wanting her sons to be doctors or lawyers. It's no secret. One of the reasons many of our Jewish friends do so well in life is high parental expectations. Many of them DO become doctors and lawyers and scientists and writers, etc., fulfilling the dreams their parents have for them. I heard about one young Jewish fellow who came to his mother and told her he wanted to be a rabbi. "What kind of job is that," she asked, "for a good Jewish boy?"
The mother of James and John had great dreams for her sons. Is there anything wrong with that? Maybe, maybe not.
LET'S BEGIN BY ADMITTING THAT MOST PEOPLE AT SOME TIME IN THEIR LIVES HAVE DREAMS OF GREATNESS. Don't we? I hope we do. Particularly when we are young. It would be sad to think that any young person would grow up with so little self-esteem that he or she never dreamed of doing anything great in life. It's natural for us to want to lead the pack, to be the best, to be the drum major in life's parade.
In the February 1995 issue of CAMPUS LIFE Wil B. Strange tells about a young man with more than his share of ambition. No joke, says Strange. He calls him the Conehead sumo wrestler.
The guy's name is Koji Harada, a Japanese teenager who literally went to great lengths to fulfill his greatest ambition: He wanted to be a sumo wrestler. But Koji had a problem. He was only 5 feet 2 inches tall. And according to the Japan Sumo Association, you've got to be 5'-8" to wrestle.
No problem, said Koji, who marched into a plastic surgeon's office and made his simple request: Doc, make me taller. Six inches taller. The good doctor obliged by injecting silicone implants into Koji's scalp, adding half a foot to the top of his head. . . The result? Conehead Koji now measures up, and now he's wrestling with the big boys.
Koji's not the first aspiring sumo wrestler to try to get ahead according to this report. Others before him have tried to meet the height requirement by using stretching machines. Some have even resorted to whacking themselves on the noggin with a club, resulting in monster goose eggs ” just for sake of an extra centimeter or two. But the Sumo Association had seen enough. It recently banned silicone implants for "health reasons." Said one expert. "The association was afraid that other people would get other kinds of weird ideas for ways to make yourself taller."
Interesting. But not too unusual, I guess. People have dreams. Some people will go to great lengths ” no pun intended ” to see those dreams realized. It is not unusual for people to be ambitious. Indeed, you could make a good case that God placed a dose of ambition into our souls so that we would seek to do great things with our life. That brings us to something else we need to note: NOTHING GETS
DONE IN THIS WORLD WITHOUT SOME AMBITIOUS PERSON BEHIND IT.
Let's face it, Ziggy's always going to be a nice fellow, and we are glad for the Ziggys of this world, but Ziggy will never make a great and lasting contribution to humankind. As Colin Powell said in bowing out of the presidential race last Fall, you've got to have "fire in the belly." And it's true. In a sense Mother Teresa is ambitious. So was Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Nobody accomplishes very much in this world nor contributes very much to the world without a dose of ambition. In fact, given enough ambition, even the least likely of people can make a difference in the world.
In 1858, a small, frail lad was born to a rich family in New York. Along with feeble eyesight, he suffered from asthma so bad that he sometimes couldn't blow out the bedside candle. Nevertheless, he became one of the most powerful men on earth.
At eleven or twelve years old, Theodore Roosevelt's father told him that building a good mind alone would not ensure success. He encouraged him to build himself a powerful new body to match his good mind. Theodore spent thousands of hours chinning himself, lifting weights, and rattling a punching bag. With that kind of determination and drive it's little wonder he rose like a rocket in the world of politics: Elected to the New York Legislature at twenty-three; candidate for mayor at twenty-eight; U.S. Civil Service Commissioner under two presidents; president of the police commission of New York; national hero as leader of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War at forty; then, in just three busy years, governor of New York, vice-president, and president. In 1905 Teddy Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in helping to end the Russo-Japanese War. Roosevelt, by the way, was five feet nine inches tall. (1) He was not a big man physically. But he did prove once again the truth of the maxim that it's not the size of the dog in the fight that makes a difference but the size of the fight in the dog.
Would Michelangelo have made such a contribution as he did to the art world if he had not prayed: "Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish"? Of course not. Michelangelo was ambitious. So was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln often said to himself as a boy studying by the pine log fire at night: "I will study and get ready and perhaps my chance will come." And, indeed, it did come.
George Washington Carver, born to an African-American slave mother, never knew his father. But he wanted to contribute worthily to life, and he did! Carver became one of the great scientists in American history.
Is it wrong to be ambitious? Of course not. God placed ambition in our bones to help us achieve something with our lives. Nothing great is ever accomplished without somebody ambitious behind it.
HOWEVER WE NEED TO ADD THIS, NOTHING IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN AMBITION WITHOUT ETHICS. Adolph Hitler was ambitious! Joseph Stalin was ambitious! Al Capone was ambitious! Ambitious without ethics is dangerous. We see the results of such ambition often in the realm of politics.
Although he has turned his life around and now is a bold witness for Jesus Christ, few will forget the quote attributed to Charles Colson when he was the political advisor for Richard Nixon: "I would step on my mother in order to see the president re-elected." And some people say Chuck Colson meant it.
Another aspiring politician has been heard to say, "No matter how noble your goals, you can do nothing if you don't get elected. I plan to do anything, and I DO MEAN ANYTHING, to be elected." (2) There are many honest and dedicated people serving in political life but we see many others who literally would do anything to be elected or re-elected.
Just within the last couple of decades we have seen literally hundreds of people in high places in our government who have abused their positions of power. We're not talking about obvious examples like President Nixon and Senator Packwood and House Speaker Wright.
We've had a Chief of the FAA who resigned when grand juries probed his earlier business dealings; a Food and Drug Administration commissioner who resigned while under investigation for overlapping reimbursements for travel;a National Security Adviser who resigned amid controversy over a $1,000 "honorarium," and an EPA assistant administrator who was convicted of perjury concerning preferential treatment for a former employer, to cite but a few. (3)
Neither party has a lock on virtue. Sometimes we wonder if either party has a clue concerning virtue! Ambition without ethics is dangerous. Of course, we contribute to the problem when we do not demand the highest standards of conduct from our elected officials. But the danger is there for every ambitious person. What price success? At the expense of your values? At the expense of your family? At the expense of your self respect?
I like something that singer Pearl Bailey once said, "Children," she said, "you must remember something. A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. Having been alive, it won't be so hard in the end to lie down and rest." (4)
Pearl Bailey was right. We need to marry ambition and love. And this brings us to Jesus' word to us for today: IT'S ALL RIGHT TO BE AMBITIOUS IF YOU'RE AMBITIOUS FOR THE RIGHT THINGS. Jesus didn't scold his disciples for being ambitious. He knew that the same drive and determination that produces success in the world also produces gain for the Kingdom. The question is how is our ambition directed? Toward gaining more goods? More goods will never satisfy the real hunger in our lives. Toward having the envy of our colleagues? Envy is never as satisfying as having the respect of our colleagues. How is your ambition directed? The most satisfying ambition in life, Jesus tells us, is to live a life of service.
Bruce Thielemann, former pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, told of a conversation he had once with an active layperson. "You preachers talk a lot about giving," said the layperson, "but when you get right down to it, it all comes down to basin theology."
Thielemann asked, "Basin theology? What's that?"
The layperson replied, "Remember what Pilate did when he had the chance to acquit Jesus? He called for a basin and washed his hands of the whole thing. But Jesus, the night before his death, called for a basin and proceeded to humbly wash the feet of the disciples. It all comes down to basin theology. Which one will you use?" (5)
Pilate was an ambitious man. He was not willing to sacrifice his possessions and his position when he was confronted with the opportunity to choose between what was right and what was expedient. He called for the basin to wash his hands.
Jesus was also an ambitious man. His ambition was the grandest ambition of all ” to usher in the rule of God in every heart. He also called for a basin that he might wash his disciples' feet.
My guess is that most of us are not like Pilate or like Jesus. We are more like Ziggy. The danger is not that we will be too ambitious but that we will never be ambitious for the right things. We could use a healthy dose of ambition ” an ambition like Jesus' ambition ” an ambition for the Kingdom of God. It's not bad to be ambitious ” as long as we are ambitious for the right things.
1. Geoffrey C. Ward, SUCCESS magazine (April 1985), pp. 55-56. Cited in Ted Engstrom, HIGH PERFORMANCE, (San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, 1988).
2. Joe G. Emerson, I WANTED THE ELEVATOR, BUT I GOT THE SHAFT, (Nashville: Dimensions for Living, 1993).
3. TIME (May 25, 1987), p. 18.
4. "Great Motivators," edited by Juanita Ruiz, PERSONAL SELLING POWER, March 1995, p. 69.
5. "Distant Follower," by C. Thomas Hilton, THE CLERGY JOURNAL, April 1995, p. 17.