{"id":3321,"date":"2020-09-02T10:16:46","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T08:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/static\/wp\/?p=3321"},"modified":"2020-09-02T11:25:02","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T09:25:02","slug":"whos-the-greatest-in-the-kingdom-of-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/whos-the-greatest-in-the-kingdom-of-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s the Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pentecost 14 – 9\/2\/2020 | A sermon <\/strong> on Matthew 18:1-20 | by Andrew Smith <\/strong>|<\/span><\/h4>\n

Matthew 18:1-20 (English Standard Version<\/em>, Crossway Bibles, 2016.\u00a0 Used with permission.)<\/p>\n

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, \u201cWho is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?\u201d 2\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>and said, \u201cTruly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.<\/p>\n

5\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>\u201cWhoever receives one such child in my name receives me, 6\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,1<\/sup><\/em> it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.<\/p>\n

7\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>\u201cWoe to the world for temptations to sin!2<\/sup><\/em> For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! 8\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell3<\/sup><\/em> of fire.<\/p>\n

10\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>\u201cSee that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.4<\/sup><\/em> 12\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? 13\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>So it is not the will of my5<\/sup><\/em> Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.<\/p>\n

15\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>\u201cIf your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed6<\/sup><\/em> in heaven. 19\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

The disciples had an important question for Jesus, \u201cWho\u2019s the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?\u201d\u00a0 Now I know what we do.\u00a0 We look at a passage like this completely isolated from its context and from our own perspective.\u00a0 But that\u2019s a little harder for us today.\u00a0 Two weeks ago, Peter confessed Jesus as Christ and blessed is he!\u00a0 Last week Jesus announced He would suffer and die in Jerusalem and Peter said, \u201cUh, Jesus, being Christ means you\u2019re in charge not suffering and dying.\u00a0 And then Jesus called Peter, \u201cSatan.\u201d\u00a0 That was all in chapter 16.\u00a0 What we didn\u2019t hear between last week and this week\u2019s reading is that Jesus was transfigured in glory in front of Peter, James, and John.\u00a0 Afterwards they call came down the mountain and met a group of the rest of the disciples who\u2019d been trying to cast a demon out of a boy and couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 They asked Jesus privately why they couldn\u2019t cast out the demon, because remember they had been able to do that sort of thing before and Jesus said, \u201cBecause of your small faith.\u201d\u00a0 Ouch.<\/p>\n

Obviously the disciples sensed a division.\u00a0 Peter was blessed before he was Satan.\u00a0 And the rest of the Twelve were not on the mountaintop with Jesus like Peter, James, and John had been.\u00a0 The Nine has so little faith they couldn\u2019t cast out a demon like they could before.\u00a0 And then Jesus goes on to make the second of His three predictions of His suffering and death in Jerusalem.\u00a0 And it looks like maybe there needs to be a plan for turnover if He\u2019s serious about what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n

Does it make sense to you that the disciples might ask a question like this?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s one of those questions that comes out of the blue but it could sound that way to us if we\u2019re reading these sections of the Gospel without any relation to one another.<\/p>\n

So the disciples ask Jesus, \u201cWho\u2019s the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?\u201d\u00a0 Now again, let\u2019s make sure we know what the kingdom of heaven is.\u00a0 The kingdom of heaven is not heaven in eternity.\u00a0 It\u2019s God\u2019s active ruling here on earth, already now.\u00a0 The kingdom of heaven is heaven come to earth already now in the coming of Jesus who brought with him healings and right teaching and the casting out demons and forgiveness and such.\u00a0 The kingdom of heaven is the perfection of the last day sneaking into the here and now, even with all the limits that will have until the Last Day.\u00a0 That kingdom has an address every Sunday as the Lord comes to His people again and again to forgive, renew, and strengthen so that they can delight in His will, walk in His way, to the glory of His holy name.\u00a0 That\u2019s the whole reason the church exits\u2014to be an embassy of the kingdom Jesus came to bring.\u00a0 Come back then to our text and the disciples are, in effect, asking who\u2019s the greatest in the church, who\u2019s the greatest among the believers?\u00a0 And Jesus does something that\u2019s actually rather shocking for the day.\u00a0 It\u2019s not shocking to us but it would not be to a first century listener of this story.<\/p>\n

Jesus takes a little child, a toddler basically, and stands him or her (the Greek doesn\u2019t tell us) in the midst of them and says, \u201cSee here.\u00a0 This little kid is a good example of who\u2019s the greatest in the kingdom I\u2019ve come to bring.\u201d\u00a0 Now I have a pretty good idea what you\u2019re thinking because you\u2019re reading this passage like a twentieth \/ twenty-first century reader.\u00a0 You think kids are precious.\u00a0 They are.\u00a0 There\u2019s no doubt.\u00a0 But that\u2019s what you\u2019ve been led to believe about children by our late modern culture in the West.\u00a0 What do we believe about children?\u00a0 \u201cWe believe that children are our future, Teach them well and let them lead the way.\u00a0 Show them all the beauty they possess inside\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 Well, it shouldn\u2019t really surprise you that neither the disciples nor the rest of the first century Greco-Roman world were influenced much by the theology of Whitney Houston.\u00a0 I know we look at children as not yet corrupted by the world and not as cynical as we can be sometimes.\u00a0 But when Jesus says \u201cBehold the toddler, the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,\u201d Jesus was not lifting up children as examples of innocence.\u00a0 He was showing children as an example of neediness.\u00a0 Neediness?\u00a0 You say?\u00a0 That\u2019s a good thing?\u00a0 Yes, says Jesus, it shows who\u2019s greatest in the kingdom of heaven.<\/p>\n

I want to reiterate this point.\u00a0 Jesus is not using this child as an example of innocence and trusting faith because that idea doesn\u2019t come about until the late 1800s in England and America.\u00a0 In the Greco-Roman world, childhood was something you grew out of and the sooner the better.\u00a0 Paul says, \u201cWhen I was a child, I spoke, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.\u00a0 When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.\u201d\u00a0 (1 Cor 13:11)\u00a0 And he meant that as a good thing, by the way.<\/p>\n

To make my point further, I want to remind you of the first thing Jesus taught in Matthew\u2019s Gospel.\u00a0 \u201cBlessed are the poor in spirit.\u00a0 For to them belongs the kingdom of heaven.\u201d\u00a0 (Matthew 5:3)\u00a0 Ah.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 That\u2019s Matthew 5.\u00a0 See all this fits together.\u00a0 Fast forward then to Matthew18 and Jesus is still talking about the kingdom of heaven and the disciples don\u2019t really understand it.\u00a0 They think Peter might be in charge after Jesus leaves, or maybe James or John.\u00a0 And Jesus is saying to them, in the kingdom of heaven it\u2019s not about who\u2019s in charge.\u00a0 It\u2019s about who is the neediest.<\/em>\u00a0 And if we stop for a minute, that should start to make sense.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s put this into a real world hypothetical discussion. Who has the greater need, all other things being equal, the person having their gallbladder removed or the person having open-heart surgery?\u00a0 On the face of it we\u2019d say, what?\u00a0 Right, it\u2019s the open-heart surgery patient.\u00a0 That was easy.\u00a0 We\u2019re having fun.\u00a0 Let\u2019s do one more.\u00a0 Who has the greater need, the person who is lying in a hospital bed for any reason or the person who wants to lodge a complaint about how the pastor has grown a beard?\u00a0 True story, in the church I grew up in I heard a family left the church because both pastors had beards.\u00a0 So we\u2019re really in a real world discussion of the hypothetical.\u00a0 But all other things being equal, who has the greater need, the hospital patient or the complainer?\u00a0 Sure, that\u2019s an easy one, too.\u00a0 But guess what?\u00a0 All other things are never equal.\u00a0 What we might not know is the person having open-heart surgery feels like they\u2019re right with God and the person having their gallbladder out doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 Could someone decide to leave a church because both pastors have beards?\u00a0 Hypothetically, yes.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve also learned over the years that the reasons why people say they leave churches are rarely, if ever, the real reasons why they\u2019ve left.\u00a0 It could be the complainer is not right with God and the hospital patient is.\u00a0 The Christian care and love we show to people in need is the art of knowing the difference.\u00a0 And it\u2019s an art to be sure, not a science.<\/p>\n

Our life together in the church is often messy.\u00a0 We are definitely never as calm, cool, and collected as we show ourselves to be on Facebook. The church is not a club or even a social group.\u00a0 We\u2019re a church.\u00a0 The local, physical manifestation of the body of Christ.\u00a0 The people who serve in our church need your prayers and your cooperation like you promised when they were installed as officers.\u00a0 Too often our rough edges clash with one another and we sin against one another.\u00a0 I\u2019ve done it.\u00a0 Chances are some of you have too.\u00a0 What we could all stand to do is bear with one another a little bit more instead of trying to hold a brother or sister to a standard we\u2019ve set for them, one, which, if we were honest, we couldn\u2019t meet ourselves.\u00a0 Forbearance is an old word.\u00a0 It desperately needs to make a comeback among us.<\/p>\n

And Jesus shows us exactly the content of this word when He bore His cross for us.\u00a0 He bears with us, as He carried our cross for us and pays the price for our not loving our neighbors as ourselves.\u00a0 That\u2019s the very different message of greatness in the kingdom of heaven.\u00a0 The greatest is the one who has the greatest need.\u00a0 First, we know we each have the greatest need.\u00a0 Compared to the perfect holiness God expects of us, we who know our own sins better than anyone else, we know the great depth of our need for the forgiveness Christ won for us.\u00a0 It\u2019s why we so desperately need to hear week after week Christ has died for all our sins.\u00a0 And if we would start at the point where we are forgiven, it should be clear to us how much our neighbor needs us to just cut him a break.\u00a0 If the cross is what Jesus bears for us, then we who have been born up bear up one another.<\/p>\n

So Jesus says the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the neediest one like this toddler here and to make sure the disciples understand, He goes on to explain to them the process by which the church should engage the neediest folks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16\u00a0But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17\u00a0If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.\u201d\u00a0 (Mt 18:15\u201317)<\/p>\n

Now this may be too much to tackle in one message but given what we\u2019ve already learned this morning, do you think Jesus is outlining the process by which we kick someone out of the church OR<\/em> is He outlining the lengths the church should go to try to win someone back into the fold?\u00a0 Yeah, probably not the first one, right?<\/p>\n

So then, the follow on passage to ours shows that my reading is right.\u00a0 You know the passage.\u00a0 Peter understands what Jesus is saying and so he asks Jesus, \u201cWell then, how much should I forgive my brother, seven times?\u201d\u00a0 And Jesus responds, \u201cUh, how about seventy times\u201d or maybe if you go with the textual variant, \u201cseventy-times seven,\u201d which would be what, 490, right?\u00a0 Again, Jesus isn\u2019t saying here, \u201cKeep count and if they reach 71 or even 491, that\u2019s it, cut \u2018em off.\u201d\u00a0 The greatest in the kingdom is the one that needs the most, in this case the most forgiveness.<\/p>\n

The greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the new member, (welcome!) the outsider, the first-time guest, the little child, the shut-in, the sick, the grieving.\u00a0 The greatest in the kingdom of heaven isn\u2019t the pastor or the charter member or the council member or the elder, or even you, except when it is.\u00a0 And when it is, we rejoice that the opposite day logic of the kingdom of heaven is in full effect for us.\u00a0 And we recognize we are not the be all and end all we seem to be to others and we are nothing but forgiven and given the grace to show others the kind of patient loving-kindness that comes not from ourselves but from Christ who bore all for us.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Andrew Smith<\/p>\n

Heavenly Host Lutheran Church<\/p>\n

Cookeville, Tennessee, USA<\/p>\n

E-Mail: smithad19+prediger@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pentecost 14 – 9\/2\/2020 | A sermon on Matthew 18:1-20 | by Andrew Smith | Matthew 18:1-20 (English Standard Version, Crossway Bibles, 2016.\u00a0 Used with permission.) At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, \u201cWho is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?\u201d 2\u00a0And calling to him a child, he put him in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,191,157,108,110,519,3,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-3321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-matthaeus","category-andrew-smith","category-beitragende","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-18-chapter-18-matthaeus","category-nt","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3321"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3326,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321\/revisions\/3326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3321"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=3321"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=3321"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=3321"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=3321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}