Matthew 18:1-20
Grace peace and mercy from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
The gospel reading for today is a bit lengthy and has several important teaching points, but don’t panic I’m not going to attempt talk about them all. Several do build on others and we will be tying them together if only briefly.
To really understand the gospel reading for today we need to talk a little about the culture of Palestine under Roman rule. The Romans were self-aggrandizing people. The mantra of those with any hope of gaining power was truly me first. The culture was survival of the fittest, cruel and cutthroat in everyway. Yes, even worse than your most horrific employment experience.
The sanctity of life wasn’t even a thought. If someone opposed you it wasn’t out of the question to dispose of them. Children were of little value, many were turned out on the streets to fend for themselves. Children were helpless and weak they just didn’t fit into the dog eat dog culture of the Romans.
Imagine if you can how counter culture Jesus’ words are for the disciples. Even the teachers of the law bought in to this brutal culture, despite the evidence of care for the household members by the master in the Old Testament.
It’s no wonder that we find the disciples jockeying for position in an imagined kingdom hierarchy. They probably would have had a look of astonishment on their faces at being told they need to become like a child to be the greatest in the kingdom. Be helpless and weak to be great what nonsense is this they must have thought.
If you had listened to John McCain’s acceptance speech Thursday night he shared a turning point in his life like Jesus described to the disciples. Whether you are for or against him doesn’t matter. He shared his moment of transformation from a hotshot self-centered fighter jock to a man that truly cared about his country and fellow pilots. That moment came in a tiny cell in Hanoi after a particularly cruel beating by his captors. He had reached that point where he had nothing; he was powerless, helpless like a child.
True transformation comes when we are reduced to nothing, that’s when God goes to work like skilled potter sculpting clay. He takes a formless blob of clay and creates a useful piece of pottery, a true servant to work in His kingdom.
As we read we discover Jesus begins to refer to children as little ones. Jesus builds the case of a welcoming heart to little ones welcomes Him. Jesus also warns that whoever tempts the little ones to sin is in a worse way than the one that falls to the temptation. Perhaps He had a dual meaning here; little ones as in children and as God’s children.
As earlier in this reading Jesus takes us on another parallel path. The tempter is symbolized as a part of the body causing sin. This is a similar analogy as Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 12 to describe the body of believers. Jesus is not saying literally cut off your hand or gouge out your eye. What He is saying is to remove those in the fellowship that are a stumbling block. The kingdom can’t grow if there are distractions. A church can’t grow if there are internal conflicts and distractions that undermine the purpose of the church. I think everyone of us has witnessed this kind of turmoil and perhaps wittingly or unwittingly was a stumbling block to the greater good of the kingdom.
Ultimately Jesus is leading us to the true purpose of His mission, forgiveness. The way Jesus uses the phrase little ones in the dialog could very well be taken to mean people looked down upon. Not in the sense of helpless, but in the sense of bigoted and small-minded. Perhaps He was targeting the self-centered people who cause harm, the people focused on earthly things rather than heavenly things. If that is the case then we are supposed to be the bigger person, the one that can forgive the misstep of the other. The bigger person does focus on a heavenly view and looks beyond the failings of this world.
What is forgiveness anyway? I’m going to borrow heavily from a paper Pastor Phil Brandt shares with seminary students because he makes some very good points.
Forgiveness is not weakness or being tough – Forgiveness starts with the reality that this hurts and the offending party needs to know that.
Forgiveness means sharing the truth about the situation not dismissing it or carrying a chip on our shoulder. Sharing the truth about a hurt is probably the toughest thing for most of us to do.
Forgiveness is not about understanding the motives or the reasons for hurtful behavior. Forgiveness does not hinge on my understanding of what my neighbor did. A wise man once told me, “you can’t get inside other people’s heads so don’t even try.”
Forgiveness starts with saying “Jesus died for this sin.” That is always true no matter how I may still feel about it. Unfortunately, most of us forget to look to Jesus first when we are hurt.
Forgiveness is not forgetting about something – often it means we remember it “red” covered in the blood of Christ. The bible never exhorts us to forget sins, it says that God does that, but it never asks us to do that. “Forgive and forget” is a quote from Shakespeare, not God. Just because I forgive a thief does not mean I hire him to be my accountant.
Forgiveness does change the way I see people – no matter what they have done.
Forgiveness does obligate me to remember their past sin as forgiven. If I cast it back at them at a later date, I have the problem, they don’t.
Forgiveness does run a risk that the other person will do it again. Attempts to set up fail safe guarantees will always subvert forgiveness itself. We don’t have to be stupid and set our self up to be hurt again. We can’t stop someone from hurting us.
As Jesus came to renew creation, setting things right with God with His blood, He exhorts us to follow. Forgiveness was a gift to us from a God that cares and loves His little ones. That gift is a foundation for the kingdom and it is a foundation of every congregation.
Every congregation finds a transforming moment when they understand the true meaning of forgiveness. The transformation from inward to joy filled outward focus. Calvary along with every congregation in the kingdom needs to evaluate where they stand and where they need to be.
In the name of our Risen Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
