A Community That Embodies Childlike Fearlessness

Matthew 18:1-9, Psalm 146:7c-10

Jesus 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.”

Not long after the Transfiguration, the disciples of Jesus bring him a question: In the kingdom of heaven, who will be the greatest? After seeing Jesus transfigured before their eyes, in conversation with Moses and Elijah, as they try to understand and process what they saw and heard, this is the question that they have for Jesus.

And the response of Jesus apparently goes in two different directions. He begins by saying that the greatest will be the one who is most like a child. Not the one with the most money, or the most accomplishments, or the greatest feats of heroism or generosity, but the one who is most like a child. Which is lovely. But then Jesus starts talking about millstones around the neck and cutting off your hand which all sounds rather frightening.

This of course mirrors the experience the disciples had on the mountain with Jesus – he is transfigured, shining with divine glory, which is lovely, and then the cloud overshadows them and a voice from heaven speaks, and the disciples are terrified. That frightening voice in the cloud says: This is my son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” In that moment, the only thing Jesus says to them is: Get up, and don’t be afraid. And now, in order for us to hear the lovely and the terrifying words of today’s gospel, the first thing I think we need to do is to listen to Jesus who begins, first and foremost, by telling us: Get up, and don’t be afraid.

Children, of course, don’t have a lot of the fear that we adults have. In a moment, of course, they can certainly experience fear and pain and sadness. But they do not yet have the experience or the imagination to know how bad things can really get. That’s why we don’t let children do certain things – play with matches, drive cars – because we worry that they don’t understand the risks very well. And so we let children enjoy their innocence and their joy – the time for worrying and being afraid will come for them soon enough, and until then they have the adults in their lives to watch out for dangers and threats.

Jesus says that to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must become like children again. We have to get up and not be afraid. The Transfiguration comes when Jesus has begun to teach his disciples about his coming crucifixion and resurrection, and the disciples’ initial reaction is to say no way. Crucifixion? Too scary. But Jesus was so secure in the Father’s love that nothing, not death, not humiliation, not even crucifixion, was frightening to him. And so it does not have to be frightening to us.

So we can hear the words: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return, and we do not need to be afraid. God is good, and even when our bodies have returned to the dust God’s love for us will not abandon us. If I have harmed someone else, let God tie a millstone to my sin and my self-centeredness and my unwillingness to change and throw it in the lake – God is good and wants to redeem me and all the wrong I have done, so I’m not afraid of confessing it and owning it and doing the work of repair. If it feels like getting a hand cut off or an eye ripped out, I’m not afraid. I’m not going to cling to what I want because God is good and what God wants for me is better than what I want.

God knows it’s not easy for us to have the innocence, the fearlessness, the trust of a child. But Jesus lived his life, right up to the end, with childlike trust in the One he called Father, and he invites us to try to do the same. As they know downstairs, children learn best in groups, watching and taking their cues from one another, and so we gather today and over these next forty days to practice being children – trusting, letting go of our anxieties and worries, learning to live for one another ever more fearlessly, being formed more deeply in the image of the One who made us and calls us into the childlike love of God.