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Who’s Number One?
A sermon by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, May 8, 2005
The disciples played a game with the Lord quite often. We
might call it in our culture and way of speaking – who’s number one? Listen to
Matthew 18 – “At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, who is the
greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven? He called a little child, had him stand
among them and He said, I tell you the truth. Unless you change and become like
little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, whoever
humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven and
whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone
causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for
him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the depths
of the sea.” This is the word of the Lord.
Almost everyone has heard the story of the Pied Piper who
made such beautiful music and promised such great life that he was able to bring
together the children of old Hamlin town. Shel Silverstein on the other hand
has in his own imagination written a poem about one who stayed behind. In that
poem are these lines, “For the father has said, thank you for not going (His
father was kind of a grouchy old person who never wanted anything to change and
certainly didn’t want his son following that nonsense. But the son knew
better. He knew that deep within side of him something had stirred; that life
and life with joy had been promised.) The little boy in the poem says, I cannot
say I did not hear that sound so haunting hollow. I heard, I heard, I heard it
clear. I was afraid to follow.
We hear a lot these days about leadership and rightly so.
How much we need strong leadership, but you can’t be a Christian and only be a
leader. The two words that put Jesus in His own class were the words that say,
“Follow me.” If you’re going to be a Christian you have to learn how to follow
as well as how to lead and those two words come to fit in our own lives and
hearts. On this day, I heard, I heard, I heard it clear – I was afraid to
follow.
If we’re going to look at our lives and our ability to
follow, it means the willingness to be influenced; the willingness to know the
power of another person upon us, not only the Lord, but those in human life that
definitely influence our way.
Let’s talk about women and mothers. You can say what you
want to, but the truth is if you ask the average man who is a Christian – who is
it that influenced you spiritually the most it will not be unanimous, but will
be far over the majority. They will say mother or wife, neighbor, friend and
more often than not it’s a woman! Have you ever thought about how often women
play the strategic role in the life of Jesus? At His birth there are two
couples that are center stage; the first, Zechariah and Elizabeth. They are the
parents of John the Baptist. Now Zack and Liz, they were old as redwood trees
and when the angel came and said, you’re going to bear a son. You’re going to
raise the forerunner, Elizabeth believed and Zack? I can almost picture it.
Yeah! At our age, yes! Well the angel was not particularly impressed with that
response and old Zack was struck dumb for several months. Now Zack was a
priest. He knew all about temple worship. He knew what went where. He knew
how to go through the ritual, the routine, and do everything just like it ought
to be done. He had all the knowledge he needed, but like most of us men in this
day and time, he had a head full of knowledge without a heart full of trust! He
knew too much and believed too little if you want to put it that way.
And dear friends, as we look at ourselves this day, we
might want to ask whether we are putting so much emphasis on how much we know
and the grades we get and the information we possess…the question may be, what
do you believe? Because I want to tell you something…when it comes down to
finding a meaning and purpose in life you can’t do it with information! Its got
to spring out of your innermost self, your spirit, and your heart.
Well as for Mary and for Joseph, ah! I have such respect
for Joseph. Boy, he made the best of a very awkward situation, but let’s face
it. Mary is center stage. I’ve seen lots of pictures, paintings that have
Joseph in them. Mary’s always there too. I’ve seen lots of pictures of Mary,
Joseph nowhere around. Joseph was the bench coach, if you know baseball.
Joseph, bless him! But you just don’t hear anything about Joseph from now on.
It’s Mary and you hear about Mary periodically in the life of Jesus. For
example, when Jesus began His ministry the first miracle was as recorded in John
2 at a wedding feast and lo and behold they ran out of wine. Now friends, that
would not have been a great tragedy at a Baptist potluck supper, but at a Jewish
wedding feast it was big time problem and perhaps Mary was good friends with the
folks who were doing all of this and she said to Jesus, do something and Jesus
said, He can handle it, He can handle it, and Mary looked at Him and said (this
is loose translation), do it! And He did! You see, even Jesus had the
incredible ability to be influenced by His mother.
Oh, in Mark’s gospel the first miracle, the first miracle
is the healing of Simon’s Peter’s mother-in-law. Will you allow me just a
little twinkle in me? A grin on my face? The first pope was married! And how
often do you hear at a memorial the words of Jesus, I am the resurrection and
the life. Yesterday afternoon in this very spot I said those words as we began
a service of memory. When Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life, he who
believeth in me though he were dead yet shall he live and he that liveth and
believeth in me will never die…when Jesus said that where was He saying it? In
the temple before the high priest? To the disciples in the Sermon on the
Mount? No, no, no, no, no…He said it to two sisters, Mary, Martha, probably on
a roadside. You see, they had lost their brother and Jesus’ friend whose name
was Lazarus.
My point is, anywhere you go in the gospels, and women are
going to play a key role. At the crucifixion and the resurrection the women
were the last to leave the cross. They were the first to visit the empty tomb.
If you want to know how God put things together He brought mothers into our
lives to influence, to persuade, to mold, to direct. It has not been a perfect
influence. Sometimes we have to work through some things, but the whole point
is the Lord has been able to impact our lives by women of faith.
It is hard from the story of Jesus to make a case for the
dominance of men in spiritual leadership. Let’s face it men, most of the time we
coast and let the women do it. How many times does a husband and a father just
kind of turn it over to the wife? This is your business – the spiritual side is
your business. We need more committed fathers but in another way, let us salute
the women of faith who have made a difference in our lives; the Sunday school
teachers, the youth leaders, the mothers, and if you’re a single mom, listen to
me. It is likely that you can pass the DNA of your faith to your children, even
if you are a single mom!
Well let’s look now at the men and the fathers. George
Barna is the religious version of George Gallup. He is a pollster and one who
takes surveys in the religious community. He became a believer as an adult and
the books he writes are full of statistics and graphs and all of that kind of
good stuff and his surveys are often helpful, but every once in a while when he
gets to preaching I want to say George, bless you! But if you’re so smart why
don’t you come out here and do it! Do you ever get that out of a book? Well I
do. And so when he wrote a book about children I did a double take. Barna?
The statistical genius writing a book about children. It is called
‘Transforming Children into spiritual champions,’ now that’s a great title!
That’s what we’re about and if we’re not about that, God help us because who’s
number one?
In Jesus’ point of view it’s the children and that’s where
Barna goes. He says that if he had his life to live over he wouldn’t spend it
trying to talk to adults on how to get spiritually mature; he would spend his
life with children! Says he, that’s where the hope is. It sounds like Jesus.
Absorbed with who is number one, Jesus never hesitated. He said to the
disciples, you’re arguing about whose number one among you. I’ll tell you whose
number one and he took a child and put him right in the middle of everybody and
said, he’s number one, she’s number one. But Jesus didn’t stop there. He said
two things to those men who were disciples. He said, first of all, if you will
love these children and if you will give yourself to these children you’re doing
it in my name. It’s my presence that’s there. It’s my face that’s on their
face and as much as you did it unto one of the least of these you did it unto
me.
Second, there is a warning. If you cause any one of these
little ones to stumble, if you cause any one of these little ones to sin, it’s
better that a millstone hung around your neck and you be thrown out in the
middle of the sea. What Barna is insisting upon, you see, is spiritual and
moral priority. He insists and he does it in lots of different statistical ways
that it is the spiritual and moral side of all of our lives that set the
direction, that give us our meaning and our purpose, that allow us to follow the
Lord Jesus in a step by step by step fashion. He does it in two ways; he talks
about all the surveys that social scientists have done with the poor and it is
so interesting that when they survey the poor they discover that many times they
are happier than the affluent and the reason is because a certain section of the
poor who are believers, not all are of course, but the certain section of the
poor who are believers have fashioned for themselves a life of faith and joy and
hope and trust. It doesn’t have anything to do with things, it doesn’t have
anything to do with them, it has to do with God and joy and creativity.
Another thing he uses are all the surveys that have been
made of those who’ve had terrible accidents, trauma, some who are disabled. He
says, people go in two directions and it depends on whether or not they have
faith, whether they have a living relationship with God. And the ones who don’t
tend to wind up bitter and cynical and the ones who do after they’ve gone
through the trauma and the transformation come to realize there’s a new chapter
out there and that God works in all things and that God has not left me nor
abandoned me. I am not an orphan in God’s sight – there is a new chapter in my
life that is yet to be lived. The scripture says, A little child shall lead
them. Every once in a while it happens and we can’t ignore it.
Michael was a boy who was not born like most of us with the
privileges we have. He could walk, but he couldn’t take care of himself. He
talked, but only with great difficulty. He was not one who would ever run and
play and although on occasion you could see him smile, it was not laughter that
was his. And eventually his father and his mother had to put him in a very
special place that could really take care of him and the mother who had trouble
with depression went into a huge depression and she did not leave the bed for
weeks.
Finally, the husband, desperate, got Michael, brought him
home, with great difficulty for he walked slowly. He entered the home and went
straight to the mother’s room. He walked over to the bed and sat down and he
just sat there with his presence he sat there. He said nothing, he did nothing,
and he just was there. The father finally came up to see what was going on and
in his difficult way, Michael pointed to a vase that had no flowers in it,
empty, and, and, and he said, C-C-Coke. The father, desperate for anything went
down and filled that vase up with Coke, brought it back up and then Michael made
in his own way slowly but surely down the stairs, into the kitchen, took a slice
of bread, took it back up to the bedroom where his mother was. He took that
slice of bread, he dipped it in the Coke, sat down by his mother and in his own
halting, stuttering way, he said the words of communion that he had heard from
the time he was a little bitty boy. His father did not even know he knew them.
B, B, Bread for you, Jesus. And the mother turned over and she looked at her
son and he had the bread and he placed it on her tongue and she took it. And
she began to week and tears streaming down her cheeks she finished what he had
begun. This is my body, which is broken for you; when you eat it, remember me.
There is a boy who turned the life of his mother around because inside of his
frail, disabled body was a very healthy spirit and he knew what she needed when
nobody else did.
I’m going to say to you what George Barna says in his book,
transforming the life, the spiritual lives of children has to be number one! I
call out of you just now the child that is within you. And will the child that
is within you, the child that loves to trust and to participate and to do and to
laugh and to rejoice, may the child within you respond by saying, yes! I heard,
I heard, I heard it clearly. I was afraid to follow. May it not be! Do it!
He’s number one and your child within listens.
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