Matthew 18

A kingdom is the “domain of a king,” I recall as I read the curious question the disciples put to Jesus here. “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?”

So much depends on our Weltanschauung—our world view—and obviously the questioners' concern about greater and lesser inhabitants of the coming kingdom suggest a vertical Weltanshauung, one that persists to this very day in one form or another.

People, things, ideas exist above or below one another. You can find plenty of information on “The Great Chain of Being” HERE. 

Vertical thinking dominates our commercial world, our educational world, our social world, even our church world although as Anabaptists we've done what we've been able to apply haphazardly what is apparently Jesus' teaching that in the “Kingdom of Heaven” world, hierarchies of importance, of greatness no longer persist.

The childlike are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus proclaims, and before we go off on a tangent, it's noteworthy that Jesus is not talking about children here, he's using the child allegorically: its those who are “childlike” who shall be great in the Kingdom. In some examples of the chain of being, “children” would appear in the above illustration below women and just above animals. Jesus upsets a very rigid “chain of being” applecart here; the classic example of his insistence on the importance of humility and servanthood is his washing of the disciples' feet at the Last Supper.

It becomes apparent that the “children” being talked about as the chapter proceeds are the disciples. Reading it that way, it's easy to hear in Jesus' words both his love for his followers—those that believe in him—and his deep concern for their safety and the survival of the movement that's beginning like a sprouting mustard seed in the place and time about which Matthew is writing. The language is harsh: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” The dire warnings continue. If you yourself, my follower, allow your eye or your hand or your foot to cause you to stray, gouge it out, cut it off: it's better to continue your journey blind and lame than to be diverted from the quest.

First, Jesus' followers are children, then sheep. I recall an old gospel hymn: There were ninety and nine that safely lay, in the shelter of the fold. But one was out on the hills away, far off from the gates of gold. Followers of Jesus may be humble, servant-like but they are precious beyond describing. Like the one sheep that strays, the shepherd will seek to bring back the one. It's a poignant moment in Matthew's recollection of those early days, those early lessons around the evening fire.

Verse 15 – 17 outline a process for dealing with those who stumble or stray on their kingdom journey. It's anachronistic (out of its time) in that it speaks of a church which didn't yet exist when Jesus is purported to have said these words. My great grandfather's diary describes incidents of church discipline that follow this instruction: confront the sinner, if necessary take some witnesses and confront him/her again and if that brings no good result, take it to the church. If there is no repentance, treat that person like a pagan or a tax collector (an outsider). In Anabaptist history, this resulted in the ban, a harsh cutting-off of relations with the community of faith. (Ironically, Matthew was a tax collector before becoming a follower.)

In our time, these instructions have been complicated to the point where they are, effectively, inactive. The definition of “sin,” other teachings like “let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” the imperatives of love all surface as deterrents to taking hard lines on fellow followers. It's possible that Matthew's recording here of the discipline process is far too cursory to be useful to all but the very literal-minded. The ban—appears to me—was ineffective and did far more collateral damage than it did good, as if the sheepfold gate had been locked against the lost sheep out on the hills away, far off from the gates of gold.

The Parable of the Merciless Servant is a great bit of story-telling. It's portent is reiterated in Jesus' teaching about prayer. In what we've come to call, The Lord's Prayer, we rather carelessly intone, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Sometimes we even think about what that actually means. To be clear about what it means, we can always read Matthew 18: 21-35 again.