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And Jesus took a little child and put him in the midst of them. And taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”
You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, amen.
We’re moving from the first time that Jesus told His disciples that he had to die to the second time that Jesus told His disciples that He had to die, and they still don’t get it. They’ve come down off the Mount of Transfiguration, and now Jesus is taking His disciples and passing through Galilee, and they’re taking all of the backroads to avoid the crowds. In fact, Jesus on purpose is trying to avoid running into anybody who might recognize Him because He needs time alone with His disciples.
Luke, really, we had it in the Gospel. Luke alone gives this to us. It’s really quite phenomenal that Jesus is trying to have just some time with His disciples because they need to know this most of all: that Jesus came to die. He came to suffer. He came to give His life as a sacrifice for our sins. That’s His purpose. That’s why He’s here. And they need to understand that. They need to understand that the Christ did not come to overthrow the government, that Christ did not come to overthrow the kingdoms of this world and set up His throne like King David in Jerusalem, but rather He came to suffer and die.
He did not, this is what it says in verse 30 of our text, He passed through Galilee, He did not want anybody to know because He was teaching His disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him. And after He is killed, after three days He’ll rise.” But the disciples—and just in case we might miss it, Mark tells us—the disciples didn’t get it. They did not understand the saying and they were afraid to ask Him about it. Instead, they decided that they would talk about who’s the greatest.
Now there’s something here, and I really want to dig into this. The disciples, Jesus reveals to them this greatest mystery, the greatest truth that could possibly be known. Jesus has taken them aside so that He could specifically teach this truth to these men, so that they could be preachers of the Gospel, so that they could preach the cross of Jesus, so that they could travel around the world knowing nothing but Christ and Him crucified. He has especially designated this time so that they would learn this most fundamental life-giving truth, and they—not only do they not get it, but they have something else they want to talk about? Who’s the greatest?
Now, they don’t want Jesus to know that’s what they’re talking about. You could see them kind of holding back. Jesus is walking forward, and He’s, I imagine, lamenting the fact that they’re not listening to what He’s saying, but they’re instead in the back having an argument. Peter says, “Well, you know, I’m the one who said you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And they say, “Yeah, you’re also the one that said, ‘Far be it from you,’ and he called you the devil.” Andrew says, “You wouldn’t even know about Jesus if I wouldn’t have brought Him to you.” And John—and John and James says to Andrew, “Well, you wouldn’t even have known about Jesus if we wouldn’t have brought you to John the Baptist.” And they say, “Well, we were there when they turned the water into wine.” And Judah says, “Well, he’s the one that they entrusted me with the money; after all, I must be the most important.”
And they’re sitting there arguing amongst themselves. Matthew says, “I’m the only one that’s a tax collector. I’m basically the only one that knows math out of all of us.” Surely I’m the most, you know, whatever. I mean, they’re having this conversation: Who’s the greatest? And we want to laugh at them. I mean Jesus wants to rebuke them. In fact, it reminds me of when Jesus came to Adam and Eve in the garden and He says, “Where are you?” Jesus knows. “Where are you?” And they have to fess up.
So they get down to Capernaum. They probably go into the house of Peter. We know that that was probably their home base in Capernaum. They go into the house of Peter, and Jesus says to them, almost innocently, “What were you guys talking about back there?” And they don’t want to say. They’re embarrassed. “Who’s the greatest?” But Jesus knows.
Now, now, before we take up stones to throw at the disciples, we should check ourselves a little bit, because this is also our temptation. You say, “Now Pastor, what do you mean? When do we ever sit around and decide who’s the greatest?” Do you know that once every four years, our entire nation sits around and says, “Who’s the greatest?” And we elect a president. Every two years, we say, “Who’s the greatest around here?” And we elect a congressman or whatever. We do it in the church, you know? Who’s going to be the one who’s in charge?
We do it when we sit down to watch football on Saturday. Who’s the greatest? This is just—the constant conversation that happens amongst humanity. It’s the basic political conversation: Who’s going to be in charge? And we’re having it all the time.
Now here’s the problem. Here’s the problem. Is that while that conversation is necessary for some things, it is not the only conversation. And Jesus is inviting us to think about things that are higher, that are more important, that are better. But just like the disciples, our minds always fall back on this sort of default argument: Who’s the greatest?
And one of the dangers that we face—I’ve been thinking about this boy pretty, for a couple of weeks now, I think this is a danger that I face, I think it’s a danger that you face, I think it’s a danger that our culture faces, I think it’s a danger that people outside the church don’t even know is dangerous—and it is this: that every conversation, every thought, everything becomes political.
Our concern becomes political. Our worry becomes political. Our media becomes political. Our reading becomes political. And what starts to happen is our hope and our despair become political. Everything gets absorbed into the political conversation. I noticed it like this. I was—someone showed me a video of a—it was a—it was a person reacting to the new abortion restrictions in Texas, and the person was reacting in a very sort of condescending and mocking way about, “Oh, now that the pro-lifers have made it illegal, now, now for sure you will start to build the social safety net that is necessary to support all people in all these cases, and you’ll make Medicare available to all and healthcare available to all and you’ll expand security.”
And aside from all the other things about the argument, the thing that I noticed was that it was the recognition or the thought behind it, the thing that was underneath was the idea that if there was a problem, then it must be fixed by the government; the only solution was a political solution. The only hope was a political hope.
And I started reflecting on this. Why isn’t that—why is it that the problems that we face cannot be solved by other institutions that exist, by the church, by the family? But the trouble is this—this sort of baseline move of our mind, just like the disciples who were on the way to Capernaum, walking through Galilee—we just sort of reset to the political conversation.
Now this is not to say that there’s not a role and an important role of the state in all of these things, but we remember that there is also the family and there is also the church, which are not accidental institutions but are established by the Lord for giving gifts. But there’s even a more fundamental problem, and it is the assumption that every problem can be fixed. If every problem is a political problem and every problem can be fixed, then why did Jesus even have to die?
I was digging into this, and I found this quote. It’s a kind of a longer quote. This is from Dr. Gene Edward Veith who is—he pulls a quote from Francis Ferre’s Interpreting the French Revolution. Ha! Are you ready for this? I’m going to check in your faces to see if you’re ready for this. I think you’ll like it.
He says, “Here I’m using the term ideology to designate two sets of belief that to my mind constitute the very bedrock of revolutionary consciousness. The first is that all personal problems and all moral or intellectual matters have become political, that there is no human misfortune not amenable to political solution. The second is that since everything can be known and changed, there is a perfect fit between action, knowledge, and morality. That is why the revolutionary militants identified their private lives with their public ones and with the defense of their ideas. It was a formal logic which reproduced the psychological commitment that springs from religious beliefs.
The political commitment becomes a religious fervor.” He continues, “When politics becomes the realm of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, and when it is politics that separates the good from the wicked, we find ourselves in a historical universe whose dynamic is entirely new. In such a world, human action no longer encounters obstacles or limits, only adversities and preferably traitors.”
And then Vieth comments, “So politics, not science as some have thought, takes the place of religion, becoming the arbiter of morality, the source of personal meaning, the point of integration of every other facet of life. While religion has sometimes resulted in violent conflict, it is also a source of benevolence and unity, but politics is intrinsically a matter of conflict, having to do with contending forces competing for power. Politics is humanistic, affirms that all problems can be solved and that there are no limits to what human beings can achieve, only adversaries who can be liquidated in reigns of terror or gulags.
Christianity, by contrast, teaches that there are limits, both to what we can achieve and to how we should act, that love is more important than power, and that politics is far from being everything.”
Now, let this serve at least at this point to point out the temptation that we all have to resort to this sort of baseline thought of everything being political, because if everything is political, then everything is in conflict. If everything is political, then everything is a fight. Who has power and who does not? Who is oppressed and who is delivered? And all of this sorts of things. And Jesus wants to give us something more, something better.
There’s a great little line in when Martin Luther is introducing Psalm 51, and he says philosophers think of human beings as rational animals, and so they should. Doctors think of human beings in terms of “Are you well or are you sick?” Well, they should. But the problem is then when you’re talking to a philosopher or you’re talking to a doctor, that’s what they’re concerned about. Lawyers, Luther says, consider a person in regards to the contracts that they’ve signed. Are you in breach of contract or not? This is what my dad used to say: that to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, right? If your mind is given over to the law or if your mind is given over to politics, then everything looks like politics.
But you are Christians, which means that you look at the world differently. You look at your neighbor differently. You look at yourself differently. Luther says in the same place that a theologian considers humanity, man the sinner, redeemed by Jesus Christ. And this is the higher calling that Jesus is giving us, and this is how He does it. He takes these political men fighting about who’s the greatest, sweaty, strong, been walking all day. He sits them in a circle in a room, and He takes a child and puts the child in the middle.
And then Jesus opens His arms and the child falls into them. The Greek word that’s used there, we had it translated like this: “He took him up in His arms.” It’s only used twice and it can be translated, and I like this, “And He hugged him.” Jesus takes the child and hugs him. And I want you to see it with your mind. It’s one of the greatest things is when you have a little baby, you know, and the baby recognizes mom and dad, so I would do this all the time, is that if mom’s holding the baby, you go to the baby and you hold out your hands like this, and when you hold out your hands, the baby just throws themselves into your arms.
It doesn’t—gravity, ground, nothing matters—whoosh, they just jump into your arms. I want you to see this child there, sitting in the middle of all of these disciples, and Jesus opening His arms, and the child simply throws himself into the arms of Jesus, and Jesus takes him up in His arms and embraces him and hugs him.
And that is what Jesus would contrast to the political conversation. That is what Jesus contrasts to the argument on the way about who’s the greatest. That is what Jesus wants us to see, because this is the kingdom of God: that we fling ourselves into the arms of Jesus, and that He catches you, and He holds you, and He hugs you, and He blesses you, and He receives you, and He forgives all your sins.
And He carries you through all the trouble of life, all the trouble of life, until He takes you through death to life eternal and brings you up out of the grave in the resurrection. Trust not in princes. They are but mortal, earthborn. They are. Soon they decay. But Jesus is forever, and Jesus is kind. Jesus is dead and risen. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the throne. And He, and He alone, and He is your Savior. God be praised. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
