Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

As A Child - October 4, 2009

As A Child

10:13-16 October 4, 2009

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

Well, once again, the apostles get the bad press. This is where Jesus is being surrounded by all kinds of people when some parent tries to bring her little child for Jesus to simply touch her with His blessing. The apostles close ranks around Jesus to keep the parent and child away. When Jesus notices this He really lets the apostles have it with both barrels. This is the only place in the entire Bible where it is said that Jesus was indignant. As in really ticked off. He warns the apostles to never ever stand between Him and a child. He fires one more shot at anyone who is listening when He says that no one will ever enter the Kingdom of heaven unless they come with the faith of a child. Then he picks up the child and blesses her.

So the apostles come off as jerks. Again. I feel a need to balance the case against them just a bit.

Three times that I know of I have crossed paths with the President’s Secret Service. Since they’re secret I suppose it’s possible that I’ve have crossed paths with them more than that. Three times I learned lessons when I was around these people. The first time I learned to never reach inside my coat to retrieve a comb. On a second occasion I learned to not look at them through a binoculars. And the third time I learned to not stand in the way of a KGB limousine when it’s carrying the wife of the President of the Soviet Union. THAT gets the attention of BOTH American and Soviet secret service people. They all wear black glasses. They all carry submachine guns. And none of them have a sense of humor.

And I don’t care WHO you think you are, and I don’t care HOW cute your little child is, but you are NOT ever, ever getting past these people for the President to touch your child with his blessing. It just ain’ta gonna happen, folks. But I’m also fairly certain that if the President did just happen to notice his people tussling with a parent with a child, the President more than likely would intervene to give a very special welcome to that parent and child. If nothing else, a really good photo op.

Now I can easily imagine this happening with Jesus and the apostles. He was always being hounded by the crowds, even to the point of having to step off the shore and preach from a boat! More than once He snuck away to the other side of the sea to just have some peace and quiet with the Father. So now He returns to His home village and the same thing is crowding in on Him again. What would the natural reaction be of the apostles? To close ranks around Him to protect the Master. That’s what I myself would have done. It is entirely possible that the apostles were doing nothing different than the President’s detail, doing their best to DO their best.

And their best was not good enough. In fact, it turned out to be a real goof.

I point this out because this is exactly what we ourselves experience so much of the time. There is a category of sin that may actually account for most of our mistakes, our sins, our offenses. These are the things we do wrong when we are doing our very best to do things right. These are the offenses we don’t even know we’ve done. There are a whole lot of us who have hurt people the most when we have been totally unaware of it.

THIS is why we need what only Jesus can do. Since we often do our worst when we are trying to do our best, we need to be saved from ourselves by One who saves: a Savior. Since we cannot unring the bells we strike, we need to be forgiven by the only One who has the authority to secure our pardon, no one less than the Son of God himself who has done this by paying the bill for our damages by sacrificing himself on the Cross.

And so what ARE we to DO? Certainly we are to do our best according to what we understand what God wants us to do. But as we do so we are to always be conscious of the fact that we always fall short of the glory of God. And when we realize THAT, then we have two options. Either we can throw up our hands in despair and cry, “What’s the use?”

Or, we can do what Jesus told His apostles this morning ...... simply to come to Him with the faith of a child: a child who wants to please its father, a child who often gets it wrong, but a child who simply comes to Jesus without a whole lot of information or knowledge or skill .... but who instinctively knows to trust and to follow.

Amen – may it be so!