"Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

        

         We now encounter a recurring theme in the Gospels. The disciples are thinking about who is greatest. They are wondering who is the top disciple, and that seems to be important in their understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus challenges them with a statement that indicates they may not even be in the Kingdom of Heaven. He calls them to change, and to become like a little child. He explains what he means in verse 4: "whoever takes a humble place – becoming like this child – is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven."

         We tend to idealize childhood in our culture, so we think more of the virtues of childhood: innocence, trust, wonder, imagination, love. But in the ancient world children were not valued highly. One study discovered "a dominant pattern of subordination, marginality and general impatience with children." This actually begins to change for the better in the first century. Jesus is not asking the disciples to guess at a virtue of children and then to imitate it; he is calling them to take a position of humility and lower status in the world. The same message comes in the choosing of the shepherd boy David to be king. It is the one in humble and lowly position who is greatest in the kingdom.

         In a deeper way this does point us to trust. You do not earn your salvation; you receive it as a child. It is humility that is able to receive grace. It is not the person who makes demands of God, who looks to Christ for a "quick fix" of his problems, who is in the Kingdom. Rather it is the one who accepts Christ's offer of his real presence in our lives as we face our failings, our anxiety and even our death. Jesus is the one who walks with us. This word of Jesus directs us to trust him and know that belief is the door to the Kingdom of God.

         It struck me that David the shepherd was the one brother who trusted God. My observation has been that those who live with attitudes like shepherds are the ones who trust God. Those who act like princes are the ones who demand from God and do not truly trust him. The shepherd would rather have someone walk with him through times of hardship. The prince would choose to have power to fix or avoid all trouble. Princes like power and ease. The spirit of our age is much more prince than shepherd.

         Lee Eklov is the pastor of the Free Church in Riverwoods. He said he thought about how to respond in worship to the economic turmoil the country has been experiencing in the last few weeks. So he sang to his congregation last Sunday,

I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold,

I'd rather be his than have riches untold.

I'd rather have Jesus than houses or lands,

I'd rather be led by his nail-pierced hands

Than to be a king of a vast domain

Or be held in sin's dread sway;

I'd rather have Jesus than anything

This world affords today.

Then he read a psalm and prayed, and then sang, "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me."

         Those old songs speak in a new way these days. The shepherd says I would rather have Jesus walk with me through the hard times of life. I would rather have Jesus because I know he watches over me.

         So Jesus says to his princely disciples that they need to change and become like little children. Some translations have "turn," and the King James has "be converted." There is a radical nature to the change that Jesus is calling for in us. He calls us to re-orient ourselves, to repent, to start again on a new footing. He tells Nicodemus that he must be "born again." We are to move in our hearts to a place where we actually trust Christ and then experience the faithfulness of God.

         For me, one time I experienced such a movement to trust came as a kind of midlife adjustment. I had been feeling increasing stress in being a pastor, until I began to feel that I could not do it for much longer. So I said something about that at a ministers' gathering, and Ted Nordlund responded and offered to spend a day with me. We ended up at our conference camp in Washington, which is large, 800 acres, and full of winding paths and marshes and woodland. So we walked together for a day. His walking with me was, I now see, a modeling of Christ, who walks with us. In our conversation and prayer and quiet times, he took me back to the call of Christ on my life, and showed me how a variety of other messages had become intertwined with Christ's call.

         It is interesting how we can pick up messages from family or church or the pride of our own hearts. These are messages of expectations, responsibilities, reminders of failure, anxious messages of what we must do or else. We can begin to internalize problems rather than pray. The yoke of Christ becomes heavy with attempts to prove ourselves worthy. On that day we went back to a place of simple trust in Christ, and then I could hear his call again. Out of that came a new agreement with God, based on trust.

         You know how it is if you have lived in one place for a long time. There comes a day when you have to repaint the living room. You don't need to build a new house, but something needs to change. For me, that day of walking at camp was a point of change, of letting go of some old messages, of moving away from the pride of trying to do too much, of moving from prince to shepherd, of trusting Jesus again.

         A few years ago I attended a lecture in which the speaker talked about the Creation and the design of God. Afterward there was a time for questions, and he was strongly attacked by some who held to evolution, without any need of God. At one point he defended himself, and he began to say, "This is what I believe." The questioner immediately interrupted him by saying "I don't care what you believe." For him the only meaningful statements were facts based on evidence.

         But I have thought about that ever since. I do care what people believe. I want to hear about your beliefs. Beliefs are what make our lives interesting. This has given me a new perspective on Jesus. He cared about what people believed, and said that belief, faith, is the door into the Kingdom of God.

I also see now that belief itself is in our culture's eyes a rather humble quality. The world does not really care about belief.

Belief is risky. Trust gets betrayed far too often. No wonder people are reluctant to trust God with their lives. Their experience with trust has made them cautious, whether it has been trusting a friend, or an institution or the stock market.

         But, lowly and vulnerable as it may be, trust brings us to God.

Eric Hawkinson wrote a wonderful little book years ago called "Images in Covenant Beginnings." I keep going back to it. One chapter is entitled "Believing."

         He writes, "The word 'believing' was a remarkably living word for the early Mission Friends. It defined their experience of conversion and their continuing state as followers of Christ. It had the living quality of breathing for them.

         "In their view, faith was more than an act with a past tense. It was a beginning and it remained in progress as a relationship to Christ. They were protected from seeing their experience as personal achievement having merit and virtue. Seldom has a generation stood so naked in its self-estimate and so enthusiastic in its trust of God's mercy in Christ."

         So they sang,

"My former resolutions to lead a better life

Were only vain illusions – my soul was still at strife:

Now on the love of Jesus completely I rely;

For me he was willing to die."

         The invitation today is to trust Jesus Christ, to believe in him. It is to renew a relationship that has become burdened by pride, expectations and demands. It is to invite Jesus Christ to walk with you through this time of your life. It is the movement of your heart from pride to trust in Christ that brings you into an experience of his faithfulness.

         For in love Jesus Christ gave his life on the cross. He died so that you might know the forgiveness of your sins. He rose from the dead so that you might know the grace of walking with him. He will come in power and glory so that you might know life eternal.

         Amen.