The Greatest and the Least

Did you know that the walking distance between Galilee and Capernaum was about 6.5 miles or 10 kilometers? So if they were walking and Jesus was teaching, that distance would have taken them about 3 hours or more to get to their destination.  

For about 3 plus hours, Jesus is trying to explain the meaning of His mission to His disciples. He is explaining that He will suffer, die, and be raised in 3 days. The Gospel explicitly tells us they were avoiding the crowd so Jesus could be alone with them to teach them. This sounds like He was teaching important stuff. Meanwhile, the disciples were not paying attention. They were caught up in their own egos and their need to be most important. Arguing about who was most important was more pressing for them than Jesus explaining what was about to happen. Their egos were more important than trying to “get” what Jesus meant by His suffering, dying, and being raised from the dead. They were so caught up in themselves that they were missing the most essential part. It was hard to understand, so they gave up and went about their petty arguing.

Of course, Jesus didn’t miss this. “What were you discussing on the way?” He called them on their pettiness and used it as a teaching moment. But not a teaching moment about what He had spent the previous 3 hours teaching. He took them where they were, in their pettiness, and made that the lesson.

Children at the time of Jesus were considered insignificant. No one paid attention to the children. By our current day standards, the children would have been considered neglected. They were even less important than the women. Jesus chooses a child to make a point to the disciples. His teaching no doubt shamed them and taught them an essential truth at the same time.

“If you want to be the greatest, you must be the least.” He chooses a child, one of least importance, and says, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” We might be tempted to miss the challenge to each of us. Children are most often loved and doted on in our culture. That may lead us to overlook the power of Jesus’ teaching. 

Let’s hear it differently. Jesus chooses one who is marginalized in our society. For example, a person who is poor, one who is homeless, one who is mentally ill, a person who struggles with addiction, a person who is black or Mexican, a prisoner, a refugee, an illegal alien, a person who is in a homosexual relationship, one who has had an abortion. The list could go on. Now let’s hear the teaching again.

Jesus chooses an illegal alien, and he says, “Whoever receives one illegal alien such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.”

I don’t know who “the least one” is for you. I just need to know who it is for me. This Gospel calls us all to take a hard look at ourselves. It challenges us not to pat ourselves on the back for the marginalized people we accept but to look for the one we do not accept. The one we cannot accept. It calls us to place their name in the blank. “Whoever receives ___________, such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” No excuses, no rationalizations, no justifications, no exceptions are allowed.

This is hard teaching. It rankles the core of who we are because we judge who is greatest and who is least. In our minds and hearts, there is always an exception. Jesus couldn’t have meant _________. But He did. We all must fill in the blank for ourselves and pray God will give us the grace to be better.

In God’s Unending Love,

Gwen