It's Better?

Matthew 18:1-14

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of stumbling-blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling-block comes!

‘If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire.

‘Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

             I am nervous.  Next Sunday I am preaching an installation service in North Carolina.  I am nervous because I was told long ago that I was not a good match for the south, too blunt, too direct.  A southern Southern Baptist preacher once told me, he said, “Fred, you need to stay north my friend.”  If it weren’t an installation service I would not worry as much, but it is so I am nervous.

            Perhaps it was to hedge my bets, but what I came up with was three mini sermons.  So either their sum will be less offensive, or I will simply offend folks three time.  What I did was take three pericopes of Matthew, three readings and make them one. There is the declaration of the child as the greatest, the humility of the child is the greatest in the kingdom of God; and then, there is terrible teaching about hacking off appendages and plucking eyeballs, and the ever-lovely millstone around the neck so drown yourself; and, lastly, the parable of the lost sheep.

            On most Sundays I only preach from one pericope.  And each one of these has more than enough for one sermon.  I mean what preacher doesn’t love to linger with death threats and stumbling blocks— more than enough for a Sunday.  But what I noticed here when I looked at these three teachings is that Matthew himself smushes them together.  He puts them together.  The other gospel writers have similar teachings.  Mark has the declaration of the child and the warning, but not together.  And Luke puts the parable of the lost lamb with the lost coin and the prodigal.  In other words the ordering of the teachings here is intentional and specific.

            And there is another oddity.  As if once were not enough, the teaching about cutting off your foot and plucking out your eye is a repetition in Matthew.  Jesus already gave this instruction in his Sermon on the Mount.  So there is a curious doubling here, a kind of reinterpretation, or different application. 

            I still think I am just hedging my bets, but we will see.

            I am going to Shelby, North Carolina to install Drew Mangione.  I am sure the folks in Shelby all know the two stories I am going to tell about Drew.  But maybe his fame has not reached the wider presbytery yet.  Both are stories about humility.  One is a favorite.  I took Drew to lunch for a year.  Once a month we would gather at a diner and have a wide ranging conversation.  At the end of the year, I suggested that he go visit Princeton Seminary because he was such a great fit for ministry.

            Drew did as all those being called, he balked.  He hemmed and demurred about his lack of qualifications and inability to imagine someone like himself going to a seminary.  I let him exhaust his doubts and said, “look, maybe you’re right.  But let’s just consider for a moment the question of qualifications.  You are a journalist, so you know how to write; you were the chief of staff for a state senator, so you understand constituency and power; and you are now a fund developer for a growing non-profit helping the poor and the hungry.  Drew, I don’t if anyone could be more qualified than you!”

            The other story is not about Drew per se, but about someone he worked for.  I invited Senator Aubertine to come and speak at a leadership breakfast.  And when he rose to speak to the crowd what he said has stayed with me ever since.

            "Our local township was a mess," he began.  "Things weren’t getting done, projects were neglected, services poorly managed.  I thought how hard can this be?  This is small township that needs some basic services, surely any idiot can do this. So I ran for office and won.  After my election and much to my dismay, I soon discovered this was hard and very complicated.  Next, I got frustrated with the county.  Here was something obviously in need of simple management but it is not getting it.  Any fool could run the county; they only do a couple of things.  So I ran and won.  Again, much to my surprise running a county is difficult and very complicated.

            Being an extremely slow learner after looking at the way the state was being run, I thought again, how hard can this be?  Well, it turns out, it is extremely hard, and complicated doesn’t begin to match its complexity."

            I love these stories of humility.  I love them because they not only define what humility is, but what it isn’t.  Most of the time when we think of humility and children, we might be tempted to think simplicity, naivete, or purity even.  But humility is not about these.  In fact, humility is the opposite.  Humility is when you see and are challenged, humbled, by the complexities of life.  Like the slow learning senator, it was complexity that humbled him.

            In a similar fashion to its definition, the temptation we face in humility is not obvious either.  Most folk, I believe, would consider rudeness, or arrogance, or boastfulness as antonyms of humility or meekness.  And they are certainly an opposite direction, juxtaposed, but arrogance and rudeness and boastfulness are not the true temptation to stumble in humility. I don’t believe so.

            I gave this a lot of thought and in the end, it was the repetition of Matthew that held the key to the potential stumbling block in humility.  In the Sermon of the Mount, when Jesus speaks of hacking off both hands and feet, as well as plucking out eyeballs, the temptation is clear, lust, desire.  Jesus said, "before you heard it said, don’t commit adultery but I say to you don’t lust.  And if you do . . .", well you know.  And by the way, just as an aside, for any who love the literal interpretation of scripture, who are devoted to a wooden reading of the gospel where “if the bible says it is it must be so” this is a real tough one.  Lot of folks get pretty metaphorical here really fast.  And no boy would ever make it out of junior high able to play basketball with this teaching.

            What is clear with lust is not as clear with humility until we consider the idea of complexity, the lesson Senator Aubertine struggled with so much.  There is a temptation we face to reject the complexity of life, ignore it, and demand the answers be simple, pure, unaware. 

And I get it. 

            This is where I start to get nervous.  I am tempted here to wade into the complex waters of our life together so to demonstrate the temptation.  There will undoubtably be folk who find such questioning offensive. For instance, for fifty years the church has debated when does life begin.  Now we are venturing into the question of when does the freedom of a woman end.  For fifty years we debated what makes marriage legal, authentic; what does it mean to be blessed by God?  Now we will have to do the same with love. The temptation is to turn away.

            I find love and freedom to be very complex, so complex I am humbled by them.  Humbled and tempted to look for easy answers, simple answers, answers that are not messy, clean. 

            A few years back I was watching television with my grandson, Dmitri.  We call him DT.  We were watching Dinosaur Train.  It is a cartoon story of young dinosaurs who are exploring the world around them.  Making mistakes, getting into trouble, learning important life lessons all the while riding on a train.  After a time I asked my grandson, “DT boy, I like this show, but I am not sure I understand how it is that dinosaurs ride on a train.  How is that?”  Dmitri spun around and looked me in the eye and said, “Gramp, it’s complicated.” And with that he returned his five year old gaze to the dinosaurs on the train.

            Friends, I put before you the essence of humility as only a child can provide, “it’s complicated.”  In the coming years I am quite concerned that in the face of very complicated questions, very complex issues of love and freedom, choice and identity, we will be tempted by very simple answers, we will be tempted to cast humility aside and boast of our surety rather. 

Or we will be tempted to find a place of silence.  When public schools are privatized and then segregated once again, the church may become mute, not wanting to become political.  When every election becomes contested and every official harassed by threats, the church may be tempted to seek a place of purity and keep our sanctuaries free from the mess of the world.  In seeking to not offend, we cause even greater misery.

Having preached for a while now and sat through presbytery meeting after presbytery meeting, I can only suggest that humility does not always win the day.

The last lesson is the one for which I am truly nervous.  My interpretation is more of a prayer than it is an exegesis.  My prayer is that Drew in Shelby, North Carolina will be blessed with the love of a congregation that will go out and find him when he is lost.  Pastors today, if they are worth their salt, and Drew is certainly one, pastors are heading into very murky, complex waters; the complicated nature of our questions makes it easy to get lost.  How does our faith inform us, how does the Holy Spirit challenge us, to cast aside old definitions, simple answers, wooden theology, how does this happen without getting lost in a time of such change?  It’s one thing for dinosaurs to be on a train, but it is quite another for them to be in the pulpit.

I have been blessed with good folk who have gone looking for me when there were just too many rabbits to chase; I have been loved by elders and deacons, widows and the dying who have tenderly brought my feet back to the ground, who have whispered, “we are over here; come on.  We’re over here.”  This is my prayer for Drew, that when he is the lost lamb of the parable, good folk will go and find him.

It's a prayer because it is not a guarantee.  When you read the parable of the lost lamb and listen to Jesus ask, well, who wouldn’t go out and find the lost, the first answer is not the right one.  Our first answer is a trap.  Anyone would go; we would all go; who wouldn’t, right?  Well, no.  In fact, it is much easier to stay with the herd.

And this is the dicey part of the sermon.  You see for a pastor to navigate the waters today, to do so with humility, that means a fair amount of confusion, that means you risk the assurance you held to this point, you question the answers you hold most dear.  For that is the challenge of humility: to lay aside the simple for the complex, to see our clarity as false, naïve even.  And it might just be I am not that bright, but I get pretty confused here. 

We are tempted today to let the confused wander off, cut our losses.  If someone is not in our tribe, someone has profoundly different definitions of freedom, of choice, of love, of gender, well, it might just be better to let that one go.  It might be better.  Right? It is very tempting today to discard those we see as confused.

In the coming years pastors will need to be willing to risk confusion, to question and listen much more than rant and declare.  For Drew to face the “living of this hour” he’s gonna get confused because he is guided by love and humility and trust.  I pray that when that happens good people will go out and find him and gently say, “hey, we’re over here.  Come home my friend.”  Amen.