Fr Paul reads from the Gospel of Luke (9: 46-50) in which Jesus, settles an argument between his disciples, saying ‘For the one who is least among you, that is the one who is the great.”Fr Paul says, there are two little incidents in today’s Gospel that can be regarded as examples of how self-importance can get in the way of the mission of the disciples which is a chief pre-occupation in this part of the Luke’s Gospel. The first happens and it is easy to imagine how embarrassed the disciples must have been, grown men squabbling about their relative self-importance when Jesus grabs a child and puts that child before them and says that this child is the standard of importance. The next incident must have wiped out the last remnants of the disciples’ self-importance. Each of them had been called by Jesus to be his disciples, and then Twelve of them had been especially selected. One of them, John, who we hear ask the question has been one of the three picked out to witness the Transfiguration and he asks if some anonymous stranger can be allowed to do the work of the Kingdom in the name and power of Jesus? With his usual forthright directness, the Jesus tells them to welcome the power of God wherever it is to be found.Fr Paul says, today’s Gospel asks us, and challenges us, to examine our lives in the area of self-importance – ‘Do I recognise the values of others or is my self-importance more important than anything else?’