Who is the Greatest?

“Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

“Hey, Maryam, Jesus wants your little Ya’acov for a minute. Bring him in here, wouldya?” What do you suppose that mother was thinking as she picked up her little son and walked into the room where Jesus and his friends were sitting? Why would the rabbi want her son in with them? They weren’t going to do anything strange to him, were they?

Of course the young mother didn’t know how the rabbi’s twelve followers were struggling to understand what Jesus was teaching them. Three of them had had an overpowering vision of him up on the mountain, which they would not understand until much later. The young mother didn’t know that the disciples didn’t understand how John the Baptist really had been Elijah, or that they were afraid to ask Jesus what he meant when he talked about dying on a cross and rising again. She didn’t know that they still thought he was going to throw out the Romans and establish a new political order. She didn’t know that some of them – John maybe, who might have thought he played second fiddle to Peter, or Judas perhaps, who was starting to doubt that Jesus would do anything worthwhile – wondered what their status would be in the new community he was creating. She probably thought they were just hangers-on of the miracle-working rabbi, following him around as if they had nothing better to do. Reluctantly, she handed over her child.

Perhaps Maryam shouldn’t have been too hard on the Twelve. We wouldn’t have done much better, because Jesus was preaching and practicing a radically world-changing message. Jesus was “turning the world upside down.”1 Jesus interpreted the Law of Moses differently from other rabbis, and he helped people to see the proclamations of the prophets in fresh ways. Jesus taught his disciples that peoples’ needs supersede even the demands of the Law, and that it is OK, for example, to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus taught them to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute them. Jesus taught them that God loves and cares for all people – Gentiles, women, the disabled, the poor, the hungry, those in prison – all people. Jesus taught them that if they truly wanted to see God they must look among those on the margins of society: they must invite in the homeless, the destitute, prostitutes, and even the hated tax collectors. Jesus taught them that those who wanted to be his disciples were expected to lead by serving everyone.

Did the disciples understand his teaching? Out of nowhere, it seems, came a question – and a way for Jesus to teach them what communities of people committed to him might look like. One of them asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus didn’t directly answer the question. Nor did he launch into a long discourse or cite chapter and verse of the Hebrew Scriptures. Instead, he called for Maryam’s child. Maryam had been right to wonder why, since children were treated almost like property in their society, and their status was little better than that of a slave. As the adult disciples began to squirm seeing a child in their midst, who could surely not be a model of anything, Jesus pointed to Maryam’s child. And then he flung a challenge at them: “change and become like this child! Give up your sense of self-importance, your sense of entitlement, your craving for status, and your desire for self-preservation. Then put your conversion into action: turn around and create communities in my name where you welcome all the status-less people. And when you welcome them after I’m gone, you’ll be welcoming me again.”

The Twelve may have had trouble understanding Jesus’ teachings, at least until after Jesus’ resurrection, but down through the centuries many of his followers did understand what he was getting at. Many of them tried hard, risking – and even losing – their lives to welcome in Jesus’ name those whom polite society disdained. St. Brigid, St. Francis, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Prudence Crandell, who taught black children to read in colonial New England, Anglican Bishop John Coleridge Patteson, who was martyred in Melanesia in1871, Constance and her companions, who died nursing Yellow Fever victims in Memphis in 1878, and C.F. Andrews, who lived out Jesus’ example in India in the early 20th century, to mention just a few. All of them understood Jesus’ teaching. All of them were “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” because they gave up any sense of rank or self-importance for themselves, and because they created Christian communities that actively served those whom others looked down on.

Such people and such communities don’t exist only in history books or on church calendars. A young man named Byron McMillan discovered such people and such a community when he visited Rutba House in Durham, North Carolina. In 2003 North Carolina native Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and his wife Leah moved into an old house in Walltown, an inner-city neighborhood in Durham. There they founded Rutba House, an intentional community that serves as a “house of hospitality where the formerly homeless are welcomed into a community that eats, prays, and shares life together.” Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, a nonprofit organization that has grown out of the life of Rutba House to pursue beloved community with kids in their neighborhood, through classes in North Carolina prisons, and in community-based education around the country. Jonathan, who is white, is also an associate minister at the historically black St. Johns Missionary Baptist Church.

When Byron McMillan visited Rutba House, he was bored with conventional church. Although he had been faithful in worship and had been on several mission trips, he had not been able to make the connection between Sundays, or mission weeks, and the rest of his life. At Rutba House, he discovered real ministry among people in need, and an authentic community of people who respected and cared for each other. For the first time in his life, he found a group of people who really took Jesus’ commands seriously. More important, as he lived with Jonathan and his family, he discovered people who “didn’t think they knew everything. They weren’t powerful people trying to create a program, or build a church, they were just humble people that loved people and wanted to eat together, laugh together, cry together, and just hang out with each other the way Jesus did.”3

“Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Can you hear the challenge in Jesus’ affirmation? Do we understand that in following Jesus we leave ourselves open to the possibility that Jesus might want to change our expectations? Do we understand that Jesus is challenging us to look beyond our individual relationship with God to partner with God in creating Christian communities that truly reflect our commitment to the one who emptied himself for our sakes? Are there ways to welcome strangers and those on the margins that we have yet to see? Can we see that we are called to “get out of the way” and follow Jesus in becoming people for others?

Might Jesus challenge us also to wonder if we are doing all that we can to effectively minister to those in need? Are we serving the homeless, the hungry, and those without adequate health, dental, and vision care right in this community? How are we serving children in need in this community? Do we need to consider how our churches can work together to mentor, tutor, and perhaps even feed local children? Where are the holes in our social safety net? And is there a community in another county – or country – whose needs touch our hearts? And if we ask ourselves why we might do any of these things, rest assured it is not so that we may feel good about ourselves, or because we have found what one writer called a “human key to heaven.” We undertake any of these ministries, because we see the face of Christ, in the faces of those to whom we minister. We undertake these ministries, because we have become people for others, because we have pledged ourselves to be the Body of Christ in the world, and we try as best we can to do what Jesus did in the flesh, including welcoming children of all communities, orphans, widows, and all those on the margins of society.

“Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

“C’mon in, Maryam. Jesus is winding up. He’s just about done with talking about your son.” Maryam tentatively stood in the doorway of the front room. She saw the rabbi’s friends seated at his feet. She saw her son Ya’acov nestled in Jesus’ arms and Jesus looking down at him lovingly. Then Jesus gently lifted the boy up and placed him back in her arms. He looked at her and smiled. She saw the love in his eyes. And she knew that, from that moment on, her own life would never be the same.

1. Albert Nolan, Jesus Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2008), 50
2. http://jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com/bio/
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5jUjiwuF-g