Proper 9 Sermon - BMT - July 5, 2026

Blind spots.

I'm sure whenever you started driving, and to all the drivers here, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

That moment, whenever you're transitioning to another lane, and you hear really loud honking and maybe other gestures to show you, you know, disapproval for your lack of spatial awareness.

Blind spots, but we have also not just visual blind spots, but spiritual blind spots.

These areas in our life that are in the dark, that are totally unknown to us, that are inconsistent with the kingdom.

And it's just we're just totally oblivious to this aspect of a part of our life that we're living, it's not walking in step with Christ, it's not walking in step with the kingdom, but we're unaware of it.

It's our shadow self, it's the big log, right, that's in our eye that we can't see, but we can see the speck in our sister brothers.

Part of our Christian devotion is going to be waking up, shining light onto these spiritual blind spots.

And this is blind spots is something that we can have as individuals, and also more broadly, that the church has had throughout time.

We think and look throughout church history, we see many blind spots, blind spots of empire, blind spots of patriarchy, blind spots of slavery.

And you just think in this state, right, in this country, not even a couple centuries ago, Christians of sincere piety and devotion had slaves.

And they didn't see this as in any way inconsistent with their Christian devotion.

And of course, we sit here today and we scratch our heads and we say, how in the world can these people claim to preach this gospel, claim to worship this Jesus, and have slaves.

Blind spots.

And what we see throughout church history is actually every generation has blind spots.

Every single generation that's ever lived in the church has had blind spots, which means that we probably shouldn't be so presumptuous as to think that we're immune or we're you know excluded from having massive spiritual blind spots.

That is, that the possibility that 300 years from now, 200 years from now, the Christians of the future looking back on us in our time, scratching their heads, you know, asking themselves, how in the world did they have the audacity to claim themselves as Christians and believe X?

Or do Y.

You know, fill in the blank.

Blind spots.

And I can't help but, as I'm going through this gospel reading today, that this peculiar prayer of Jesus is touching upon something like a spiritual blind spot.

So in Matthew's gospel, Jesus has been engaged in ministry throughout Judea, and this ministry is as he's traveling to different villages throughout Judea, and he's healing people, he's casting out demons, he's speaking about the kingdom of God.

And village by village by village, they put up a hand to Jesus.

They resist his ministry, they reject his teaching.

Village by village by village.

They want nothing to do with Christ.

They're not buying it, not buying his ministry.

And then in Matthew, right after this, Jesus kind of shifts and he takes something of like a prophetic stance against all of these villages, and he starts pronouncing judgment like a prophet on all these villages, village after village after village, for precisely rejecting his teaching and his ministry.

And these are harsh judgments.

Like if you if you read, in fact, of Capernaum, Jesus says that, hey, it's actually going to be more tolerable in Sodom and Gomorrah on that day than it is going to be in Capernaum.

In fact, if I had gone into Sodom in those days, Jesus says they would have repented.

Village after village after village, resisting Jesus, the person, the ministry, the teaching of the kingdom.

And then it picks up immediately where our gospel reading was today.

Matthew says it begins at that time.

At that time, what is that time?

The time that Jesus was pronouncing judgment on these villages.

At that time, Matthew says, What does Jesus do?

He looks up to the Father and he starts praying this massive prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude.

And if you're reading Matthew, if you're like me, I see this and I have no idea what's going on.

But Jesus clearly sees something that I don't see, and this is why I see, like a blind spot, something that's so clear to Jesus that he can, after pronouncing judgment in all these villages who rejected him, he can look at the Father and thank the Father.

What is he doing?

Jesus says, Father, I thank you.

Thank you.

That the mysteries of the kingdom have been hidden from the wise and the understanding, and that you've revealed them to little children.

Such was your gracious will.

What is he saying?

Little children.

It's easy for us in our time, and it's easy for me to like sentimentalize children and then kind of impose that sentimentality onto the tags, you know.

Like, you know, we need to have a childlike faith, and you know, it's free and simple and playful, you know, etc.

But in the first century they did not at all sentimentalize children.

In fact, children were viewed with a status that was lower than the status of a slave.

That children, I mean, you think in a subsistent agrarian society, right?

A slave, at least a slave, can get some work done around the household, but a child in an already hard time, they're just another mouth to feed.

It was actually not uncommon in antiquity in Greco-Roman society.

A family was having a baby, and the baby comes out, and they wanted a boy, but it was a girl.

Well, we'll try next time.

We'll just throw this out with the trash.

Literally the trash.

When Jesus says, Father, these things you've hidden from the wise and understanding, and you've revealed them to little children.

What is he saying?

He's saying that the kingdom of God is down here.

It's not up here.

That the kingdom of God is revealed to those with no rights, no privileges, no power, those who are at the bottom of things, not at the top of things.

Jesus will often use the imagery of children, right?

Jesus will speak of the kingdom as it's near, it's coming, it's among you, it's within you.

But Jesus will also say that this kingdom that is coming and near and among you and within you, it is still a kingdom you need to enter into.

To enter this kingdom through an act of faith, the will, desire, seeking, all of these things.

So how do we enter the kingdom?

Jesus actually says, Father, that you cannot, uh the father cannot be received, the kingdom cannot be entered into unless you become as children.

In fact, Jesus says that unless you become like a little child, you will never, never enter the kingdom.

Those are strong words.

What is Jesus' thanksgiving to the Father that this kingdom is revealed only to little children, say about the kingdom?

Such that we need to become children to enter the kingdom, become children to have the mysteries unveiled to us.

What does it mean to become a little child?

To become one free of rights, privileges, and powers.

I think, in short, this is the spiritual ascending of intimacy with the Father, growing in faith, in union with the will of God, maturing in the power of the Spirit, that this growth is revealed in Jesus to be a massive descent.

That we go up by going down.

And the kingdom is down.

It's not up.

It is accessed through great humility.

Without this great humility, you will never enter the kingdom.

Or in the words of Christ, unless you become like a child, you'll never enter the kingdom.

This is the humility we see on display in this prophecy in Zechariah, right, about Christ, the King of Israel, coming into Jerusalem.

He comes in not on a war horse, not in a chariot, not in a royal caravan.

But Jesus will come rolling into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Humble.

A donkey that he doesn't even own.

It's not even his.

God comes to us at the bottom.

God comes to us in great glory and humility.

As Jesus says, right, the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.

And this is our pattern.

What Christ is revealing.

Christ is the child.

Christ is the lowly one.

Christ is our pattern.

This is what Paul says in Philippians 2, right?

That Christ, although he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, held on to.

I'm not giving this up.

But no, Paul says he made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of humanity.

And Paul says, in being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, a slave's death.

So this is the pattern.

If we're up here, we need to come down here.

If we have rights and privileges and power, we give those up in order to.

This is the kind of the formula that we see in Christ.

This is how Christ saves us.

Although he was rich, he became poor for us.

So that we, in order that we might become rich.

This is the pattern that you see with Saint Paul.

Paul, an apostle of Christ, he's going to travel around the Mediterranean.

And as an apostle, Paul says that he has a right to money from the people that he's ministering to.

I wish I could talk like that.

But Paul actually believed that.

He said, I have a right to cold heart cash.

Because I'm coming in here and you're reaping spiritual benefit.

Is it too much for us to reap material benefit so that he can then go on to the next city as an itinerant preacher and an apostle?

But what's absolutely wild about Paul is Paul actually never makes use of that right.

He tells the people, he's like, I have a right as an apostle to demand money from you, but I do not do that.

Instead, I work and I labor night and day.

I toil with my hands, they're callous, I'm hurting, I'm, you know, I often go without food, I don't have a place to stay, so that I'm not a burden, so that you would see my life laying down my right to your money as an example of Christ.

And follow.

What does it look like for us to become children?

It is to say that we lay down our rights, we lay down our privileges, we lay down our power.

Well, I worked hard all week, and it's my money, and I'm not giving it to fill in the blank.

They're just gonna waste it on fill in the blank.

They'll never pay me back.

Will I work too hard and protect my time too critically to just give it away doing X or talking with Y?

I already have friends.

I don't need any more friends.

Why should I give up my time, my emotional energy, my reserves to befriend somebody that I don't need as a friend?

That is the wisdom and understanding of the world talking.

It's not this Christ talking.

To become as children is to become those, right?

A child has even less power than slave.

A child has even less rights as a slave, less privileges as a slave.

Like Jesus is using an example of somebody that doesn't have anything that they could point to to justify why they don't have to do anything or listen to anybody.

They're totally vulnerable.

And this is the vulnerability that Christ has called us to enter into.

And I know that this may sound like scary or precarious, but I honestly think another way that you could hear everything that I just said is the language that Jesus Himself will use just moments later, that I believe is talking about precisely this.

Right after Jesus offers his thanksgiving to the Father, the mysteries of the kingdom reveal to children, right?

And he'll pivot and he'll look and he'll say, Come to me.

All who are labor, you labor and you're heavy laden.

Come to me, and I will give you rest.

I am lowly.

I'm humble.

Find rest here.

It is extremely burdensome to hold on to rights.

It's extremely burdensome to hold on to our privileges, to hold on to our entitlement.

And the paradox of it all is when we give this up for the sake of each other, for the sake of God, that this is true rest.

This is where the blind spot is, right?

That everything, all of Jesus' teachings, you can sum it up.

I mean, everything about his generosity, about his mercy, about blessing those who curse you, about all of Jesus' teachings can be understood as Jesus, another way of Jesus saying, Hey, I want to give you an abundant life.

Follow me.

That's what it is.

And in proportion that we don't see a teaching of Jesus as promising abundance, we're not actually seeing the teachings of Jesus well.

May we enter and follow this Christ who beckons us to come to him.

May we sit at his feet, may we give Christ our burdens.

May we know him as the humble Messiah that he is, that he looks at us and he does not turn us away.

He does not refuse us his love.

He does not refuse us his discipleship, but he receives us humble and lowly of heart.

Amen.