Listen

S. Pentecost 15.26 Matt. 18:1-20

‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them…’

Such a long gospel reading, with so much going on! Without my newly expanded lectionary study group helping (and thanks to all of you for joining me Wednesday evening and Thursday morning) I would not have seen the connection. But it really is all about this last famous verse. Jesus is not found where 2 or 3 million or billion are gathered in some huge Imperial Institution that calls itself “Christian” or “Catholic” or “Lutheran”…

No!—even though most all the world thinks that Jesus only hangs out in the Imperial edifices of bureaucratic Christendom.

The truth is tucked away in that shocking little parable in the middle of our Gospel reading today. Jesus doesn’t give a rat’s ah… er, fig for 99% of Christendom—the Pope and his minions, or the Ecumenical Patriarch and his fractious followers, or the hordes of nondenom prosperity ever after growth, or the crumbling Protestant bureaucracies of America.

No; Jesus is not found there, though his disciples are often found there, in those raggedy corners where the old liturgy is going on as the apostles handed it on and some incidental witness the the Gospel is given. But Jesus is not found there, no…

As he says plainly: it’s only where 2 or 3 (not 2 or 3 million or billion, let the reader understand!) are gathered in his name—there he is found in their midst.

But 2 or 3…what, exactly? Who are the 2 or 3? and how would we recognize them? More importantly how would we BECOME THEM!??? And that is the question these 20 verses answer in slightly divergent but connected ways…

The end wraps back around to the beginning of this pericope. The 2 or 3 are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven! They are the disciples (I think the 12, paradigmatically, but also the whole entourage, the 120 or so following Jesus around like Deadheads of the ‘70s, the Apostles & Co. The rite crowd and no crowding!

They are much maligned, the 12, for always asking Jesus: “who is the greatest?” and arguing among themselves which of them was the greatest. It is fashionable to mock them for this. I’ve done it in homilies over the years and in my increasingly lengthy unpublished manuscript “Humility and How I Achieved It”. Hint: I achieved humility by not being like the 12—so greedy for greatness!

But recently, I’ve been wondering 1) maybe I haven’t actually achieved humility at all? Maybe boasting of how humble I am and writing a guidebook on it keeps me from it? 😉 and 2) Maybe chasing greatness as the apostles did is actually not a vice but is at the very core of their great virtue—and something we should chase with all our heart, mind and soul, ourselves? 😉

This is a somewhat recent insight, but it has led me to set aside the manuscript of “Humility and How I Achieved It” and start on a new essay tentatively titled “Chasing Greatness”. Because I’ve noticed something looking at the 3 pericopes (of which this Gospel is the first) where the disciple argue/inquire about who is the greatest that: Jesus never does CHASTISE them for this—for chasing greatness!?

Even though nearly all commentators take it as a an undeniable truth that Jesus rebukes them for chasing greatness, I can’t see where he does! This is especially clear in Luke’s account of the Lord’s Supper when the apostles are arguing about who is greatest, that Jesus never does say: “Stop it! You should try to be humble, like me!”

No, what he says—and gently, I think, with a smile, is that: the kings of the Gentiles exercise authority by lording it over everyone, and are called “benefactors” for this. But not so, Jesus says! Rather the greatest is as the youngest, as a little child a παιδιον in Greek as in our text today which is literally an infant, a babe in arms—and the leader is the one who serves, the one whose service is indispensable as the LORD’s service to us is—he is the greatest.

And instead of rebuking them for the question, Jesus points them in the right direction when he says very gently and kindly “You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I will to you, as my Father willed to me, a Kingdom; that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.”

Which sound pretty great to me!

Also today, in our Gospel, when they ask who is the greatest, he sets small child—a baby or at most a toddler—in their midst and says: “unless you may be turned (not as all English translation render it “unless you turn” it’s an aorist passive subjunctive “unless you may be turned” not something you do but something done to you by the Father! you will never even enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

It is the babes in arms, totally dependent on their Father who are great. Because when we are nothing in ourselves, and Christ is everything in us, then we’re getting somewhere GREAT! It’s a paradox but only kinda. It’s the Jedi lesson that real power is not wielding your own strength, but letting the Force flow through you and move you and mold you in whatever direction it’s blowing, not unlike the Holy Spirit, perhaps?

It’s not the 99 sheep who need no Shepherd, but it’s the one lost lamb that Jesus cares about and chases and gathers to himself and who depends entirely on his grace and mercy, not doing anything herself, but simply receiving everything from Jesus her Shepherd.

And anyone who scandalizes this one lost lamb Jesus is really going to mess up! They are in for one hell of a time in the End!

Here’s the difference between lost lambs who belong to Jesus and the found who don’t: when the lost sin (and remember from last week what sin is? Sin is unbelief!) So when the lost lose touch with Jesus like sinking Simon Bar-Jonah 😉 they cry out “LORD, save me!” And when we see a brother sinking like ‘Stone’, we warn, a couple times, tell it to the church and if they don’t say “Lord, save me!” they show themselves heathens and hedge… er, tax collectors, and we leave ‘em alone lest they drag us down too…

What the Church needs now is more shunning, maybe? 😉

So, to conclude: the 2 or 3 with whom Jesus is found are the little children, the lost lambs who depend entirely on him and agree with each other on THIS: that only receiving everything from JESUS, eating and drinking at his table as beggars after all, do we—in our lost aloneness—find true GREATNESS in the arms of our Shepherd Jesus who…

Does not send us out to achieve humility, but entices and encourages us to always be chasing the Greatness that is found in his love, his suffering and dying alone; and Peace, surpassing understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.