To Become Mature, We Must Become Like Children: The Upside-Down Way of Spiritual Growth
The Upside Down Way of Jesus (Lent 2024) • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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As we begin this season of Lent, (actually Lent began on Wednesday—Ash Wednesday—but in our Sunday worship we mark the beginning today...the 40-day journey to Holy Week, the week the starts with Palm Sunday and concludes with Easter Sunday....as we begin the season of Lent, we begin a new sermon series titled, the Upside Down Way of Jesus.
And I want to start this morning by briefly talking about the CROSS. The cross event of 2000 years ago demonstrates for us most clearly the upside down way of Jesus. I want to say something about the cross that undoubtedly will get repeated by me or Jun throughout this series. It’s really a very remarkable thing that for many of us we can easily miss or overlook.
But it is the cross that anchors the whole of the Christian life. The Christian life is the upside down way of Jesus. Let me use a more theologically sophisticated expression.....The Christian life is the “Cruciform Life”....the cross-shaped life....and the cross-shaped life is the upside-down way of Jesus.
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OK…so let me begin by sharing this most remarkable truth about the CROSS.... [crucifixion scene image]. In the time when the events of the NT took place the Romans used the cross as an instrument of execution. And it was one of the most barbaric and excruciating means of execution that could be imagined. Not only was the death excruciatingly painful, but it was tortuously slow. I could say a lot more about the details of death by crucifixion, but I’ll spare us all of that and simply say this....it was awful.
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Rome used this means of execution to say, this is what will happen to anyone who stands against us. It was used by the Romans to say: we have the power to torture, we have the power to torment, and we have the power to kill the helpless. Don’t mess with us.
Some of us will remember the events of what took place around 10 years ago…when ISIS took over parts of Iraq and Syria…it was is if they tried to resurrect that understanding of the cross. We saw pictures of Christians and Yazidis who had been shot through the head, hanging on crosses. It was like ISIS wanted to resurrect this symbol of power and say, don’t mess with us. And because it was public, it was a kind of billboard telling everyone what happens to the rebellious.
And yet, it is precisely this symbol that captures the essence of the Christian faith.
The cross of Christ shows us that in actual fact, it is the powerless who triumphs over the powerful, it is the slave who triumphs over the master, it is the man condemned to the cross that triumphs over the apparatus of the state. The cross is the symbol of the weak securing victory over the strong.
Here’s how historian Tom Holland puts it:
“We have to put ourselves in the sandals of the Romans to understand and appreciate how incredibly strange it is that today the cross of all things is perhaps the most immediately recognizable cultural symbol that a human culture has developed, and it symbolizes not that the powerful, but on the contrary, that the victim will triumph.”
(https://en.infochretienne.com/articles/selon-lrsquohistorien-tom-holland-lrsquooccident-a-beaucoup-a-apprendre-des-chretiens-persecutes/)
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The cross is at the heart of the upside down way of Jesus. And in this Lenten series each sermon will explore some aspect of the cruciform life, or the cross shaped life.
We will see that a cross-shaped life is a life of paradoxes.
What is a paradox? A paradox is something that seems to be self-contradictory. [Line in the play Hamlet. “I must be cruel to be kind” .... A statement that seems to contradict what one expects and yet at the same time it reveals an important truth.
Let’s go back to the cross: An instrument of the powerful vanquishing the weak is in reality an instrument where the weak triumph over the strong. To say, “It’s on the cross where the weak triumph” is a paradox.
But this is precisely the upside down way of Jesus.
We heard it read earlier in our service this morning, in the Jesus way, the way down is the way up.
Let’s read our texts for this morning:
1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
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Today we consider the way of spiritual growth: To become mature, we must become like children. Or to use the words of our text: to become great in the Kingdom of heaven we must take the lowly position of a child.
Now its important for us to appreciate the way in which children were viewed in first century Rome.
Listen to one commentator by the name of Leon Morris writes:
In modern Western societies children are often seen as very important, but in first-century Judaism they were not. In the affairs of men children were unimportant. They could not fight, they could not lead, they had not had time to acquire worldly wisdom, they could not pile up riches, they counted for very little....Their smallness made them very humble members of society.
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In fact, for many people children were considered disposable.
One Bible teacher that I listen to periodically (Glenn Scrivner) tells about an ancient document that we have which is a Manual for Midwifery in the First Century. A manual for midwives. And one of the early chapters in that manual begins with the question:
How do we discern the child that is worth rearing? .... we go YIKES, but first century Rome wasn’t doing that...... thrown down wells, rivers, dumps....slaves, boy soldiers, girl sex slaves.... girls who would work in state sponsored brothels....
Another NT scholar (Larry Hurtado) tells this story. A letter from Hillarian to his wife Alice…1st c. If boy keep it, if a girl cast it out..... in the same letter he also expresses tenderness and love towards his wife...
Question: Why should you keep unproductive members of society?
What is natural is: survival of the fittest and sacrifice of the weakest.
There is nothing more....in Jesus the fittest sacrifice themselves for the weakest....
Compassion is divine.
It was a brutal world and Christianity provided a haven of humanity and compassion...
In fact it was in the centuries that followed that eventually the practice of abortion and exposure and the founding of institutions like orphanages and places of protection of women.
[Also talk about response to plagues..... during the first, second and third centuries of Christianity, the Roman empire experience 2 signficiant plagues.... we have documents that are essentially eye witness accounts of what was being experienced by the population during these plagues....the mortality rate was between 25 - 30%..... 1 in 4 and 1 in 3..... start of hospitals....Basil writes about the beginings of one of the very first hospitals in the Roman empire, this in the 4th c.....and it was constructed primarily as a place of refuge and healing for plague victims. The nursing profession arose out of early Christianity… helping plague victims.....but also caring for the sick more generally....
5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
So....all of this historical background to say that one of the qualities of children that the Lord Jesus is calling us to notice and to embrace is the quality of “helplessness”.....
“except for the grace of God there go I”
living with a daily dependence on the grace and provision of God...
recognizing that there is nothing I can do to save myself.... my life is corrupted and infected by the condition of sin.... pride, self-interest,....and there is nothing I can do to free myself from that corruption....there is nothing I can do to cure that infection..... I truly am as helpless as a little children and must depend completely on the love and grace and forgiveness of God shown to me through Jesus Christ....
Helplessness
Humility - Dependence and trust
The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament 2. Affirmation of the Individuality of Children?
The child’s littleness, immaturity and need of assistance, though commonly disparaged, keep the way open for the fatherly love of God, whereas grown-ups so often block it.
Matthew 2. Implications for the Church: Humility and Forgiveness (18:1–35)
In first-century thought children were often very little esteemed. Jesus ascribes to them great value, but here his more immediate point is that would-be disciples must share their condition of utter dependence, in this case, on God. Without a recognition of one’s fundamental inability to save oneself and without a subsequent complete reliance on God’s mercy, no one can enter the kingdom of heaven. Conversely, those who most clearly perceive their helplessness and who respond accordingly are the greatest in the kingdom (again the “is” refers to the present aspect of the kingdom).32
“Humility is not a virtue by itself; but it is pure receptivity, the expression of inner need, the prayer for God’s grace and forgiveness, in a word, the opening up of the heart to God.” Bruner 212, quoting Adolf Harnack in What is Christianity?
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When you think about our text in that way you can see that Jesus is not only concerned about “Welcoming children in my name” but he says, “welcomes one such child”.....one such child serves for us as an example of anyone with needs....
Jesus is really calling us to a life of humble service.....
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! 9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
Jesus is exalting service..... selflessness.... think of Matt. 25.... whenever you give water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, clothing to the naked, visits to the imprisoned....you are doing that for me.
The Message of Matthew Humility (18:1–4)
The kingdom upturns secular values. Real greatness is not to be found in seeking to be praised and served by others, but in seeking others to serve, especially those who have no rights.
https://youtu.be/vPAYlAnW92g
Mitchell Marcus - Team Manager - developmental disability...
Coranado Thunderbirds.....
Last season of game....suit up....Coach planned to play him 1 1/2/ minutes left, leading by 10.... team mates tried to get him to score..... then at very end of the game a player named Jonathan from the opposing team.... called out Mitchell’s name..... “play any game with this much sportsmanship and both teams win”
11 The greatest among you will be your servant.
Who are we serving....
In order to become mature in the Kingdom of God, we must become like little children.
Exalting Jesus in Matthew Becoming a Christian (Matthew 18:1–4)
In the previous two chapters, we’ve seen Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ (16:16) as well as Jesus’ transfiguration before Peter, James, and John on the mountain (17:1–2). These significant events seem to be at least a part of the reason for the disciples’ question to Jesus in verse 1: “Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Perhaps some thought that the greatest was Peter, the disciple who was singled out by Jesus in the institution of the church (16:18) and who was also permitted to see Jesus’ glory on the mountain.