Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change
and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Let’s think about that. Jesus says the only way we
can enter the kingdom of heaven is to become like little children. What’s
that mean? In what ways are you and I
supposed to become like little children?
It’s an important thing, after all. I think all of
hope to enter the kingdom of heaven. And here, Jesus tells us how to do
it. And yet, what he says seems really
backward, when you really think about it. I mean, one of the worst
insults you can give an adult is to say that they’re being childish. And even when we’re kids, that’s not always
what we want to be. It seems like there are so many things we cannot do
when we’re young. We want to be older,
so we can do more things. And yet, Jesus
says the only way we can enter the kingdom of heaven is to become like little
children.
Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about in our next
sermon series. What did Jesus mean when he said we should become like
little children. What qualities of
little children are we supposed to re-capture as adults so that we can enter
the kingdom of heaven, as we all want to do?
Jesus does tell us one thing. After the statement we
quoted, he says this: “whoever takes the lowly position of this child is
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
“The lowly position of this child.” That’s not how we
think of children, is it? We tend to say that children are really
important. But at the same time, little children are in a lowly position
in a lot of ways. There are a lot of things little kids cannot do for themselves. Little children are almost totally dependent
on their parents for the things they need.
I think that’s one of the ways Jesus wants us to be like
little children. Jesus wants us to be totally dependent on God.
We know that. And when we’re here, in church, we’ll
say it. We’ll talk about how we’re dependent on God. We’ll talk about how all good things come
from God. We’ll talk about how much we need God’s guidance and God’s love
and God’s blessings.
And then, too many times, we walk out of here and start
figuring out what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.
We start making our own decisions about everything, and leave God
completely out of the picture.
It’s human nature. At least, it is in our society.
We all want to be independent. One
of the founding documents of this country is The Declaration of Independence.
We all want to be able to take care of ourselves. We all want to figure things out for
ourselves. One of the hardest things in
the world for some of us to do is to admit that we need help. We want to
do it ourselves.
And that’s not always wrong.
There are times when that’s good. We certainly don’t want to just
sit around, doing nothing, while other people take care of us and do everything
for us. We all need to make a contribution, and sometimes that means
doing things for ourselves and being independent.
But
sometimes we get too hung up on this idea of independence. We try too
hard to be independent. We start feeling
like we don’t need anyone. Not only do we not need other people, we start
feeling like we don’t need God.
And maybe--speaking only in terms of earthly success--maybe
you don’t. I mean, we’ve all known people who don’t seem to have God in
their lives at all who seem to be extremely successful. You google
“famous atheists” and you’ll find lots of really famous and successful people
who claim to not have God in their lives at all. They claim to be totally
independent from God.
But that’s not what Jesus was talking about. Jesus
did not say that we need to believe in him to have earthly success. There
were lots of people in Jesus’ own time who did not believe in him and had
earthly success. The people who had Jesus killed were all people who were
successful on earth.
As
Christians, our goal is not to have earthly success. Don’t get me
wrong--I’m not saying earthly success is automatically a bad thing. I’d
like to have success on earth. But
earthly success does not mean anything unless we’re successful in a way that
reflects God’s will. The only way we can truly be a success in God’s eyes
is if we allow God to act through us.
That’s why we pray so often for God’s Holy Spirit to be poured out onto
us and into us--so that what we do will reflect God’s will, and so we will
allow God to act through us. Praying for God’s Holy Spirit to be poured
out onto us and into us is a way of declaring our dependence on God.
That’s what Jesus was talking about in our second reading,
the reading from the gospel of John. Listen to how he says it:
If you remain in me and I in
you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not
remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such
branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain
in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done
for you.
If we follow
Jesus Christ, and if we feel the Lord with us, leading us and guiding us--if,
in short, we’re dependent on God--we’ll be able to do all kinds of things for
God. But we cannot do anything for God on our own. If we want to accomplish things for God, we
need to stop trying to do things on our own.
We need to allow God to work in us and through us. We need to
declare our dependence on God.
And the thing is, God is just waiting for
us to do that. God is waiting for us to invite God, to ask God for help,
to allow God to act through us. God is waiting for us to declare our
dependence on God.
Those of you who have kids, have you ever
watched your kid, when they were little, struggle and struggle trying to figure
something out? You don’t just jump in and help them right away, do
you? You wait. Maybe you’d like to jump in and help them,
show them how to do it right, but you don’t. You wait. You wait until they actually ask for your
help. Then you give it to them.
But not before.
That’s what God does with us. God
watches us struggle with things. Sometimes God sees that we’re even
trying to serve God. But we’re struggling with it, trying to figure out
the best way to do it. God might like to jump in right away and help us,
show us what to do. But God does not do
that. God waits. God waits for us
to actually ask for God’s help. Then God
will give it to us. But not before.
You and I can do so much--if we allow God
to act in us and through us. If we depend on God. This church can do so much--if, as a church,
we allow God to act in us and through us. If, as a church, we depend on
God.
And we can enter the kingdom of heaven if
we depend on God. We may have earthly success, too. Or we may not. But again, as Christians, our goal is not to
have earthly success. Our goal is to follow God. Our goal is to serve God. We will never accomplish those goals
perfectly, because we’re flawed, imperfect people. But we will bear
fruit, just as Jesus aid we would. In
fact, we’ll bear more fruit than you and I could ever imagine, and we’ll bear
it in ways that we could never imagine.
This is our first worship service of 2019.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if 2019 is the year that everyone connected to
this church declares our dependence on God? Wouldn’t it be amazing if
2019 is the year when we truly do open our hearts and souls to God’s Holy
Spirit? Wouldn’t it be amazing if 2019
is the year when we all truly allow God to act in us and through us?
And don’t get me wrong, I need to do this,
too. I’m not up here pointing fingers at you. This is something I need to do at least as
much as anyone else.
But what do you think will happen if we
do? Can you even imagine it? I
don’t think I can. Because I think if we do this, God is going to do
things that we’re not even thinking about right now. I think, if we truly
allow God to lead us and guide us, and if we then go where God is leading us
and guiding us to go, God is going to take us in directions that are not even
on our radar screen right now. But I also think they’ll be awesome
directions, because we’ll be following an awesome God.
Little children are dependent on their
parents. As God’s children, we need to be dependent on our heavenly
father. If we are, we’ll enter the kingdom of heaven. And with God acting through us, we’ll accomplish
some pretty incredible things on earth, too.
May 2019 be the year we declare our
dependence on God.
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