Scripture Matthew 18:10-14
[Jesus said,] “See to it that you do not treat one of these little ones with contempt. * I say to you all that their angels in the heavens see the face of my Abba who is in the heavens all day [every day]. What do you all think? If a person had one hundred sheep and one of them wandered off, would they not leave the ninety-nine on the mountain and go in search for the one that wandered off? If they find it, truly I tell you all, that they rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine who did not wander off. In the same way, it is not the will of your Abba who is in the heavens that one of these little ones should be lost.”
Sermon
Good morning again, and welcome to worship out in God’s beautiful world! Welcome to a place where we find our wisdom for living in the world in the year 2026 from texts that are nearly two thousand years old.
There are three timelines that matter, for our understanding of today’s story.
· The first is the timeline of Jesus, approximately the year 30 CE, when he walked the earth teaching, healing, and feeding people wherever he went.
· The second is the timeline of the gospel of Matthew being committed to papyrus, what they used for paper in the late first century. That timeline is somewhere between the years 80 and 90 CE—fifty to sixty years after the crucifixion. This timeline includes all that was happening in the still-new church at that time.
· The third is our timeline, the year 2026 CE, in the United States, in the Southern Tier of New York, gathered as the church, the body of Christ, here in this pavilion, where we can touch grass and smell the trees.
Why are we revisiting this idea of the timelines? Well, something happens in this week’s reading that make those timelines relevant. Something sneaks into Matthew’s recounting of the story of Jesus that clues us in to what was going on in the church in his day, 50-60 years after Jesus walked the earth.
We pick up almost exactly where we left off last week. We’re still in the 18th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, and Jesus is still talking about the little ones. Now, last week, we recognized the little ones as children. Last week we listened as Jesus insisted that his disciples need to become like children if they wanted to be on the same page as Jesus, and love and learn the way God calls us to love and learn.
This morning, just a few verses later, Jesus is still giving his followers warnings about how to treat little ones. But now, the understanding of who the little ones are has shifted. Jesus says,
“See to it that you do not treat one of these little ones with contempt.” (Matt. 18:10)
This seems like an odd thing for Jesus to say about children. Why would anyone treat children with contempt? In that era, people were more likely to ignore children, think of them as less important. But contempt means a strong feeling of dislike or disrespect, the idea that someone or something is worthless, beneath you. Why would anyone think of children like that?
* If you’re following along in your bible, you may now notice something odd and interesting: I’ve just read verse 10. The newer translations skip directly to verse 12. No verse 11, unless you’re reading the King James version, where they have wisely left verse 11 in place. If verse 11 had been left in, here’s what this would say:
“See to it that you do not treat one of these little ones with contempt, for the Son of Man came to save the lost.” (Matt. 18:10-11) And that’s our clue. Jesus is no longer talking about children. Here and elsewhere, Jesus uses “little ones” to refer to those who are new in the faith—even new disciples.
Now, remember what was happening in the early church, which had begun with Jesus’s original followers—all children of Abraham, which is to say, those whom today would call themselves Jews. But somewhere along the way, the Way of Jesus began to attract people who were not children of Abraham. The church began to attract Gentiles, who came to following Jesus from a very different system of beliefs and practices that included the worship of multiple gods, and temple sacrifices, and rituals foreign to Jews and Christians alike.
This is another definition of “little ones.” And, the truth is, those who had the Old Testament scriptures written on their hearts didn’t necessarily welcome those whose previous practices they found offensive. According to the gospel of Matthew, at first, Jesus was one of those people. Earlier in the gospel, in chapter 15, we read about an encounter Jesus has with a Gentile woman.
Just then a Canaanite woman … came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But [Jesus] did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ~Matthew 15:22-26
Jesus casts out countless demons in the gospels. He has empowered his disciples to cast out demons. If the number of times it is mentioned is any indicator, this was an enormous phenomenon. Today we might wonder whether those demons were some kind of mental health crisis, or epilepsy, or some other neurological illness. Or, we may conclude, demons were, in fact, more prevalent in that time and place. Whatever the incidents were, Jesus usually provided relief, and restoration. Jesus usually provided healing.
And yet, a Canaanite woman, not a daughter of Abraham, approaches Jesus because demons are plaguing her daughter. And Jesus’s initial responses shock me. First, he ignores her. Then, prodded by the disciples, he gives her a reason why he’s not healing her daughter: She isn’t a part of his tribe. Then the woman throws herself on his mercy: she kneels in front of him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he replies: It’s not fair to give the children’s food to the dogs.
It’s almost unbelievable to hear Jesus speak to someone like that—someone in need, someone asking for something he does on a routine basis. It’s not a side of Jesus we want to see. And throughout the years this has often been interpreted as Jesus testing the woman. But Jesus doesn’t play tricks on people. It’s entirely out of character for him to play at refusal, testing someone’s faith.
The woman’s final appeal is to remind Jesus: Even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table. She is saying, if we are dogs, then give us your crumbs.
And something in Jesus softens. Something in him changes, opens up. He has a change of heart. Jesus praises the woman’s faith and sends her home to a daughter healed. Even Jesus initially rejects people from outside his faith. After this, his heart open to outsiders, he heals all comers, whatever their origins.
And here is what he has to say, several chapters later, about those he now affectionately calls “these little ones.”
“See to it that you do not treat one of these little ones with contempt, for the Son of Man came to save the lost. I say to you all that their angels in the heavens see the face of my Abba who is in the heavens all day every day.”
Jesus tells his followers that these little ones, these outsiders, have angels protecting them who are also in the presence of God, the Holy One. And then he tells the most famous parable of the New Testament, the parable of the lost sheep.
If a shepherd had a hundred sheep and one of them wandered off, wouldn’t they leave the ninety-nine on the mountain and go in looking the one that wandered off? If they find it, don’t you believe, that they’ll rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine who did not wander off? And he concludes: In the same way, it is not the will of our Abba, our Father, that even one of these little ones should be lost.
It is a small story with big implications.
Each person matters, Jesus insists. Each person—even, maybe especially, those from outside the tribe, the outsiders. And this is nothing new within Jesus’s faith. Throughout the Old Testament, three groups of people are named, repeatedly, as being in special need of the care of the community: These are widows, orphans, and outsiders, whether they be outsiders by way of immigration or by way of another faith. It is the will of God, our Abba in heaven, that not one of these little ones should be lost.
Three timelines. We see what happened in Jesus’s ministry that opened his heart to outsiders. We see how Matthew reminded the people in the early church that Jesus, like them, initially rejected outsiders, but ultimately, cherished them, and described them as having special protection from God. As for us, in our day? We are called to open our hearts and lives and sanctuaries and food pantries to all God’s children, whatever their origin. We are called to remember that God entrusts us all into one another’s care. And we are called to celebrate those differences that might seem to divide us, but in reality, remind us that we are all God’s children, each and every one of us.
Thanks be to God. Amen.