Years ago we were all fascinated by the emergence of personality types.

In this case, the alphabet letters used aren’t Meyer’s Brigg’s types, but these:

Type A folks and Type B folks.

Those who are type A are the high strung driving achievers. They are forthright and very comfortable with being assertive and leading.

Those who are type B are thought to be mild-mannered, quiet, and inward focused. They are more apt to be followers.

Type A personalities were thought to be destined for early deaths because of the stress levels in their lives. They are prone to expressing it, since they are more tightly wound and expressive anyway. So physiologists and psychologists formulated the notion that type A’s would keel over quicker than type B personalities.

But a psycholigist by the name of Larry Scherwitz conducted a study of type A people and type B people to see what the indicators were for high levels of stress in their lives and the effect of that stress on physical well-being.

And they found out that it wasn’t personality type at all that was the stressor. It wasn’t how wired or out there people were with their personalities.

What was the indicator in those who exhibited high levels of stress in their lives was this -

The amount of self reference in their speech. The number of times they used the words “Me, me, mine, my, I and so on.

The more the word “mine” was in their speech, the more they were apt to keel over because their bodies just couldn’t deal with the stress of that much self-absorption.

What Scherwitz and his partners found is the more self-absorbed we are, the more stressed we are. And the more our focus is OUT of ourselves and into the well-being and awareness of others, the less stressed we are. (found in Infinite Life, Robert Thurman, pg. 60)

Wow! Tell me Jesus didn’t know what he was doing when he sought to teach his disciples the lessons he learned from his own Jewish roots:

All that we have has been given us by God. What do we really own? And how much of our time do we spend obsessing about my my me me mine as the Beatle’s song goes? All that absorption into ourselves is literally killing us.

And we know it is harming this planet and world we share.

Is there a one of us who has not been holding our breath these past weeks as Muslim and Catholic and all people of faith have thrown insults across the globe? We are living in a tinder box of such clutched fear that it seems everyone is waiting for the match to alight to spark violence and chaos.

What have we to turn to as a people of faith as we live in a culture which glories “mine” and in a faith tradition that often does the same?

We turn to scripture and the teachings of Jesus and do our best to live them in a grounded and honest way.

Hear the words of James 4: 1-12 from The Message:

Is there a one of us who doesn’t know what it feels like to want what we don’t have? Sometimes that wanting can make us near miserable with the pain of it.

There are different kinds of aches in this world.

The ache for healing that leads us to long for peace and the ending of violence. Those longings are not in themselves wrong.

The ache for enough to eat and a sense of safety for our beloveds. Those longings are not in themselves wrong.

It’s the turning in that those longings can sometimes kick off. The self absorption. The inability to see any longer the ways our misdirected longings have contorted our lives.

In the reading this morning from the book of Mark, Jesus challenges his disciples. He challenges them because he becomes aware that they are so misguided about what they desire. They are prone to self-absorption.

Imagine. He has just told them, again, that he is going to be killed at the hands of the authorities. He will be betrayed.

This he tells them, this beloved teacher and healer and lover of the disciples.

And what do they do? They commence to squabbling over who is the greatest among them.

They take their anxieties over what they have heard - the impending death of their beloved teacher - and distract themselves with a fight they know well - a variation on the “mom likes me best” theme we all know the rules of.

No one wins when we have those fights. But we have the fun of a wrangle to distract us from the pain of life.

Tell me that isn’t part of what is going on in the world around us.

We chest thump and wrangle over who is greatest; Pope or Ayatollah, American or Iraqi. And while we are doing that self absorbed wrangling, children are being distinctly unwelcome in a world where they are not safe from bombs or starvation.

Children Jesus has called us to be mindful of and tend with exquisite hospitality. All of the innocent, the vulnerable, the lowly.

While we are absorbed in singing “I, I, me, me, mine” , as nation or as people, we are not welcoming the Christ in our brothers, we are not making room for the holy.

So what’s to be done?

We have work to do. The hardest work there is - paying enough attention to ourselves that we are honest, and getting outside of ourselves enough that we are the hands and feet of Christ in this world.