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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the Gospel reading as well as the Epistle reading. You may be seated.
So what does it mean when you are to cut your losses? Well, the first point that you must come to an accurate assessment is, what exactly are your losses? Losses. That’s the problem with this text, the gospel reading that is. Because there are some things that you and I would consider losses and some things that God would not. And there’s some things that we would not consider a loss and God says, yes, you need to get rid of it.
So what is this thing in us that we are to cut and lose? And what we are to cut and lose is that which keeps us thinking wrong—that the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world are amalgamated. See, we have a mistaken notion of greatness. We assume greatness to mean achievement. It’s a measurable quantity. It’s something that we have that others do not, which separates greatness from mediocrity. Problem with that thought, it has no application in the kingdom of God. Why? And that’s Satan’s great sin of temptation for you. Why else would those apostles ask the most benign question, but who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? They knew when they asked a specific criteria that would fulfill that answer. Someone who gives generously to the church. Someone who attends church regularly. Someone who opens that portals of prayer in that Bible daily. Someone who takes time to pray daily. They’re great in the kingdom of heaven.
Funny, when Jesus put someone in the center, He did not put any of those apostles, and those apostles prayed daily. He put a child. Not because the child is childish. The word childish connotes much more of a pejorative sense of the term, meaning something that is immature. Childlike promotes the positive aspects of being a child. You look back in your memory. When you were a child, you did not worry about the house payment. You just knew there would always be a house, and you trusted your mommy and daddy. Right? When you were a child, you didn’t think about the car payment. You didn’t think about the job layoff. You didn’t think about the food bill. You didn’t think about saving. You didn’t think about your 401k or 401cb, whatever retirement type of income. You only thought about simple things. And you trusted that your parents would take care of you.
If you say, and I know you do, Jesus is my Lord! Then why do you worry if He really is your Lord? Because the Lord promises to take care of His subjects. Are you not His subjects? Yes. Does He not say He will take care of you? Yes. Why do you and I worry?
Part of being a child in this situation that Jesus is bringing Him into the midst of these apostles is because the apostles were concerned about the things of this world. You and I have to be as adults concerned. But Satan’s temptation is to get us to move this kingdom of the world into the same place as the kingdom of heaven. And that is a sin. The kingdom of heaven is what matters. The kingdom of the world does not. But what do we strive for? God’s will being preeminent in our life? And we spend more opportunity to be corrected by God so that we do know what His will is toward us? Or… And you see the struggle that the apostles were in. And if those apostles were in it, then so are you.
Cutting our losses means to repent, to turn, and go back to the forgiveness we need. That’s cutting our losses. That’s becoming a child. Jesus said, whoever humbles himself like this child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Meaning, they will be what I’m looking for. And what does a child look like? Well, we just spoke to you. A child is somewhat trusting that someone else has that responsibility over us. The other side of a child, which is a part of this text, which is the most important part of this text, most children… At one time or another, though you and I fussed, most of us receive correction.
It’s funny, as we grow older, we kind of poo-poo our parents and some of their correction. And yet, as we’ve grown older, we’ve looked back and said, that was beneficial for me to have received, and it was correction. As we grow older and are married… The person who is the most influential probably in my life is my wife. And I am not the pastor or the chaplain or the man that I am without her. Correction. But I will be quick to say neither is she the mother, the wife, the woman. She is without me. But correction isn’t easy, is it? But I know and you know. Because you’ve experienced it from the mouth of your parents. From the mouth of good friends, from the mouth of your spouse, and even from the mouths of your own son or daughter, correction, and on first hearing it hurt, as you reflected upon it, what did it drive you to do but become like a child? Return back to the Lord and receive His forgiveness.
Forgiveness. That’s great in the kingdom of heaven. You are a living example of how God has used correction in your life. Now granted, you can bring up all kinds of examples of where it was misused. Oh yeah, we can always do that and become bitter. That’s an ugly thing. You sang about that in that hymn. But we have benefited far more from correction. But it takes an effort to love someone like that, doesn’t it? Loving someone like that means that you have to be engaged in their life on a regular basis. It can’t be fleeting. How you doing? Fine. You? Wonderful. And that’s all that’s said.
God has called you to be engaged with the people who sit in front of you and behind you and across the aisle from you all around this church. Not for the sake of you being a better corrector. Ha, ha, ha. No, for you being a better child and receive correction from Him. All of us want to be the smart one in the class, the eldest son or daughter who tells the little brother or little sister, see, you should have listened to me, I told you so. Few of us want to be the one who heard the words of correction. And yet the only way we can listen to God’s word of correction is to be continually engaged with Him.
It’s part of the reason why we’re trying to get people to come back to church. That’s the only way people can have correction in God’s house by God. And that’s how He uses you and me in their life and they in ours. We want to look at this text as if it’s what we’ve got to do to our brother, rather than forgetting that it always takes two. This text is as much about receiving correction as it is about giving correction. How beautiful the parable that Jesus threw in there to make his point: the 99 and the 1. Because he wants us to start first and foremost in seeing ourselves not as the enlightened one who tells the unenlightened one what’s wrong, but rather a child telling another child.
The one is the lost sheep in all of us. Whether you grew up in the church, whether you grew up in a religious home, whether you didn’t, all of us are the one sheep that Christ found in our mother’s womb, at the baptism, at the Word of God being preached. He found us. We did not find Him. And He did not chastise us when He found us. He rejoiced over us because He found us. He gained us.
If you want your relationship to grow with a loved one, you have to continually be interfacing with them, don’t you? Constantly. And with all engaging and interfacing with a loved one, there will be barbs and there will be balm. Both. That’s part of being in a relationship with someone. It is the same with your God. And at times His law cuts us deeply. Deeply. And drives us to come back to Him so that He can find us again. And He rejoices over us with His forgiveness. That balm.
When Paul said the one commandment that fulfills everything, being love, that’s what love looks like. Love looks like engaging someone on a regular basis and not just about things that are easy to talk about. But about the hard things that are to talk about. That’s love. You’re a living example of that love. When loved ones came to you and told you about you and you did not like to hear what they told you, was that not love as you reflected upon it? Even if it was not done necessarily in a way you liked, but yet you grew from it, did not that come to you in love? Does His Word not come to you in the same way? Finding you, holding you, and rejoicing over you. He does so that you can engage your loved ones, your brothers and sisters in Christ who are around you.
Let the body of Christ here be built up, and you’re a part of that building. In the name of Jesus, Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life eternal. Amen.
