Harbor Church - Mid City

Investigating Jesus—On Greatness

Lk. 9: 44-51 Mid-City March 6, 2011

Let me ask you a question.  What do Muhammed Ali, the wicked queen in Snow White, and Jesus’ disciples have in common?  They all wanted to be the greatest.  Muhammed Ali was the self-proclaimed greatest boxer in the world, and, for a time, he was indeed the greatest.  The wicked queen in Snow White wanted to be the fairest, the most beautiful in the world.  This disciples wanted to know who was going to be the greatest disciple in the whole world.  When we get our cabinet posts when you come into your kingdom Jesus, who are you going to appoint vice president.  And what Jesus does in our text is that he gives them a lesson on greatness. 

Notice he doesn’t say, “Don’t pursue greatness.”  Some Christians seem to shy away from greatness, either b/c they are lazy or because they are fond of false humility.

Think with me how crazy it is not to pursue greatness.  Imagine that you are one of the guys who lines the streets with the yellow marks.  Ever seen those trucks.   What if you were on the job and your boss came up to you and said, “You know, I can’t really figure out your work.  I was inspecting the street you just lined and it is perfectly straight, but then about every quarter of a mile, there is a little zig-zag in the road.  If it only happened once, then I could understand.  Maybe something comes in front of you and you swerve, but this seems almost intentional.”  And you respond, “Oh it is intentional.  I don’t want you to think too highly of me.  I am afraid you will start praising me to others and I like to be humble.  I don’t like others bragging about me.”  So your boss says, “Well, let me help you with your humility.  You’re fired.  That should help.” 

You should do great work and pursue a great life.  Jesus, here, redefines what we think of as greatness. And he does it by taking a sledgehammer to their old notion of greatness, giving them a logo for kingdom greatness, and then giving them a vehicle for kingdom greatness. And I am going to try to help unpack this lesson by looking at it from 3 different angles:

First, the sledgehammer of worldly greatness.

Remember, the disciples have just witnessed greatness.  They saw God reveal the greatness and glory of Jesus on the Mountain, then they saw Jesus heal a boy possessed by a demon.  Then in V44 in the midst of wonder and awe, Jesus drops a bomb.  Talk about the ultimate buzz kill.  The disciples are whooping it up, raising the roof, music blaring and they are basking in the glory of Jesus coming into His own.  His political campaign for glory and power are, in their mind, taking shape.   And then Jesus goes over to the stereo, turns the knob all the way down to zero, and all the disciples, at one moment look over and he says sternly, v44, “Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you:  The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.”  But they did not understand what this meant.  It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.

Haven’t you been where the disciples are before.  Clueless.  And a little afraid to admit it. I was in that position this week.  I was with a bunch of missionaries at a missions conference and one from the middle-east was throwing out acronyms like he was in the military and he just assumed everyone else knew what he was talking about.  Kinda like how most of you who are non-Christians feel when you go in a church and here all this Christian insider jargon thrown around.  This guy was talking about ministry to muslims and he kept saying MBB and TCKs.  And you know how you sorta wonder, “Am I the only one in this room who doesn’t know what an MBB or a TCK is?”  Then I saw somebody else with the same problem lean over and give it one of these, “What is MBB?”  And the other person whispered, “Muslim background believer.”  Then another, and I knew I wasn’t alone, “What is a TCK?”  “third culture kids.”  Why of course?  Third culture kids—I had to google that one even when I knew what it stood for.

  That is the scenario here.  Jesus has just turned the music down, gotten really stern with them, and told them something that they know should mean a great deal to them b/c it obviously means a great deal to Jesus, and they don’t have a clue but are too embarrassed to ask.

Then, to make matters worse, v46.   When they got alone they started this argument about who would be the greatest.  We know that they didn’t have this conversation around Jesus because Mark tells us this when he recounts the story.  They talked about this on the Capernaum Road and Jesus catches up to them and says, “Hey, what were you guys talking about back there?”  And I guarantee you this is what they did, even though it isn’t printed.  They immediately all look down and start drawing in the sand with their sandals b/c they were embarrassed.  A few of them probably started whistling.  Busted.  They knew this wouldn’t go well for them.

Jesus brings a little child over.  And says, “Here is the answer to which one of you will be the greatest.  This little child. Why?  Why a child?  What is it about a child that provides the show-and-tell lesson that Jesus is looking for on greatness.  Well, let me take you back to the 1^st century world.  See in the 1^st century, kids had absolutely no swag.  Can you tell I have been hanging around college students this week?  I keep hearing college students use that term, swag.  Swagger, in America, comes from being somebody.  Accomplishments.  Stuff.  Beauty.  Power.  Influence.  Little bling, bling.  Degrees, credentials.  When you show up, people notice you are there. 

You couldn’t be any more swagless than a kid in the 1^st century.  No clout, no voice, no importance, no rep.  Kids were to be seen, not heard.  Parents weren’t drawing sketches of their kids on papyrus and constantly talking about how great their kids were.  No.  Kids existed to make the family better.  To work the farm and provide for the family. 

So, the reason Jesus brings a child in is because a child would shatter all of their preconceived notions that greatness was built on the back of merit.  That is what they thought.  That is what their culture told them.  If you want to be great, earn it.  See, a child, better than any other object, would help them see that in the kingdom of God, greatness grows in the soil of God’s grace, not merit.  That being great is about pressing into the grace of Jesus.  It has nothing to do with ministry accomplishments.  See the disciples are still saying, “Jesus, how do my ministry accomplishments stack up with Peters?  I drove out 6 demons last week, had a little trouble with the demon in that boy standing in front of you, but I was hoping you were going to overlook that b/c I healed 4 people the previous week and saw 4 people get saved.

Jesus says, “Stop.  Look.  You have the wrong grading scale.  And that little kid will help you realize it because I know you think you are better than him.  But, you aren’t.  There is only one great man, and I am He.  I am the way, the truth, and the life of greatness.  And true greatness is only found in me.  And until you get grace, and preach grace, and live graciously, you’ll never be great.  See greatness, according to Jesus, isn’t earned, it is received.

See this is the same exact lesson he laid out in Mt. 11 with a religious crowd who didn’t get grace.  He says, “Look, John the Baptist, you know him, he is the greatest man ever born of woman.  Not Moses, not David, Not Abraham.  That dude out their in the desert with bugs stuck in his teeth from his locust dinner last night, that dude who wears the same outfit that he got from the Salvation Army thrift store everyday, that dude who smells.  He is the greatest dude every born of a woman.  And then there is this remarkable place in Mt. 11:11 where Jesus puts the cherry on the top of the grace of greatness and says, “yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”  What???

The least, the one who knows he is a sinner and calls out and receives my greatness.  He is greater than than greatest dude ever born of woman b/c I am with Him.  My greatness is all over Him.

See the child here is a grace sledgehammer to the disciples house of merit.  The least in your whole world, a child, is a greater than John the Baptist, than Moses, than Abraham—b/c the least, the low, they are in me.  They are covered with my greatness. 

(2) Logo of Greatness

But there is another reason Jesus brings a child over.  It isn’t just to break up your old house of merit, but it is also to give you a logo for greatness. I am no marketing expert, but I have spent some time around marketers and graphic designers who tell me that when you are designing your logo that, if possible, you want that image to convey a message that tells the story of your company.  Jesus says gimme that kid.  That gangly little one with disheveled hair, with dirt all over him and holes in his jeans.  Yeah, perfect.  There is my logo. 

And the caption below him is v48.  This is the tag line: v48  “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me.”  He uses the word welcome.  This is the word for hospitality.  So his answer to their question of who will be the greatest is this, “Whoever performs acts of hospitality to the very ones that you think are supposed to perform acts of hospitality to you.”  Children were supposed to be servants; he says you serve the servants.

Go low.  That is where greatness is found.  That is where you’ll find me.  Among the poor, the broken, the kids, the servants, the busboys.  Go low

Ann Voskamp put it this way.  I do hope your going to read this book—it is changing me, helping me live a more joyful life.  Helping me in my pursuit of a great life.  Ann says, “It is the joy of small that makes life large.”  Joy of going low, becoming like a little child, serving the servants.

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it.” G.K. Chesterton.  That is why you need the poor, the swagless, to become smaller and, as a result, to watch your life explode with greatness.

FB Meyer put it this way "I used to think that God's gifts were on shelves one above the other and that the taller we grew in Christian character, the more easily we should reach them. I find now that God's gifts are on shelves one beneath the other and that is not a question of growing taller, but of stooping lower and that we have to go down, always down to get His best ones."

Go low.  If you want to be great, go low.  I had the privilege of spending some time with Sam Metcalf who is living a great life and leading an organization to go low.  He leads Church Resource Ministries and he told me a story about one of his friends who got this, who kept stooping lower.  He was a 27 year old Palestinian.  He came out of a militant muslim background and met Jesus.  He then knew that he was called to take Bibles into militant, muslim occupied terrirory and Sam was walking to him and said, “You know that is really dangerous, right?”  And he said, “Sam, I would have blown myself and others up for something that was false;  do you think I am not willing to die for something that is true.  I have met Jesus Sam.  He is great and true.”  And then, after this conversation, Sam said he headed off with the Bibles and he didn’t make it back.  Greatness, going low, serving those who are without the word of God. 

Mother Teresa lived a great life.  Let me tell you a story about a woman who knew that greatness was about going low.  See one day she knelt beside a man lying in the gutter of a Calcutta street. His eyelids flickered; his breath came in gasps. He was so thin his ribs looked like a bird cage. The small woman wearing the white sari with blue stripes knew the man was dying.

2) “Taxi!” she called in Hindi. When a taxi stopped, she said, “Take me to the hospital with this man – quickly.” The taxi driver took one look at the man’s diseased body and drove off without them. After several more tries, Mother Teresa gave up and borrowed a wheelbarrow from a workman. She lifted the lying man into the wheelbarrow and wheeled him to the nearest hospital.

3) But the hospital wouldn’t take him, either. “We can do nothing for him,” they said. “We only have room for people who might get better.”

4) Mother Teresa shook her head sadly and took the man home with her. “No one should die alone and unloved,” she told the other Missionaries of Charity. “We need a home where the very ill can die in peace.” She went to city officials and asked help in funding someplace to care for the dying. They showed her some rooms that travelers had used who came to visit the Temple of Kali, a Hindu goddess. The rooms were filthy and needed cleaning, but Mother Teresa immediately accepted. But some of the neighbors were angry. They thought a Catholic missionary was corrupting their Hindu temple. One day a group of tough young men blocked Mother Teresa’s way. “If you don’t leave, we will kill you!” they threatened. Mother Teresa shrugged. “If you kill me, I will just get to heaven sooner,” she said. Puzzled that she wasn’t afraid, the young men backed off.

6) But still the neighbors complained. They sent a policeman into the Nirmal Hriday to kick out the nuns. The policeman strode into the Home for the Dying, ready to do his job. As he looked around the first room, he saw two young women gently washing the dirt from an old man just off the street. Another woman was feeding a feeble man who could hardly swallow. She had to try many times.

7) “Don’t you get tired?” the policeman asked her

“How can I get tired?” she smiled. “This is Jesus in a distressing disguise.”

Nearby another woman was tenderly stroking the face of a man with sores all over his body. The man lifted his eyes to the policeman. “I have lived like an animal on the street,” he whispered hoarsely, “but I die like an angel, loved and cared for.”

8) The policeman finally found Mother Teresa. She was carefully picking maggots from an open wound in a man’s face, talking soothingly to him the whole time. Turning on his heel, the policeman went back outside. “I will throw out these nuns,” he said glaring at the complaining neighbors, “when your mothers and sisters take their place and do what they’re doing for people who are dying.”

If you welcome one of the least, you welcome Jesus.  Go low, and you’ll meet Jesus. What if we, as a church, go low together.  So much so that city officials start saying to secular and religious folks about us what they said about the Mother Teresa and her nuns.  Think about how much glory and fame Jesus could get.

But you know what will keep us from doing so.  Taking our eyes off Jesus and putting them on to others.  That is what John did.  Immediately after this lesson on the greatness of going low, John says, “Master, we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.”  “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.” 

John says, “Jesus, he isn’t one of us.  This guy probably doesn’t even baptize babies, Jesus.  This guy probably only submits to 4 of the 5 points of Calvinism Jesus.  .  Jesus says stop—he is on our team.  He is doing ministry in my name.

But before you try to straighten Jesus out on this one and get him to be a little more theologically precise, just  take his advice.  Go low.  Get among the lowly and serve them in the name of Jesus.  And let your theology take root among the least of these.  But how?

(3) The vehicle

Well, fortunately, the vehicle of greatness is Jesus.  See, friends, that is what Jesus did.  His whole life.  He descended from heaven and the word became flesh, in some straw and hay, and who was there to celebrate.  Some cows and chickens and shepherds.  And he just kept going low, hanging out with all the wrong people, people with no swag, seemingly going nowhere.  And, then, the ultimate descent.  Look at the gospel of v51, “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out to Jerusalem.”  He resolutely went down to Jerusalem.  Nothing could shake him or deter him from his descent down to the cross that waited for him on a hill just outside Jerusalem, where he would serve sinners like you and me by taking our sin upon himself.  And he just kept going low, as low as anyone can ever go, which is why we say, “he descended into hell,” on our behalf.  But how does the next part of the creed go: on the 3^rd day, he rose again from the dead and now gives himself to the lowly, to those who confess their sin and confess their need for his grace, his greatness to come into their life.  Don’t you see, He is your hope to go low.  He is the power because He did it.  He went as low as anyone has ever gone and

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