Sermons

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Surprising Greatness
June 15, 2003
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Sermon Series on Matthew
Matthew 18:1-5

We’ve been making our way through the gospel of Matthew since last December.

We’ve been doing that by looking at groups of three. Last week we finished looking at three questions that Jesus asked people. Now we’re going to finish by looking at three questions that people asked Jesus.

Who is the greatest? That’s what they asked Jesus.

It’s a good question. Every so often, one of the large magazines like Newsweek or Time takes a poll. Who are the greatest people in America? In fact, how would you answer that question? Think about it for a second. Who flashes into your mind as the greatest people? Most of the polls had fairly predictable answers…all famous people. You had heard of them all. Back in those long ago days ('60s) when I was a kid, the answers sounded like Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, John Rockefeller, Muhammed Ali. Ali, the great heavyweight boxer, wrote a book that left no doubt whatsoever: an autobiography called The Greatest: My Own Story!

Over the years, the names change…but you still recognize them all: Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Madonna, Bono, Colin Powell, Denzel Washington.

Who are these great people? They’re the famous. People of great wealth, sports figures, military leaders, political movers, intellectual giants, business people, entertainers. They all excel at something the world values. They are people of influence.

Who is the greatest in the kingdom? That’s what they asked Jesus.
“The kingdom” is the kingdom of heaven in Matthew, the “kingdom of God” in much of the other gospels. The kingdom is the time and place where God sets things right. It is the time and place that is marked by righteousness, justice, healing, freedom from sin, restored relationships. The kingdom is the place where the King breaks in to set things right. The kingdom broke through when Jesus came to restore the relationships of people with God…and will be finalized at the end of time. The kingdom is visible where God’s will is done.

Who is the greatest in the kingdom? I wonder what the disciples thought Jesus would say. Perhaps they expected to hear Jesus talk out of the Psalms, Judaism’s answers to this question: the righteous, the one immersed in scripture, the skillful teacher, those rich in good works. Perhaps they thought Jesus would be more specific and say Abraham, or Moses, or Elijah, or King David. Maybe they wondered if he would say John the Baptist. OR, if we read the parallel story in the gospel of Luke, the context is that the disciples were arguing over who was greatest…among their group! Maybe they wanted to hear their own name. Who is the greatest?

What they undoubtedly did NOT expect…was for Jesus to provide a totally surprising and living answer to his question.

On Wednesday nights, we host the community dinner here at Bethany with about 200 people. At the end of the dinner, we have a little Bible study, usually just 4-5 people, and I sometimes lead these. This last Wednesday was one of my turns, and I did something I’d just done one other time: We read the same passage that I knew I was preaching on for this Sunday. It was a nice night, and we sat out here in the courtyard, actually about 8-9 people. We were just finishing reading these five verses out loud when the bushes next to me started to rustle. And as we finished, the bush began to shake…and a little boy, about 5-6 years old, stepped out of the bush. He just appeared, right there at my elbow! As he walked off, I said to the group: “Where on earth did HE come from?”

But they all looked at me and said, “How on earth did you arrange THAT?!”

Jesus calls a child right into the middle of this conversation and says, “Listen up!” The New Revised Standard Version says, “Truly,” and the Greek word actually is “Amen!” which Jesus always uses for emphasis, for things that are serious and that his followers should take careful note of: Listen up!

“If you do not change and become like children…you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Now remember…Jesus is talking to the disciples. These are not the heathen, nor the backsliders, nor the atheists…these are the disciples, the ones who have followed him. To THEM Jesus says : You HAVE to change. Literally, it says, “You have to turn around.” The disciples were going down a road…that was going exactly the wrong direction. If what they were interested in was the Kingdom of God, the time and place where God’s will was done, where relationships were set right, where mercy and justice reigned…they were going the wrong way. Stop! The question to ask is NOT “Who is the greatest?” Turn around! Walk towards God, not away from Him.

I know I’ve told you about being in the Boundary Waters area in Northern Minnesota for a couple of men’s canoe trips. I’m sure I’ve mentioned how much fun it was to PORTAGE canoes. I always wondered what that word meant…it sounded kind of exotic. But all it meant was…when you came to the end of one lake…you had to take all the gear out of the canoe, then someone had to flip the canoe over and carry it upside down, with their head inside, and their shoulders supporting the whole weight of the canoe. Pretty exotic.

One time it was my turn to carry it, and we started up the path. I couldn’t see much of anything but the path at my feet, but the others in the group could. We walked up the path, knowing that we would put in again below a waterfall. We walked and walked. Worked hard lugging all that stuff. Told jokes, whistled, sang…all the time, the sound of the river got further away, and the path got smaller and smaller as it headed into the woods. But no one had seen the 3-foot sign that said, “Falls, turn left.”

So we kept walking until we were literally in the middle of a forest…me with the canoe on my head. We were walking down a path…but it was going EXACTLY the wrong way. And the only thing to do…was to stop, and turn around…and walk back towards the river, instead of away from it.

Jesus says, “Turn around. Come to your senses, stop going that direction that is further and further from the kingdom…turn around and come back.” To the DISCIPLES he says this, the believers, the world-changers, the ones who have already given up their lives to follow him, to THEM, Jesus says, “Turn around!”

Jesus says the question about “Who is the greatest?” is the exact wrong question to ask. He says it to the Christian community. “The main enemy of the Christian community,” Dale Bruner says, “is the desire to be prominent.” If you don’t change and become like…this unassuming child in front of you…Jesus says, not only will you not be great in the kingdom. You won’t even be in it!

Now Jesus has the disciples’ attention. They look at the child in front of them with new eyes. SHE is the greatest? “You must become humble like this child.” But she is so little! Exactly. That’s what “humility” means. Low, or little. Pride, or inappropriate self-love is the opposite of humility…but humility is not self-hate. It’s a positive. Humility is the ability to love others. It’s the ability to love to the extent that you would limit or redirect yourself for the sake of others. To be humble is not to belittle yourself…it is to choose to decrease…so that someone else might increase.

And you know what? So much of the time…lives of humility…are not famous. They are not all over the news. Who is the greatest? That’s what they asked Jesus.

I suspect Jesus would point at the foster parent who lives on your block, who has given their life to make a way for a child who had no way. They’ll never be in the news, they’ll never appear in the poll. But they might be working in the kingdom. Who is the greatest? It’s not the one looking for the way to be great, or cultivating an image, or looking for recognition. Have you ever been with someone who absolutely cannot take their eyes off themselves? I had coffee a couple weeks ago with someone who never asked me ONE question about myself in a solid hour. Actually, they did ask one…but they answered it for me! What’s a humble person look like? It might be the teacher at the local school, the one who sees the potential in a child, the one who models a healthy private life, the one who gets kids to think about what’s right and wrong. They could make more money elsewhere, they could pursue some more prestigious line of work. They could be GREATER somewhere else. But Jesus isn’t looking for great people. He’s looking for little ones…people willing to be little.

“Become like this child,” Jesus says. We don’t know who the child standing in their midst was. There’s a couple of traditions in church history, one that says it was Peter’s son…one that says the child grew up to be Ignatius of Antioch, an early martyr of the church. But we don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. But just by virtue of being a child, a couple of things were obvious.

One is that the child was small, insignificant. In that day and culture, children were powerless, and more to be seen than heard from. Children were at the bottom of the totem pole as human beings. SO, greatness isn’t about stature or prestige. The child was dependent. As in any culture, a child was totally dependent on its parent for its very survival. When it ran into something it couldn’t do…it turned and said, “What do I do? Will you do it with me?” [I bet God would LOVE it if we would ask that question more often]. SO, greatness isn’t about independence and autonomy. The child instinctively trusted its parent. It knows nothing else than that it will be taken care of.

If we are going to turn around, and come into the kingdom as children, in humility…how do we do this? It’s a difficult thing. The world doesn’t encourage it. I used to interview people to come to work for our company. We basically said in those interviews: “Tell us how great you are, and how you’ll change the whole company in a week!” And it’s not just businesses. Ever interview with a church? You ask the committee, “What do you want in a pastor?” and they say “Someone with humility.” Then they say, “Tell us how great you are, and how you’ll change the whole church in a week!”

Do you just conjure humility up? Do you put yourself down all the time? How can someone authentically be concerned about putting other people forward, about living from the heart instead of the ego, about serving and living FOR other people…even before ourselves? In other words, What enables someone to live out of humility? There may be lots of answers, but the one I think of is this: I believe they need to know they are loved. If someone knows at the core of their being that they are loved…they can authentically give themselves away for the sake of others.

We need to know we are loved. You parents read and hear a lot about building your children’s self-esteem these days. It seems to me that with young children, we do that not so much by telling them how great they are at something, but by convincing them that they are loved, absolutely and positively loved with a crazy-sold-out-grace-filled-discipline-undergirded love that does not waver. If they have that…they have an inner reservoir that emboldens them to try things, to take risks, to learn. And when things seem a little shaky, they need to be reminded that they are loved. [Those of you who are dads might think about this on Father’s Day…do your kids know you love them?]

It’s not just kids, but adults. We need to know we are loved. As a married couple, Anne and I have a little dance that we do. We’ve honed it over the years of our marriage. If I have a hard day, I might come home and say, “Honey, do you love me?” Anne will say, “Sure I love you.”

And if I’ve had a really hard day, I’ll say, “No, I mean do you really LOVE me?” And sometimes Anne stops and looks at me and says, “Do you meant that? Are you really wondering?”

And my mind will begin to go back over those years of marriage…21, in fact, this week…and I think about the places we’ve lived, the kids we’ve raised, the great times we’ve had together, the many times we’ve had to ask and extend forgiveness to each other, what a great friend she is to me…and I’ll say “No…I’m not actually wondering. I just had to be reminded.” You see, if I know Anne loves me, I can put up with an awful lot of other stuff.

We need to know we are loved. It’s the same way with God, I believe. When we come into contact with the fact that we are loved with a nothing-held-back-permanent-self-sacrificing-love by the God of the universe…when we can be reminded of that, and rest in it…then we just might be able to turn around from whatever self-protecting path we have been on…and walk towards other people. We might be able to be small, and dependent and trusting.

And every time we say, “God, do you really love me?” we are pointed back to the cross again, the cross that says YES. In fact, this humility word comes up again in Philippians, where it says that Jesus emptied himself…of all the things that would bring power and influence…and humbled himself as an obedient servant…even unto death.

But do you know what? This is such a totally different thing than you and I have been raised on. It is so totally different than the world around us values.

“Who is the greatest?”

“The greatest among you will be your servant,” Jesus will say just a couple of chapters later. And Jesus says it not to the world…but to the church…the disciples. You and me.

Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? That’s what they asked Jesus.

“Turn around,” Jesus says. “You’re not even asking the right question.”