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Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to Commons. If we haven't met yet, my name is Yelena, and what a treat to be here in the room with you all and join you in your homes online. Thank you so much, everyone, for being here. Well, today we continue our new sermon series called BothAnd.

This summer series is all about embracing the complexity of our spirituality. It is for those moments when the polarity of the eitheror approach does not serve us well. It is when the truthfulness of our humanity needs to be embraced and when we need this both end. Last Sunday, Bobby kicked us off with an amazing message on loud and quiet. If you haven't listened to it yet, you definitely should, especially if you want to hear a story, a great story, about King David's dance moves and his loud posturing and about his wife, Michael, who could see right through him in the quiet sorrow of her broken heart.

The beautiful thing is that God was present to both of them in all the entanglement of their stories. That same God is present to us now, to our own loud and quiet humanity. So this is where we started last week. Today, we move to our next theme, strong and weak. That hit me a bit too close to home last week when I was working on the sermon.

On Wednesday, I woke up with some stiffness in my upper back, which I kind of shrugged off and blamed it on an uncomfortable kitchen chair that I was using to do some reading the day before. On Thursday morning, my lower back seized up. I was in so much pain, I had to roll off my bed to get up. And for the next few days, I just had to slow down. There was no way for me to power through that.

I felt weak, and I was angry at myself for not being diligent with my exercise routine, but I also felt terrible about how my sudden back pain wasn't just debilitating for me, it was impacting my husband's week. My ego, let's call it my value of independence, was kind of resenting the need to ask for help with the simplest things. Strength and weakness, we hold and carry both And our bodies are so resilient and so fragile, and in our hearts too. We all live on this spectrum between feeling like we can climb Mount Everest one moment and then ask someone to get a teaspoon from the dishwasher for us because we can't bend. So when was the last time you felt weak?

Was it in your body too? Or maybe life just felt out of control, like for sixteen months or so, right? Or maybe you saw someone suffering and you could not do a thing about it. Or maybe you had to let go of a dream and that felt like weakness. But what if our hyper awareness of weakness, being scared of it, noticing it right away, seeking it out in ourselves and in others?

What if that actually prevents us from seeing the strength that is gently pulsing under the surface? What if our strength does not have to be located in us, but can still be accessible to us and lift us up? This is what we're going to talk about today. We will read a story from the Gospel of Matthew through this lens of strong and weak, and we'll talk about comparison and envy, image and presence, welcome as respect, and the gift of each other. But first, let's take a moment and pray together.

Loving God, gentle care of souls and bodies. To you, all hearts are open and all desires known. You know it when we feel weak, and you know all the emotions that flood us in those moments. May we not be discouraged by what we might see or experience as a failure. God, you also know our strengths, those gifts and qualities we're so proud of, and those we are still learning to accept.

May we trust the sources of strengths in our lives, and may we trust you who took on our humanity in all its weakness and all its glory to make us fully alive. Help us live our beautiful, complex lives fully and with great courage. In the strong name of Jesus we pray, amen. Let's start in Matthew chapter 18 verse one. At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

What a question. So Jesus, who would you say is the top disciple? I almost want to say, after all these years with Jesus, you guys should know better. But let's not jump to quick conclusions just yet and orient ourselves in the story a bit to see what might have prompted this question. This chapter, chapter 18, begins a new section in the Gospel of Matthew, known as the fourth discourse.

Matthew records five discourses in total, five big sermons from Jesus. The first one, for instance, is Sermon on the Mount, which Jesus gives pretty early in his public ministry. By the time we arrive to chapter 18 and this fourth sermon, Jesus is famous. He has a distinct and committed group of followers and his understanding of his call has significantly grown. Now there are a few other things in the background of this question.

First, in Matthew 16, Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to build his church, which is a pretty remarkable statement to make considering the word he uses for church, ecclesia. Ecclesia is the old testament word for the people of God. Jesus is basically saying, you will be a special community of people who will live in God's ways. His fourth discourse, his fourth big sermon is all about relationships that will shape this community. The second development is that now Jesus talks openly about his death.

By the time of the disciples question, he has already made two announcements that their current journey to Jerusalem will be different. They will see him suffer, die, and on the third day be raised to life. And finally, out of the whole group, Peter seems to be getting a little bit more attention. First, Jesus announces that Peter will play a unique role in the founding of his church. And then, just before disciples show up here with their question, Jesus pays his and Peter's annual temple tax.

And we're not told about the rest. The disciples are dealing with some exciting and some really disturbing announcements. Some major changes are on the horizon for them, and Peter seems to be in the limelight for some reason. On the one hand, it is only natural for them to ask how this new community that Jesus is building will be organized. Reasonable question.

On the other hand, all the synoptic gospels include stories of the disciples arguing about which one of them was better. The closer we get to the cross, the more we get a sense of emerging competition in this tight group. All this talk about glory and kingdom mixed up with their proximity to Jesus, this great rabbi, and potentially future king of Israel. All of that begins to foster some unhealthy comparisons. Even the word they used here for greatest, Maison, is actually a comparative, not a superlative form of megas.

Megas was used generically, like great joy, great storm, great banquet, but also it was used specifically to describe someone's status, power, and authority. This is not a question about who's the most awesome fellow in our tight group, Jesus. It is a question about leadership and with a leadership position. More like, who's the top dog in your kingdom, Jesus? With perhaps an underlying thought, How does one secure one's place in this new reality where we're heading?

Now, in the world of that day, one's rank and position in society, along with age, religion, and so on, determined everything about how this person would live and be treated. Today, we are a bit less concerned about status in the same way, but we definitely know comparison. We all know what social pressure feels like, this invisible but very powerful standard of good life. In Russian and Central Asian culture, in my culture, if you're pushing 30 and still not married, you better do something about it. And to tell you the truth, I was pretty grateful to keep some geographic distance between myself and my parents in my late 20s.

That's just too much. But that social pressure is so real, and it can make us forget that our one unique life does not come with a blueprint. And then again, we all negotiate with ourselves what we mean by success. Our embodied humanity is so good at reminding us of our limitations. We cannot pursue everything at the same time, endlessly.

We cannot maintain the highest level of satisfaction in all areas of our lives all the time. We try hard, but in the end we all make choices. And then we look at other people's choices, at other people's gifts and achievements and abilities. And sometimes we question ourselves, we question our choices, we question our abilities, and sometimes we even doubt our worth. Adrian Van Kam, a professor of formative spirituality, researched the effect of comparison and envy on our sense of self.

In his book, Envy and Originality, he calls comparison a deformative disposition. The more we insist on comparing ourselves with one another, the unhappier we become. Van Kahn writes: Habits of comparison prevent us from both appreciating ourselves and coming to know and admire others. We do not meet ourselves and others as real persons. We reduce what we see to a mismatched set of measurable statistics.

And when comparison leads to envy, envy cuts us off from each other. That book is an oldie, all the way from the 70s. I wonder what Van Kom would have said today. Maybe something like, We reduce what we see to an Instagram feed, filled with happy images that we capture when we feel good about ourselves. But then, images have power.

They have power not only to hide, but also to reveal what is true and what is real. Jesus here responds to his disciples' question with both an image and a real person. He called a little child to him and placed the child among them. I honestly wish someone could Instagram that story of this group of men with beards and serious faces huddled around Jesus, having an intense, almost political conversation, and all of a sudden Jesus calls in a little boy or a girl. Child is neutral in Greek.

We cannot tell much except that it was a little kid who could walk when summoned. Perhaps it was a kid of one of his hosts in Capernaum. Jesus calls this child and places them right among this grown man as an equal and legitimate participant in the discussion. The disciples are puzzled. Then he says, Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whenever Jesus begins with, Truly, I tell you, it means, Listen up. This is important, don't miss this. Okay guys, you're asking about who's the greatest, but who told you that you are even in? Now, this is not a theological statement that Jesus is making about salvation.

The scene is how Jesus begins his fourth big sermon about relationships within this new community. His response here does not mean that the disciples are out, that they're excluded. It is just a bit of a wake up call for them that they have work to do to reorient the way they see God and each other. Unless you change is literally unless you turn around, both in the physical sense of changing direction, but also in the sense of shifting one's perspective. I could almost see Jesus saying, Hey guys, your question reveals a whole worldview that will make it so hard for you to experience the kingdom and the commonwealth of God.

The fascinating thing about this phrase become like little children is that its meaning has changed over the centuries. Since Jesus does not exactly expand on the characteristics of childlikeness here, Every historical period and every interpreter has read into this phrase their own cultural understanding of a perfect child. For the fourth century church, Father Basil the Great, that's a great name, to be like a child was to quietly listen to instruction without quarreling with a teacher. For Martin Luther, eleven centuries later, a child was supposed to dutifully accept the punishments of their parents. For Leo Tolstoy, children were the innocent ones, truly capable of loving their neighbor.

And in our own times, for instance, the interpretive emphasis is on the teachability of kids, their openness to new ideas. All of that to say, our interpretation is always conditioned by our culture. All of our theology is contextual, and the context is our lives. Everything we read, we interpret. That does not mean that the text then loses its meaning.

It just means that we should be aware of our own interpretive lens when we read, and we should hold some of our interpretations loosely, generous with them. It is not a weakness not to have a clearly articulated position on a certain topic. You have the right to take your time to figure things out. But also, it is not a sign of strength if we cannot let go of our perspective and approach if there's something different and available to us. In the context of the ancient world, little children were not considered as full human beings with their own integrity.

They were insignificant, powerless, incomplete individuals who needed training. That, interestingly enough, was also reflected in the language. The Greek word for child, paideon and pais, could also be translated as slave. In Jewish culture though, children were loved and seen as a gift from God, but similarly had no social standing. When Jesus tells his disciples that the greatest is the one who comes down to the level of the weakest in the community, he turns the standard of power so firmly implanted in their imagination upside down.

He says here, Here guys, move, move, move down to the eye level with this child. Okay, you see? A totally different perspective. And if you do that often enough, maybe you will learn to look at the world with an inquisitive and not a comparing eye, with an expansive look, not a narrowing gaze. Maybe you will finally see that there is enough love to go around, that your colleagues and partners will stop looking like a threat to you.

To be strong in this new community means to keep your desire for importance in check, or better unlearn it. It means to lift up those who never get invited into big conversations but then have to live with their consequences. It is to see those who have been told or tell themselves that they have nothing to contribute, that they bring the most. And you know, sometimes if we look at the world from the perspective of weakness, through the eyes of weakness, I believe we might discover incredible strengths right next to us. Think of a newborn who will make you a grown person, gladly rearrange your whole life around them.

Or think of someone you love. Doing life with them can make you so, so painfully aware of your weaknesses. But then the safety, the security of this relationship, where it's okay to be real, can give you strength to grow and make you realize that perhaps the source of your strength is actually located in the relationship itself, in the life that you are building together. This child in the middle of this grown man is more than the metaphor for everyone labeled weak. It is a real image of where this new fledging community will find its strengths, not in authority and hierarchy, but in a respectful welcome.

Jesus continues, And whoever welcomes once a child in my name welcomes me. Here, he gives them one concrete action, one practical aspect of what it means to be humble. Later he will add service, but welcome is where the leveling of status begins and where the values of this new community will be experienced. The word for welcome has a connotation of showing hospitality, like accepting a person into your group or receiving someone in your home. The idea is to accept a person, no matter who they are, as infinitely valuable.

Jesus emphasizes this call to solidarity by saying, Welcome them, as if you were to welcome me. Treat this child and every vulnerable human being who will walk through your door with the same respect you offer me. Speaking of respect, Adrian Van Kamp sees respect as the antidote for comparison and envy. He defines it as an attitude of appreciative attention. If envy closes us off from others and isolates us into our teeny tiny little world that we want to protect at any cost, respect leads us out and toward each other.

He writes, When you look at someone with respect, you don't only see the potency of good in them, you open up new avenues of creativity in yourself. Every time we look at somebody with a respectful, kind eye, we create strength in the community that both lifts us up, lifts us others, and helps us to nourish our humanity. Our welcome, our respectful welcome, is a recognition of each other as a gift. One scholar comments that this attitude of humility, welcoming humility, was essential to the church's existence and survival. Because only through welcome those early Christian communities could be countercultural and could bring men and women, slaves and free, poor and rich together.

But we know the disciples did not learn the lesson immediately. Literally, in the next chapter, Matthew tells us a story where they do not let little children come to Jesus for a blessing. Jesus needs to interfere and teach them again. Then in chapter 20, the struggle for power gets even more real with James and John's mother coming to ask Jesus to give her sons high positions in the future kingdom. And again, Jesus needs to remind his disciples that greatness is about welcome and service and not about power and exclusion.

But eventually, and this gives me great hope, they've learned. If we look at the book of Acts and some letters of Paul and the early church documents, we will find children present and participating in the early church gatherings. They were respected as members of the community and had full inclusion in the practice of faith. Today, we, all of us here, continue that tradition. It is of value for us to have children and youth in this space with us, to learn with them, to learn from them, and to see Christ through them.

And it is a gift to grow as a community together. And I'm sure just like the early church and the stubborn disciples, we do not have everything right. We make mistakes, we might unknowingly hurt each other through poor welcome and careless words, but hopefully over time, as we live into Christ's story and allow that story to change us, we will become a space where the relationships can be another source of strength in your life for all of us here, and where we will not be scared to show up and bring our weakness. Let me end with this thought from The Christian faith recognizes that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures who cannot reason or will our way out of mortality. The gospel begins not with the assertion that we are violent, fearful, frightened creatures, but with the pledge that if we offer ourselves to a truthful story and the community formed by listening to and enacting that story in the church, we will be transformed into people more significant than we could ever have been on our own.

Please join me in prayer. A loving God who always, always seeks our good and with whom we do not need to pretend. We thank you for the gift of this community. We thank you for the gift of children that fill this space, for the welcome that we can receive and extend here. We ask you to be present to us as we go into this next week, this new week, with everything it will bring.

May we be attentive to our weakness and our strengths. May we hold those experiences with respect, without exaggerating them or denying them. Give us courage to reach out for help when we need it and to offer support when we can. And God, we trust that together and through your grace, we will become people more significant than we can ever be on our own. In the name of Jesus, our strength, we pray.

Amen.