Death & Greatness

Morning, Church.

Today's reading is from the Book of Mark, chapter 9, verses 30 through 37.

Mark 9:30–37

They went on from there and passed through Galilee, and he did not want anyone to know.

For 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 when he is killed, after three days he will rise.

But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.

And they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house, he asked them, What were you discussing on the way?

But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.

And he sat down and called the twelve.

And he said to them, If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.

And he took a 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, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And I realized my sleeves were rolled up and I intended to have them rolled down before I walked up here.

That thought probably could have stayed internal.

We have a new uh member of our congregation.

He's a very tiny new member, uh, Bennett, who we will baptize uh later in the service today.

Um But uh today we're going to uh move through this this wonderful passage where Jesus um explains this deep mystery that receiving even one child is as though we are seeing as though we are receiving God the Father.

Um that's a that's an almost impossible thing to grasp.

So uh I hope that we can meditate on that together as we see see this deep mystery that Jesus is calling us into.

Before we do that, let's pray.

Holy Father, we thank you for your loving kindness.

We pray that you would give us eyes to see you as you are and as you've revealed yourself to us in your word.

Lord, as we sang together this morning, considering the grace that brought us to the fold of God.

Lord, we stand on nothing before you.

And yet you hold us up.

You pursued us while we were yet your enemies.

And in the depth of your loving-kindness towards us, you brought us into your fold and took responsibility for us.

Call us your own.

Jesus, you are not ashamed to call us brothers.

Lord, we praise you for that depth of grace.

How unsearchable it is.

We pray that we might have our imaginations uh purged of all of those ways that we act in those modes of being, those things that we focus on that that form our hearts away from seeing the depth of grace that you show to us and from living in the reality of that.

And that you purge us from those ways of seeking our own greatness in this false way that we do.

And that you would show, open our eyes to the reality of the world that you've placed us in and the order that it is in, as you, our Lord, showed us your greatness in going to the cross on behalf of your enemies.

Lord, these things are too high, too wonderful for us.

I pray that you would give us uh by the power of your spirit the ability to see them this morning.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Uh I was talking after the men's book study, a couple of us were sticking around.

Well, well, actually, I guess kind of like at the end of that time at the Cozy Cottage on this Sunday, this past Thursday, and it was bringing up this passage of scripture that I was preaching on and uh seeing uh Jesus just take this child and hold him, uh, not even saying anything to the disciples, just to giving this moment of holding the child, and then explaining that if you receive this child, then you receive me, and not just me, but the one who sent me.

And then just saying, I've got to write a sermon on this today.

Uh what could this mean?

Like what is this mystery?

And I want us to just kind of have that image in our minds of Christ holding a child that he calls to himself and saying, if you receive this child, then you receive me and not just me, but my father who sent me.

And I was thinking, why is why is this so incomprehensible?

What is it about what Jesus is showing us here?

What is it about our hearts and the way that they're formed that make it uh it feel to me where I'm looking at it and I I it's almost like when you when someone shows you a great painting and it's like this painting changed the course of world history, and it's it's actually this you know political statement, and uh there's uh uh you know, uh all of art changed after this, and it's like it's a woman with a picture, you know, pouring out a what and and you know in your in your mind, it's like, okay, I know the problem isn't the painting, you know, because it's I'm sure that it's true that it did change the world in this way.

The problem is me.

I don't know how to look at this thing.

And that felt that feels true of seeing Jesus holding the child and explaining this deep mystery that you receive God Himself when you receive one such child as this.

It's like, okay, I I feel like that should be that should be absolutely transforming everything that I do.

Uh, and the fact that it isn't is probably not a problem with what I'm seeing.

It's a problem with me.

So I was thinking, what is that problem?

And my wife shared with me this podcast.

You guys listen to the podcast?

What did we used to talk about?

We just uh it now it's just that's where uh I guess maybe now we just talk about other people's conversations that we've heard, that we've listened in on.

And then we hear the things that they say, and we think, that's what I think now.

And it's uh um this homeschooling podcast, and they were talking about different curriculums and different but different sort of books and stuff for kids.

And uh this lady who is talking on it, she's um I can't remember her name.

I I should have looked it up so I could recommend it because I thought it was excellent.

But she was describing how uh children's books are so bad because they don't tell stories anymore, and they aren't engaging children with stories, they're always just teaching lessons.

And they're just like these, so they're they're not cultivating imaginations, it's just like rem here's it, all right, let's read this book, and your child sits down next to you and you read the book, and basically you're like, remember to share.

It's like that's oh, excuse me, I dropped this pen.

It's like, okay, well, that's kind of an enjoyable time.

But our TV shows, you know, this is kind of the world right now.

Everything has become utilitarian.

And the question is not is there beauty or truth or goodness in this?

Uh the question is, what is the usefulness of this?

Um have you noticed that if you've watched a comedy recently, it takes about 20 minutes before you realize they're not trying to make me laugh.

They're teaching me a lesson.

They this is not about me.

This is not about saying something funny.

I'm I'm they're teaching me a lesson right now.

Um yeah.

Oh man, do I say it?

This is why Ted Lasso became completely insufferable.

It was just a it was just sermon.

Literally, watching Ted Lasso, I turned to my wife, said, This is preachy even for me.

And you should know.

And I should know.

I know preachy.

It's just utilitarian.

Um there's uh it's what lesson can we convey to you?

Like what what new little tip or trick can you take away from this?

And the podcast world is this is the podcast world.

We're just like like ingesting cheap wisdom.

And we're the lady who's describing the way that children's books are, she says, she said this phrase, and I can't get it out of my head.

She said, our kids must be morally exhausted.

Don't you think, aren't, aren't you?

I heard that phrase and I was like, I am.

I'm morally exhausted.

I'm just ingesting so much cheap wisdom that is, it feels like I'm being morally taken advantage of, morally manipulated with all the how-tos that I have baked into my mind to increase my productivity and maximize my health and have my uh make sure that I'm that I'm thinking the right thoughts, the precise right thoughts politically about this moment and where things are headed.

And I'm just I'm running to get uh enough information into myself to be able to cope with a world like that.

Uh morally exhausted.

I thought that was a I thought that was a true phrase.

One uh I'm not gonna not talk about podcasts, you know.

Um one uh uh I I guess he's a bit more than a podcaster, but um man who has been helpful in kind of helping me understand the diagnosis of what's going on and and why this sort of why why I think we have the sense of like we're in this swirl of information that uh feels like morally manipulative, cheap wisdom.

That's the way that I experience it and I what I think it is.

Um this guy's name is uh John Vervakey, and he's a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto, which just cranks out public intellectuals.

I didn't know it existed like five years ago, and now it's like if you're gonna be a public intellectual, I'd start at the University of Toronto and like pick a fight with some woke person.

So the uh he uh John Vervake he makes this distinction that I think is helpful in in his series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, which is which is very good.

Um he's not a Christian.

He was raised in a fundamentalist Christian home as he describes it, and and walked away from the faith when he was 15.

But this is a particularly helpful distinction that he makes that I found useful in interpreting what this swirl is of uh morally manipulative cheap wisdom.

And he makes the distinction between lies and uh he it's a compound word that involves the letters B and S that he uses technically.

Let the listener understand.

This is church, and so I will not be using such harsh letters, I'm going to use the term garbage.

Uh so lies and garbage is the distinction that he makes.

A liar cares about the truth.

Because a liar has to keep their eye on the truth, you know, to make sure that they're sneaking around it precisely.

Uh if the if the truth, if the truth sneaks up too closely, then the liar is gonna have to pivot and make a new sort of move.

But the garbage artist, do you hear what I'm saying?

Is not interested in the truth.

The truth is an an uh a completely unnecessary category.

Now, we see this distinction take place first, sort of like in in uh philosophy, with the sophists, sophistry.

You know, you've heard heard that term.

And the um sophists uh take place at a time where there's uh tons of pluralism in the Greek world with a lot of competing gods, and a lot of uh there's a decreasing power among the aristocratic families that had tended to hold those things in power.

And so the sophists come along as the school of philosophy that's very different from the prior schools.

The prior schools of philosophy were answering questions like what is the world, you know.

And so Heraclitus would say it's fire and it's constant change.

And people would say, okay, that's the way we'll try and cope with the world.

And Parmenides would say it's static, and and it all change is just an illusion, but it's really just static.

And then they would they would argue back and forth together.

So we're discussing questions like that, trying to discover what are the objectively true things about reality.

The sophists, with the decline in power of the aristocratic families and the way that they held the structure of society together, no longer became interested in questions of objective truth.

In fact, they said that there is no such thing as objective truth.

Instead, we just need to learn how to negotiate the emotional landscape so that we can politic our way in power.

So, Gorgias, a famous sophist, explains that there is no objective truth, and therefore the study of philosophy should be replaced with the study of rhetoric.

So that's an example to kind of legitimize the next example that I'm going to give, which is what is garbage.

The sophistry example is just barely helpful.

This example will be helpful.

It's a beer commercial.

A beer commercial, this is John Vravake's example.

In a beer commercial, uh it's not a lie, but it's someone who's holding a beer who's beautiful, and they're dressed in expensive clothes, and they're in a bar where everybody is beautiful and flirtatious and smiling and just having this incredible time.

Now, now go into a bar.

Okay, so it's not a lie, but it's an emotionally resonant image that is describing to you a mode of being that you can somehow participate in.

And it's and it's out there for you to be particip for you to participate in it.

And you would say, well, what there wasn't, there wasn't a moment, they didn't even have to keep their eyes on the truth.

It doesn't even matter.

We're just going to paint a completely other image of the world, and by our rhetoric or our our uh uh uh uh emotional sort of sort of manipulation, we will uh take you into this whole other world where you're not even considering what's true.

That's not a part of the conversation anymore.

It's just what what is uh what how can we emotionally resonate you?

How can we call on this existential mode of being?

You know, you don't sell motorcycles with speckless.

You know, the engine has this compression ratio, and there's no you you sell motorcycles by saying things like this, freedom.

You know, it's a it's a whole other world, it's a mode of being.

It's not a it's not a lie, it's different from that.

It's completely separate from a conversation of the truth.

This is why it can be so disorienting.

Because in a world like this, people argue back and forth together about the facts of the situation.

What are the facts here?

Who's lying over there?

And people inside the conversation know this is not that type of a conversation.

This is this is why it like fact-checking in this landscape, this garbage landscape, is a complete misunderstanding of the conversation that as it's taking place.

Uh, and is just a recipe for deeper entrenchment in the garbage.

Today's text is about the pursuit of greatness and the way that the disciples pursue greatness.

And when they pursue greatness, the reason I wanted to lay this whole framework for why we don't understand greatness is because we're participating, we're constantly participating in a garbage framework of greatness.

And greatness is not a matter of facts.

Greatness is not in the category of lies, greatness is in the category of garbage.

Because you're not wondering what what premises could I use to describe my life to guarantee that I'm I'm great.

What you're wondering is what would it feel like to be great?

And what would the image of my greatness be?

And so we're seduced at that level.

We're not seduced at the you're just being lied to level.

We're seduced at the garbage level.

That distinction I found very helpful.

I hope it is, I hope it is to you too.

I hope it kind of pries open.

Like for me, it was like that's what's happening.

That's why I feel like I'm swirling in this world.

In this clouded garbage paradigm, Jesus is uh incomprehensible and scary.

These two things.

We see this in the disciples in the story today.

He is incomprehensible, we can't understand him in this garbage paradigm, and he is frightening.

He's scary.

We we don't want to understand him.

In today's text, we'll see the disciples completely miss Jesus' greatness.

We will see the disciples' desire to cultivate their own greatness.

Uh, that almost sounds positive.

Like I want to say something like conjure, like I'm not some conjurer of cheap tricks, that connotation of conjure.

They're trying to conjure their own greatness.

And then Christ's image of true greatness.

So let's look at this together.

In Mark 9, 30 through 31.

They went on from there and passed through Galilee, and he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples.

This is a segment of Christ's ministry, uh, which is referred to as his retirement ministry, which is kind of a funny phrase.

I'm sure archaically the word retirement didn't conjure images of as much golf as it does now.

But there's this is his retirement ministry, is the time where he's not doing public teaching like he was previously around Galilee.

Uh, but he also isn't marching towards Jerusalem yet.

This is this quiet space where Jesus' focus is just on the twelve disciples.

Now, we think of uh ministry in terms of reach, and yet Jesus spends this huge portion of some of his most precious time in this third year of his ministry focusing on just these twelve disciples.

Just he he builds this depth, he neglects the reach for this depth, and we see that that depth will multiply.

This is a this is what Jesus is interested in.

He's interested in these twelve men, and and even though the smallness of their lives, and that in their hearts they might grasp what he is doing in the world, and that their hearts might be transformed, that they might know him.

This is the level at which Jesus operates.

And then during this time, in the in the plainest possible language, for Jesus announces to his disciples his death and resurrection.

And his death and resurrection uh he announces prior to it three times.

And this is the second of those three times.

Later, in a later sermon, the third time, we'll we'll look collectively at each of these three times, and you can kind of see what he's doing with each one, which which will be enjoyable to do.

But uh, for now, we're just looking at it in the context of this story.

Mark 9, 31 through 32 says, saying to them, he's quietly just with 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 when he is killed, after three days he will rise.

But they did not understand the saying and were afraid to ask him.

Remember, Jesus is incomprehensible and scary.

The repeated theme throughout this retirement ministry, which we actually saw in the story we looked at last week, and the uh this section, and then the one immediately following it, which we'll look at soon, is the silence of the disciples.

The disciples before Jesus are repeatedly being brought to these moments of silence.

Um, last week, when the uh scribes were arguing with the disciples about their inability to cast out this particular demon, uh, Jesus comes in and says, What are you arguing about?

And the scribes and the disciples are both silent.

Here, this next paragraph, we see Jesus explain in the plainest possible language.

This can be too familiar.

So I'm gonna say it again more slowly.

I'm gonna read again what Jesus says more slowly.

And I want you to picture just like a friend telling you this.

The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him.

And when he is killed, after three days, he will rise.

Now we can understand their silence a bit when we look at the first time that Jesus explains this.

Uh, in almost identical language, he explains that the Son of Man will be given into the hands of men, he'll be killed, and then three days later he will rise.

The first time he explained that was after Peter's confession.

Peter, Jesus asks, Who do people say that I am?

And then he asks, Who do you say that I am?

And Peter says, You are the Christ, the Son of God.

And uh Jesus says, You're right, God has shown you this.

And then Jesus says, I'm going to be killed.

It's the next thing that Jesus explains to Peter.

And three days later I will rise.

And then Peter says, Jesus, Ryan, talk with me for a second.

And they go off to the side, and Peter rebukes Jesus for saying that he will be killed.

And then Jesus says, Get behind me, Satan, for your mind is set on the things of man and not on the things of God, is what Jesus says to him.

So now, this is the second time, Jesus says, I will be killed, and then three days later I'll be resurrected.

Now the disciples this time are silent.

And you can imagine the trap that they feel that they might be in.

Don't talk like that.

You know, you gotta believe.

Okay, so that option's off the table.

Well then, what's my other option?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're gonna be killed.

You're gonna be killed.

This one who I'm confessing is the Messiah, who I have really hitched my wagon to.

You know, I've I've this is going to be my life, is their success.

And what I understand their success to be is overthrowing Roman occupation, re-establishing the kingdom of Israel, re-establishing Jerusalem as the as the spiritual center of the world, and ushering in a new age of glory, of which I was one of the first 12 investors.

And so I'm going to ride that one up.

When you say, Yeah, I'm going to participate in killing that.

You'd have to, so in one, in one instance, your your Jesus says, you're like Satan standing against me.

And then in the other instance, all that you expect your life to be, all of the story of what you think your life is, you have to throw away.

So they respond in silence and fear.

Incomprehensible.

What does he mean he will be killed?

What did he mean when he said that it's it's by defending against that, it's it's a um having my mind set on the on the things of man and not on the things of God.

That's incomprehensible.

Or I blow up my whole life in trying to grasp, accepting that he will be killed.

And I have to completely reframe all of what I think my life is.

That's scary.

Jesus is incomprehensible and scary in this phrase.

This is when Jesus says that this is uh setting your mind on the things of man and not on the things of God, uh, I'm I'm thinking of that as shorthand for this garbage paradigm where we think we can make our own greatness by participating with it or crafting with it.

But it's really just a participation in our own deception.

There's a question that was hanging there that the disciples could have asked.

What do you mean after three days you will rise?

But this is an impossible category.

In order to grasp something like three days later, after death, through death, Christ is working, through death, his greatness will come and be shown on the other side of death.

Those are most certainly the things of God.

These are incomprehensible in any sort of paradigm apart from God.

So what must have what type of people must we be?

What are we primarily formed by, such that Christ's most plain, most explicit proclamation of his death and resurrection is incomprehensible and scary to us?

How deceived are we?

Well, we get to see a picture of this in uh the next story, which I uh are linked together just precisely so that we might see these things, I think.

Mark 9, 33 through 34, we're gonna see the disciples feigning their own greatness or conjuring their own greatness.

And they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house, he asked them, so they get to Capernaum, they're alone in someone's house.

He asked them, What were you discussing on the way?

But they kept silent.

For on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.

On the way, they were discussing with one another who's the greatest.

So we get more insights into this in the other uh uh gospels as they describe the same story.

And we hear particular questions of who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

We hear them arguing about uh that this is this is precisely what they're wondering.

Where will each of us rank in this kingdom when it comes?

And when Jesus asks them, what were you discussing on the way?

We hear once again from the disciples this silence.

And do you see what's happening here?

In their traveling, they're discussing greatness.

And we may we may think, what's the problem here?

Well, it's just the argument with each other.

You know, it's this divisiveness that's taking place uh among the disciples, but this is to miss it because they are not divided before Jesus.

They're in perfect unity in their response to Jesus.

Silence.

They, each of them, all together, have this precisely the same reaction to Jesus.

And so we should not just think, oh, this is just division versus unity.

It's different than that.

The question is, because they're responding, think of what we don't get details about.

You know, we could have gotten details about the particulars of the argument.

Uh Peter said, I got out of the boat, and you all didn't, uh, to which Simon says, you didn't walk that far.

You're also the one of us who sank.

And then they there's compete, there's competition in the way that they're explaining the stories, and that that's the place of lies, right?

That's the place of lies.

We can test.

They're keeping their eye on the truth.

It's not saying that's good, just saying it's not what they're united in.

When they are arguing together, what is it they're actually doing for one another and for one another's hearts?

They are entrenching themselves in the ways of man.

They are reinforcing together the ordinary narrative of greatness.

What did they just hear?

What options were they just given?

Support his death and be called Satan.

That's strange and incomprehensible.

Or somehow be supportive of him going to his death and all that we're working for get blown up.

And it became true that we don't even understand the mission that we're headed towards.

So what do they do?

They get together and they argue, but what are they really doing?

They're comforting one another.

They're saying it is ordinary greatness that we're headed towards.

We can discern what the greatness is that we're headed towards.

Look, amongst our, sure, Jesus can say strange things, but amongst ourselves, what do we really know?

We understand the way that kingdoms get established.

It is by great men, and we've got one.

And we understand how power gets apportioned in the world.

It is by closeness and proximity to that great man.

If we all agree to know how the world works together, then we can show it to each other by arguing about where we'll stand in it.

That's what's happening.

Their argument is a cover for reinforcing their desire to stay in this garbage worldview.

To stay in a world that they think they can understand, where they think they understand what greatness looks like, so that it doesn't have to get blown up.

And then recognize this reality that greatness is on the other side of death.

And that's the way that Jesus keeps talking.

If you want to avoid that with a group, then let's just argue amongst ourselves.

They're practicing being avoidant of what Jesus is saying.

I think this is this is a this is a I don't want to say this as like the there's a way to say this, and it's like um there are no meaningful arguments taking place in our culture.

That's not true.

You know, that's just like a way of being somebody who I can stand outside of all the political fray and see that it's all outrageous.

That's not, I don't want you to get that impression because there are meaningful arguments taking place.

But I do think that there is a large portion of what is passing off as meaningful arguments and meaningful divisions that are actually just us reinforcing together our own garbage narratives so that we don't have to face something as absurd as what Jesus is describing for us here.

Do you see that?

Okay, then Jesus shows them against their silence this true greatness.

And he sat down and called the twelve, and he said to them, If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.

Jesus sits down.

And he says to them in this one sentence, just completely it's like a knife.

What were you arguing about?

Silence.

If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.

Now I want you to think back on how they might have experienced this argument.

Let's imagine Peter won and oh let's imagine that uh Thomas lost.

You know, he's he doubted the whole project.

Peter hears this from Jesus and he thinks, what does it what does it mean that I won?

I outwitted, I outplayed, I outlasted.

And now I realize what have I done for my friends here?

There was no service towards them in this at all.

I've been playing I was playing the wrong game.

And I won.

So I lost.

Now Thomas, he lost.

So what does he he gets to, he doesn't have the pride that Peter might have had before the conversation started.

He has something different.

He has resentment.

Like CSU.

And the resentment, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

That was terrible.

I just ruined my all the points that I'm trying to make.

He has resentment, and he's he's saying, uh, Peter, he always does this.

This is just so like him and the way that he works in the world.

You know, Peter, the only reason he's able to do this is because he talks so loudly and he moves so quickly, but he doesn't know how to stop and think about things.

He doesn't know how to actually get a picture of a situation and analyze what's going on.

You know, there you can imagine what an internal dialogue might have been of resentment.

And then he hears if you're first, you're last of all and servant of all, and he thinks, how was I thinking about my friend Peter?

Servant of him?

Was there anything in my heart that looked like love towards him that could be held out in service to him?

This is why, look, the the disciple, it's not a ranking as though you can uh avoid it by being a failure, you know, avoid it by just resentment, or escape it by high enough pride.

It's a completely, it's an incomprehensible and terrifying truth in the world, which exposes what we must stand before silently.

I think all of the way that I've been understanding and thinking about my life and what progress looks like in it has been wrong.

It's been upside down and backwards, and there's this whole new view of the world.

But remember how our visions of greatness form.

Our visions of greatness don't just, this isn't, remember, we're not just in the category of lies.

And so it's not sufficient for Jesus to just put forward a premise and say, because they didn't have a premise, you know, they weren't articulating, um, uh, we're actually, Jesus, we're actually living in a whole other uh paradigm in which we view greatness as being better than everybody else.

And so in our frame of reference, then greatness is we actually are arguing logically about what greatness is.

And you just have your own frame of reference, Jesus, which is uh quite quaint and uh we we really uh hope for your sake catches on.

No, it's not at the category, it's not in the category of premises, it it uh just lies.

You know, this is um garbage.

And you can and so Jesus can't just say something to have this transformed in them, he shows them something.

Shows them something.

You know, how do you uh how do you unwind the garbage of a beer commercial?

You walk into a normal bar and you realize this is one of these things, these are not the same experience.

And the uh with this, he he shows them true greatness.

So they have to look at it.

But they realize it's not something that was over there, it's something that's that's it's been right here the whole time.

Our visions of greatness for ourselves, they're the of course the beer commercial that's seductive.

It's maybe there's there's this rest where finally everything will be settled, but it's elusive.

There's an image of your budget that it secures you.

This offers something like security to you.

There's the imagined career that fulfills you.

There's the sex that validates you.

There's your finally empty calendar that liberates you.

There's your finally full calendar, your perpetually full calendar that justifies you.

These are not propositions that you test for their truthfulness, these are whole ways of being, ways of operating that you look to and you say, Can I receive greatness from this?

I'm doing this for greatness.

And then in verse 36, and he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, Okay, what does Jesus do?

He takes a child, he puts them in the midst of them, and then he takes a child and he just puts them in his arms.

And Jesus just holds this child in front of them.

It's this picture of greatness.

In verse 37, he says, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me.

Children are just needs.

Children, picture children arguing among themselves for greatness.

And how do you hear that as an adult?

It's kind of harmless.

This just isn't actually a category that's available to them.

Children are are the absolute least.

You know what children contribute to society?

I can tell that some of you do.

Yeah, it's absurd.

How we kicked off the industrial revolution by having all those kids working in those factories.

I Children are just needs.

Just needs.

Looking at my six-week old, maybe right now.

Just needs.

And Jesus holds him.

And he says, when you receive this child.

And look at the look at it.

He says, whoever receives one such child and becomes a servant of one such child receives Jesus Himself, who is great and Jesus is not great.

And not just Jesus, but receives the Father who sent Jesus, the one who spoke the world into existence, who is great and the father is not great.

Who gets to define greatness?

What greatness is?

I saw this morning a post from Nine News that said in the last two overtimes of last night's game, Shador Sanders was the goat.

Now that's not true, because that stands for greatest of all time.

It's a superlative.

And he was not the greatest of all time then.

When we're talking about Jesus, we're talking about God the Father, receiving God.

What is greatness other than this?

And where is it that you lay your life down even for the least of these?

That's where greatness truly is.

And how can that be true?

Well, because it is what Jesus does.

Jesus comes in.

How is Jesus treating the disciples in this moment?

You know, of course he's submitting himself to this child, conforming himself to the child in comfort.

But how is he treating the disciples?

He doesn't even scold them.

He says, let me show you.

Let me show you what true greatness is.

He draws them close.

He's spending his time with them.

They're insufferable.

They're arguing back and forth constantly about these things that Jesus knows this is actual foolishness.

It'll lead to your death if you continue in it.

It's silly and strange.

And he endures them patiently.

He calls a child to himself.

Don't you see in the story the disciples, Jesus is holding the child, but he's holding the disciples?

And he's laying his life down in service to the child, but he will lay his life down in service to these foolish disciples.

That in his death they will be saved and loved and cherished, and he will draw them as useless as they are.

They were just fishermen.

Paul said, not many of you were great when you were called.

Not many of you were wise when you were called.

And yet you can participate in this unthinkable greatness, and it's right here.

You could see it in a child's face.

You could see it in the least of these, their face.

It's the love of God.

Well, how could you participate in that?

Well, because your whole garbage way of viewing the world that you used to be so easily deceived by, it doesn't work anymore.

Because you see Jesus, the who is greatness, all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to him.

And how is Jesus manifesting his greatness?

He holds the child.

When we see that, when we see that we are the ones that are held by him, like these children, we start to see there is a greatness available to us here in service and love to the least of these that is beyond anything I could be seduced by.

This is an utter reframing of our lives.

A complete reframing.

I hope that we can see it.

Alright, we're going to skip questions today.

And um uh so that we we have time for our baptism.

And uh uh we'll take this time now to move into communion.

In 1 Corinthians 11 23, Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

These same disciples arguing back and forth about their own greatness.

Jesus invites to a meal.

And he says, This bread is my broken body, which is broken for you.

This cup is my poured-out blood, which is poured out for you.

This is the new covenant.

It is the covenant of my grace, and I show my greatness to you, and that I lay myself down for you and make you servant of all.

Now, this is the pattern of the world: death and resurrection.

Participate in it.

We can trust him for his.

He has given it to us.

His life for ours.

Holy Father, we praise you for your loving kindness.

Lord, let us see this image of you holding sweetly the child who is able to gaze into your face.

The patience that you show towards the disciples as you show patience to a child.

Let us understand in our hearts that we receive that very patience.

And that the cheap wisdom, the moralistic manipulation that just is pushing us, pushing us on and puffing us up or crushing us in a garbage paradigm that seduces us, Lord, would we would we write those things off?

Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, boastful pride of life.

And Lord, might we see you holding the child and saying that if we do likewise we receive you and receive the Father.

Lord, let us be held by you that we might participate in that pattern of greatness.

Transform our imaginations, Lord.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.