Grace, Mercy, and Peace be unto you
from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
Amen
At that time the
disciples came to Jesus saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven? And calling to him a child, he put him in the
midst of them 3and said, Truly, I say to
you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter
the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the
kingdom of heaven.
In the name of Jesus dear friends in
Christ
This
statement from our Lord is truly remarkable.
Unless you turn and become like
children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Really the last three weeks we have looked at
statements from Jesus that has put the disciples in their place. These statements, which are fundamental to
the church and to our faith, build off each other.
First we had
Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ,
the Son of the living God. Which
Jesus followed with this first remarkable statement, you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates
of hell shall not prevail against it.
Through the faith worked by the Holy Spirit, Peter confessed Christ, and
the foundation of the Church of God was laid.
On this confession, by our confession of Christ, our faith is founded
and built.
Last week we
had two statements vital to our faith.
The first was the prediction of Jesus’ suffering, death, and
resurrection. From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to
Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes
and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
Then Jesus went into his discussion on carrying our crosses. If
anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and
follow me. For whoever saves his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Now we get a
discourse beginning with the disciples asking who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? This is a favorite topic of the
disciples. Perhaps spending all their
time together they began a little competition like sometimes brothers
might. They wanted to brag about
themselves, build their cases for superiority above everyone else. Now this account varies a little between the
Gospel. Mark and Luke both add the
detail that this was not a mere conversation between the disciples but they were
arguing between themselves about this.
It is very
likely that the disciples were looking at this in an earthly way. Maybe they were competing to see who would be
the greatest in earthly power if they were to rule earthly kingdoms, which is
what the arguments in Mark and Luke might be about. But in all three, Jesus uses the child to
explain the kingdom of heaven.
At that time the disciples came to
Jesus saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to him a child, he put him in the
midst of them and said, Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like
children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself
like this child is the greatest in heaven. What does
this mean? When we think of children is
humble the first thing that comes to mind?
Children are great. It is fun to
have been blessed with 4 great children.
To be the ones who provide for them, who take care of them, to be the
ones they depend on for everything, is a blessing.
But therein
lies the confusion. Not just to be
considered the greatest but to simply enter the gates of heaven we must become
like a child. But what can a child do
for themselves? They are so dependent, so
innocent, and so naive. We can’t unsee
things, undo things, we can’t just give everything up and let someone else take
care of us. Granted, there are ways it
would be okay to be a child again. I
tell my kids I wish someone would put me in a room for two hours every
afternoon for naptime.
How can Jesus
tell us that we need to be like them and view them as the greatest? Maybe an even better question is in line with
what Nicodemus asked Jesus. When Jesus
told him unless one is born again, he
cannot enter the kingdom of God. Nicodemus
says in reply, how can a man be born
when he is old? Can he enter a second
time into his mother’s womb and be born?
How can we become like a child again?
We cannot
know exactly how the disciples rated themselves as the greatest. Maybe they bragged about how Jesus sat by the
most or who he used as an example the most.
Peter no doubt always wanted to put his name at the top. But the disciples were anything but humble.
We today like
to look around and see who is the greatest.
We use a variety of ways to measure our social status and success. We look at who is the most successful in
their work, in their relationships, in their daily life. We use things such and money and possessions
to gauge these successes. We also, like
the disciples, are anything but humble.
We like to show off our successes and put ourselves up against our
friends and colleagues and brag a little bit.
But when we
do, we are about as far from being a little child then anything. We don’t want to be dependent. We want to show how well we can do on our
own. Innocence, hardly. We are completely sinful, sinful from
birth. And in all honesty we are nowhere
near naïve. We question, we are
skeptical, we want explanations to everything in order to believe.
As much as
we would like to make everything be about us, it is not. We are dependent. Like a child needs to have things done for
them, like they cannot feed or clothe themselves, so we cannot do anything
spiritually for ourselves. But this is
the greatest news ever. We can’t do
anything on our own and yet everything has been done for us. Just as a child is completely at the mercy of
their parents, so we are at the mercy of our heavenly father.
Our heavenly
father out of his divine mercy gives us all we need to support this daily
life. He has given us our body and soul, eyes, ears, and all our members and
still take care of them. Also clothing
and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals,
and all we have. He richly and daily
provides us with all we need to support this body and life. The best part, all this he does out of
fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us.
What amazing
grace. He clothes us in his
righteousness in baptism and feeds us here in the Lord’s Supper purely by the
merits of his own dear son, Jesus Christ our Lord who won forgiveness life and
salvation for us on the cross. Our Lord,
the king of Love, is the Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for us and
taken it back up so that we would be with him in paradise forever. He took on our sinful nature and in return
gives us his perfection. St. Paul said
it so beautifully when he wrote, while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for
the ungodly. For one will
scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would
dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been
justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were
reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are
reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through
our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
What a
humbling thing it is to come here to this building, hear the words of the
absolution spoken to you and receive the forgiveness of sins. What a humbling thing it is to be invited in
our sinful state to come and receive our savior’s precious body and blood. All this we in no way deserve. But thanks be to God for sending his son on
our behalf.
Like
children hang on every word their parents say, so we hold on and cherish all
that our Savior utters to us. Like my dear
children will tell anyone who listens about what they are doing or what they
get to do, so we share the great news of the gospel with those all around
us. May God bless us as we share this
great news, as we share and live out our faith in ways only a child can, with
full confidence not doubting for a second but trusting whole heartedly the
Gospel message.
Amen
+SDG+
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