If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
31 October. Matthew chapters 18-20
The section headings in some modern Bibles are not part of the original text, but a good guide. In the NRSV chapter 18 is headed “True Greatness”. That sounds like the title of a self-help book. What is the secret of being “truly great”? Obviously we are not talking about “Making America great again” or similar political claims. But what makes a great person?
As Shakespeare wrote, “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” But his character was thinking in human terms – greatness as fame, or wealth, or power. Some adults devote all their energies to achieving at least one of these, and few of us are completely immune to their temptations.
Jesus’ example of true greatness is that of young children. He does not immediately go on to explain that, but maybe he was contrasting children, presumably at an age (and in a culture without TV celebrities) when fame and wealth and power were of no concern to them, with the anxieties that drive adults to seek greatness in the wrong form. But he does go to great lengths to stress the enormity of the sin of “causing [a child] who believes in me to stumble”. That might include what we would now call child abuse, but Jesus was probably intending rather the sin of making a child aware too soon of the temptations of the world, including those of fame and power.
Further on in this reading (19:13-15) he repeats this in a different form: “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs”. That verse (with its older translation “Suffer the little children…”) is carved into many a Victorian church font. But the Victorian clergy marshalled the little children into Sunday School classes, taught them the Bible by rote, and in many cases probably also taught them to seek wealth and status in society. They may well have been just the stumbling blocks that Jesus warned about.
The following passage refers not to children but to young adults, in particular the young man who wanted to follow Jesus but felt unable to comply with Jesus’ instruction to “go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (19:21). In this respect, Jesus is not telling everyone they have to make themselves poor to be his followers. He is acting more like a wise spiritual director who discerns what is really going on in someone’s life – in this instance, a love of money preventing him from really engaging with Jesus’ teaching and ministry. Someone had, at some stage in this young man’s upbringing, “caused him to stumble” by giving him the impression that maturity is about seeking wealth and fame, rather than about finding who you really are and seeking God’s will for your life.
So for those of us who minister in churches that include children in the congregation (and a church that has none is in real trouble!) our task is to draw them to “come to Jesus” without being “stumbling blocks”. That will involve helping each child to find his or her own identity as a person and guide them along their own path to maturity and spiritual awakening. Along the way they will inevitably encounter the temptations to seek greatness in the world’s ways, but a Christian education is about equipping young people to seek a better path in life. It’s a tall order, but as Jesus warned, if we fail, it is we who will bear the burden of guilt.