Father Stephen De Young: And we’re going to continue to see:

Now it came to pass, about eight days after these sayings,

So after this night, when Jesus tells them these things, it’s eight days later.

that He took Peter, John, and James and went up on the mountain to pray.

And we know from tradition that this is Mount Tabor. And again, we see Peter, James and John as sort of the inner circle of the inner circle, these three, who Jesus takes, at a particular time. So he raised Jairus’s daughter. And now here…

Interlocutor: Are James and John his brothers?

Fr. Stephen: No, James and John are his cousins, and they’re brothers. These are James and John, the son of Zebedee. There are a bunch of other James’s. These are James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and then, of course, Peter.

As He prayed, the appearance of His face was altered, and His robe became white and glistening. And behold, two men talked with Him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

So, Jesus is there praying. He’s taking these three with Him. As he’s speaking, we read that his face changes. And this seems to be a reference forward to, as we’re going to see, and as we’ve already seen in Matthew and Mark after Jesus rises from the dead. And we’re never given much of an explanation of this, probably because we can’t understand it and it can’t be explained, but we’ve seen another number of episodes, \we’ll continue to see them, where people see Jesus after he rises from the dead, and they don’t immediately realize it’s Jesus, they don’t immediately recognize Him.

And then all of a sudden, they’ll recognize him, and so this is probably an allusion to that: his robe became white and glistening. So this is sort of what we’re seeing here is a foretaste of Jesus after the resurrection, of Christ’s divine glory, after the resurrection, which again, he just prophesied about for the first time. Remember, he just told them he was going to be raised on the third day. As I said, they didn’t really have a context for understanding that. And then further sort of resurrection symbolism, is he’s there with two of the saints. Those two men who are Moses and Elijah. Remember, Elijah didn’t die, right? He’s taken up into heaven in the fiery chariot. And Moses, remember, his body disappeared. His body was taken up to heaven. So that’s why they’re appearing here bodily, but in glory.

So this is again pointing to the resurrection. They’re in glorified bodies. They’re not sort of spirits or it’s not the ghost Elijah. This is pointing us forward to the resurrection.

But Peter and those with him were heavy with sleep;

OK, so as we’ve seen and we’ll see again as we get closer to the end of St. Luke’s Gospel, the disciples have some problems staying awake and saying their evening prayers, which I at least can identify with sometimes, late in the evening, when it’s been a long day, you start saying your evening prayers and maybe you nod off a little bit. Well, that happened to Peter, James and John also. So they’ve fallen asleep. This happens…

And when they were fully awake,

So this happening sort of wakes them up, right? And as they wake up:

they saw His glory and the two men who stood with Him. Then it happened, as they were parting from Him,

The “they” here is Moses and Elijah. So notice the disciples don’t say anything. Peter, James and John. Don’t say anything. So we can assume they were just kind of staring [Laughter] in awe, because Jesus is sitting there conversing with Moses and Elijah, all of them glowing with the glory of God. In Christ’s case, his own glory, in their case, the reflected glory of God in the kingdom of heaven.

So as Moses and Elijah are prepared to take their leave, the two prophets are going to depart, Peter says to Jesus:

“Master, it is good for us to be here;”

To translate that from the Greek idiom into modern American English. “This is awesome.” It’s good for us to be here. This is cool, right? This is great. This is wonderful.

And let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said.

So he says basically, “We should just stay here. This is great. This is amazing. Let’s just stay here, right? We’ll build some tents for you three, right? We could just all live up here. I have some great questions I want to ask Moses later, that I’ve really been wondering!”

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud.

What is this an echo of?

Interlocutor: Exodus.

Fr. Stephen: Right. In Exodus, remember, when they come to Mount Sinai, the cloud comes down over the top of the mountain, right? The dark cloud. So they’re standing there. Moses is there. What happened in that cloud? Moses spoke to God face to face, remember? So we’re seeing sort of a repeat here. Once again St. Luke is tipping his hat a little bit as to who Jesus is, right? That Jesus and Moses conversing on top of a mountain in a cloud, right? Jesus does the things that God does

“And they were fearful.” As in Peter, James, and John. So, the cloud descends and they get scared, right? So Peter starts to think, maybe this isn’t so awesome. Maybe this is more terrifying. And why would they have been afraid? Why wouldn’t Peter have just said, “Oh, this is even better. This is like Mount Sinai!”

Remember the Israelites, how they reacted when the cloud descended on Mount Sinai, right? They were terrified. They didn’t want to go near it, remember? They didn’t want to go near it. So they sent Moses. They kind of shoved Moses up to it. “You go up there, you go see what God wants. We’re going to hang out back here. We’re scared. We’re scared.”

And that fear isn’t an irrational fear. Remember how Isaiah reacted at the beginning of the Book of Isaiah? Isaiah’s taken up into heaven, right? He sees God sitting upon his throne and the angels sitting on his throne. His reaction isn’t Peter’s reaction, right? He doesn’t go, this is awesome, right? Remember his reaction? He sort of curses, tears his clothes and falls on the ground, says, “Woe to me, for I’m a man of unclean lips for people of unclean lips.” When we really understand that we’re coming into the presence of God and his holiness, the more we become aware of his holiness, the more we become aware of our unholiness in comparison. And that is a troubling and terrifying feeling.

So this is sort of why when Peter says that, it says he didn’t understand what he was saying. But now as the cloud comes, he sort of becomes more aware, like, “Oh, maybe it’s not so good for me to be here, me as I am, being the person who I am. Maybe I shouldn’t be here. Maybe I should head back down the mountain before something bad happens.”

This is the kind of fear that’s being talked about in the Old Testament, like in Proverbs where it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When we talk about the fear of the Lord. It’s not like being scared of God, right? Like, “Oh no, he’s going to smite me!” That’s not what it’s talking about. But it’s talking about that reverence and that awe where we begin to understand who he is and who we are in comparison. Because of that, we have an awe and a reverence toward Him. That’s the kind of fear that we’re talking about here.

And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ìThis is My beloved Son. Hear Him!î  When the voice had ceased, Jesus was found alone. But they kept quiet, and told no one in those days any of the things they had seen.

Notice the in those days, St. Luke again, sort of tips his hat on his sources. A lot of the time he says, “Well, they didn’t say anything about it then”, meaning they said something to say Luke about it later. And that’s how he knows that this happened, because he heard from the three of them. The cloud departs, it takes Moses and Elijah with it. Jesus is there by himself. Now, we have to again take this in its context. What did Jesus just say to them before this happened? Because St. Luke ties these two things together when he says eight days after Jesus said this, this happened, he’s tying the two things together. He could have just said, “And it came to pass later,” if he was just starting a new story. He specifically says this happened eight days after he said these things to tie them together.

So he’s talking to them about what he’s about to do, which is what he just told the disciples about. So, what we see here… what did he just tell the disciples? “We’re all on our way to die, but you’re going to see the kingdom of God. I’m going to be killed, but I’m going to rise on the third day.” And this was something that they couldn’t understand. And so what we have here on top of this mountain is Jesus giving them a sneak peek, right? Jesus giving them a glimpse of the resurrection, giving them a glimpse of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven that he’s been promising them, showing them not just, “This is what’s going to happen, but this is already a reality. The resurrection is already a reality. Moses and Elijah aren’t dead. This is what I was alluding to.”

So, he’s trying to get the disciples, Peter, James and John, to put these things together. Remember, Peter was the one who gave the answer, You’re the Messiah, he’s trying to get them to put these two things together. Yes, what’s about to happen in this world is that we’re going to our deaths, right? Me first, you later. But on the other side of this, on the other side of death, as he says he’ll be killed, raised on the third day, on the other side of death, on the other side of you giving up your life in order to save it. This is what I’m talking about. This is the trade I’m talking about: trading your life here in this world for this, for the kingdom of heaven, for the resurrection, for eternal life with God.

Interlocutor: The resurrection, as we understand it, begins with Jesus, however when we look at Moses and the prophets and Isaiah and other supernatural, mystical things, there is a resurrection for them. So then, part of my wonder is, why do we wait as a religion, and say it’s not until the Second Coming of Christ to raise us all, when we see here they have been raised?

Fr. Stephen: Remember, Jesus said to the Sadducees who didn’t believe in the resurrection, he says, God says, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not I was. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And God is the God of not of the dead, but of the living. So he’s saying Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive. Jesus is proof of the resurrection is that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive, not dead. Part of this is, the reason we’re looking for the resurrection of the dead at the return of Christ is that that’s going to be the final culmination of human history and the bodily resurrection. But we’ll see in a few years when we get to the Book of Revelation, that St. John in the Book of Revelation talks about the first resurrection. He’s going to talk about those who give their lives for Christ and who therefore participate in the first resurrection, which is what we call in fancy theological terms, “the intermediate state”, meaning where we are, our state of existence in between our death in this world and the return of Christ when we’re raised from the dead bodily. So there is a first resurrection, and St. John says, “Blessed are those who take part in the first resurrection.” That’s not a bad thing. It’s not like the really lucky people are the ones with Jesus returns. But hey, it can’t be everybody, right? It’s blessed are those who are the first resurrection. So, there is sort of a first resurrection and a second resurrection in that sense, and I think that’s what you’re pointing to.

Interlocutor: What I don’t understand is…. [Inaudible]. I’ve heard so many times that when a person passes, they are in heaven. And I understand we wait, we’re asleep, and we wait…

Fr. Stephen: Well, not quite… The analogy of being asleep doesn’t mean that we’re like dreaming or something. The analogy of sleep is an analogy to the fact that we’re going to wake up, right? So it’s what we would call a dead body. The point that’s been made by that analogy is that it’s not like as much as I love dogs, it’s not like a dead dog on the side of the road or a dead deer, where it’s just a dead body. It’s just meat, right? Decomposing meat. A human body is not decomposing meat. A human person could be said to sleep because that human person, when Christ returns, is going to wake up again. The deer isn’t.

So, that’s part of what’s being said there with that analogy. The problem with, and the reason I don’t like to use the term “going to heaven” is that it implies sort of a lot of bad folk religion ideas. Like, first of all, that heaven is a place somewhere up in the clouds. The word heavens in the Bible refers to the sky. So we have sort of this weird mental image that we float up in the sky and sit on a cloud and play a harp or whatever, right? And that’s not in the Bible, anywhere. Those who are referred to as the dead in Christ, like the dead in Christ who rise first, the first resurrection.

So, the Bible doesn’t say a lot about what we call the quote-unquote the “intermediate state.” What we know about it is that if we are in Christ in this life, we will still be in Christ when we leave this life. As the Book of Wisdom says, “the souls of the departed are in the hand of God who gives them rest.” We don’t have a lot of details at this point. Your soul has been separated from your body. You’re not in a physical place because souls are immaterial, so they don’t have extension in space, right?

So, heaven isn’t sort of a place, or hades for that matter, isn’t really sort of a place. We know that basically at that point we will be experiencing a foretaste of what’s going to happen at the Last Judgment one way or the other. We know that if we are in Christ, we will remain in Christ and be with Christ during that time. St. John in Revelation describes it as us… and St. Paul in Ephesians, for that matter, describes it as us reigning with Christ as Christ reigns over this world until His Second Coming. Paul says in Second Thessalonians that when Christ does return, he’s going to be returning with those people. But even the word “return” isn’t necessarily a good translation of the Greek word, the Greek word there, Parousia, doesn’t really mean return. It means presence.

Interlocutor: What does mean when they say Jesus Christ ascended into heaven?

Fr. Stephen: Well, they physically saw Him go up and disappear into a cloud, but Parousia means presence, like physical presence. So what that really means it’s returned, not like he went away somewhere and now he’s far away, right? And we all have abandonment issues because he left us, because we confess every liturgy, Christ is in our midst. Christ is in our midst. So it’s not that he went away somewhere. He’s still here with us, but not in his physical presence, the way he was after the Resurrection, where the disciples could come up and touch Him and put fingers in the nail hole, right? So he’s going to be present again with us physically. The other terminology that’s used in the New Testament is the day of his appearing, his glorious appearing. So he’s here with us now, but he’s here with us invisibly he’s in our midst, but we don’t see Him standing there in our midst, but at what we call the Second Coming, he will appear.

And so, when he appears, he will appear with the saints and the angels. He says he’s the Son of Man. He will appear with the saints and the angels and glory. And that is more of the Biblical language and the language that the Father sees right at the beginning of the Creed, “One God, the Father Almighty, creator of all things, visible and invisible.” The idea is God’s creation has two parts, there’s a visible part that we see and touch and feel every day, and there’s an invisible part, which is the spiritual realm, which is where angels are, which is where demons are, which is where our soul lives, which is where Christ is now, is in that invisible part.

And so, that visible part becomes sort of briefly visible at times. Like, remember when Elisha’s servants saw the armies of God, right? The angels became visible. Or Gabriel comes to the Theotokos, he doesn’t fly out of the sky with his wings, come and land in Nazareth, right? But he appears. He was there already, but he appeared. So that is more the idea. So human beings as a creation, the angelic beings that God created are purely invisible creatures. Plants and animals in this world are purely visible creatures. Human beings bridge the visible and invisible worlds. We have both a material part, a visible part, and an invisible part. And so what happens when we die is that the visible part and the invisible part are torn apart and separated. And so, our physical body in this world decays because our life, our soul, has been separated from it, but our soul continues to exist in that invisible part of creation.

Interlocutor: The immortality of the soul.

Fr. Stephen: Well, sort of. The soul is not in and of itself immortal. Any life we have, we have from God.

But it’s also important to note here again, it’s Moses and Elijah who are two people who still had their bodies, which is part of what makes this imagery of the final resurrection. It’s that they’re there in glory, physically. So, they’re in their glorified bodies, their resurrection bodies, because they’ve been transformed.

Now it happened on the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, that a great multitude met Him.

Now, again, St. Luke is continuing the Exodus imagery here, right? Because remember, Moses had the multitude of the people waiting for him at the bottom of the mountain, and he went up by himself. So now Jesus, who went up by himself to pray, taking his three disciples with him, he comes back down the mountain. Here’s the crowd, here’s the multitude, at the base of the mountain waiting for him.

Suddenly a man from the multitude cried out, saying, ìTeacher, I implore You, look on my son, for he is my only child.  And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out; it convulses him so that he foams at the mouth; and it departs from him with great difficulty, bruising him. So I implored Your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.î

So remember, Jesus took those three with them. The other nine were down there waiting at the bottom of the mountain. The crowd is down there at the bottom of the mountain waiting for Jesus. And a lot of people in the crowd had people who needed healing. One of them is this man with his son who’s been demon possessed. And so while they’re waiting, he brought the boy to the disciples, right? To the nine disciples. They had just been given authority earlier in the chapter, they were given authority over demons. They were given authority to heal. So, they have the authority to do this, but they haven’t done it. They couldn’t do it.

Then Jesus answered and said, ìO faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.î

Now, it’s important that word that’s translated generation, wherever we hear generation, we automatically think of it in terms of time. Generation in time, like a 40-year period or a 30-year period. You got the Baby Boomers and the Generation X and the Millennials, we think. So Jesus isn’t saying, “Man, those people who are alive at that time, they were just real bums”, right? But the word genos there, that’s translated generation, it can mean that. It can refer to that; it could also refer to generation, as in sort of the bearing of children. So it could mean like a family line or a people group, like what we would call an ethnicity or a nationality. So a better translation of that might be “O faithless and perverse people”. Right? Because he’s referring to what? He’s referring to the genos that was created by God when he brought them out of Egypt. Remember the symbolism of coming down the mountain?

He’s talking about this people, the people of God, from the Old Testament. Now, what should this remind us of? What did Moses find when he came down the mountain? Golden calf. He comes down the mountain, they’re all worshipping the golden calf, throwing their big pagan party, right? And what happened? He gets mad, right? God has just created these people, just brought them out of Egypt, just done all these great wonders, given them these great signs. He just gave them his law, made this covenant with them, and what are they doing?

So, we have sort of a similar picture here. Jesus has just laid out in fairly explicit terms to his disciples, “Here’s what’s going to happen.” He’s gone up on the mountain and given the three glimpse of the resurrection. He’s given them the authority to do this. They got all the tools, he’s given them everything. And what does he find when he comes down the mountain? “Oh, my son needs healing. And these nine couldn’t do it.” So not only does the crowd not get it, who might be expected not to get it, but Jesus’s disciples still are clueless.

So, he’s saying, the people of God haven’t changed. From the very beginning, God has been dealing with them patiently. As we saw, most of the story of the Old Testament is the story of God putting up with Israel’s nonsense, right? But not just nonsense, wickedness, evil, corruption, tolerating it. And Jesus is saying, this continues. But what’s he doing here when he says this? He’s speaking for God. How long has Jesus been putting up with them? Maybe a year since he started his ministry. That’s not what he’s talking about when he says, how long shall I put up with this genos? He’s talking about going all the way back to the golden calf. All the way… he’s talking about a good 1500 years, right? A millennium and a half. How long is this going to continue, that God continues to reveal himself to them, give them what they need and nothing in response?

So, He says, “Bring your son here.”

And as he was still coming, the demon threw him down and convulsed him. Then Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the child, and gave him back to his father.

So Jesus very swiftly takes care of it. Notice once again, I want to reiterate this. So we see this as a theme in Luke. How does Jesus do it? He’s very specific about how he does. St. Luke always talks about how he does it. Not just Jesus healed him, not just Jesus cast the demon out, but Jesus rebukes the spirit, meaning what? He spoke. Once again with St. Luke, just like God spoke, he created the world. We see God’s word in the Old Testament. Jesus speaks and it happens. So again, Jesus is operating the way God operates. It doesn’t say he prayed to his father that his father would remove the Spirit, right? He’s not like a prophet. He’s like God.

And they were all amazed at the majesty of God.

So the crowd thinks, well, this is amazing. This is wonderful.

But while everyone marveled at all the things which Jesus did, he said to his disciples,

So the crowd… and it says, “all the amazing things Jesus did”, meaning he didn’t just heal this one boy. These people have been waiting. He’s healing the sick. He’s casting out demons again, right? The crowd is all wondering at this. But Jesus says to his… he calls his disciples, he calls the twelve over. This is what he says to them:

“Let these words sink down into your ears,”

That’s pretty explicit, right? That’s like, “Listen up. Listen to me. Pay attention to this, this is important.”

“for the Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.”

So again, he doesn’t want them going, “Yeah, Jesus said some weird stuff about suffering and dying, but then he went back to healing all these people. Then he went back to the good stuff, so I’m pretty sure he’s still the Messiah.” He doesn’t let them start going back down the road. He pulls them up short again, “Remember, I’m about to be betrayed. I’m about to suffer, I’m about to die. That’s where this is heading.”

Then a dispute arose among them as to which of them would be greatest.

So we immediately see they didn’t get that either. Oh, sorry, I skipped a verse:

But they did not understand this saying, and it was hidden from them so that they did not perceive it; and they were afraid to ask Him about this saying.

So not only did they not get it, they didn’t really want to know what he meant. Every time Jesus starts talking about the whole suffering and dying part, they get real uncomfortable. They don’t like talking about that part. They like the healing part. They like the casting out demons part. They like the proclaiming the kingdom of God part, the suffering and dying part, not so much. Less of that, more of the other. So they don’t even want to ask.

Interlocutor: The part where it says “hidden from them”? Who hid it from them, does this mean they did not understand, or something that was hidden that they did not fathom? I say this because surely when Herod and the Romans and the Pharisees all out there in the crowd, I would think they would have the sense that they were not welcome that they were liked. They would have to see that someone is mocking us. And look at Jesus was saying to the Sanhedrin.

Fr. Stephen: Well, a little later on.

Interlocutor: I’m sorry. But who is hiding this from them?

Fr. Stephen: Well, it’s a passive participle in the Greek, meaning it’s not an active verb. It literally says “it had been hidden from them”. Meaning because it’s done in the passive, there’s not necessarily a person, an agent who hid it. For example, if you said, “I found a spring hidden in a cave”, you’re not trying to say someone took that spring and hid it in a cave, right? Maybe in a very roundabout way, well, God created the spring and he created the cave, so maybe God hid it in the cave. But that’s not really what you’re saying, right? You’re saying it was in the cave, you didn’t know it was in the cave, and so it was hidden. But then when you found it, the fact that there was a spring there was revealed to you.

And so that’s kind of the force of this, at this point, it’s still hidden from them, meaning it hasn’t been revealed to them. And when it’s going to be revealed to them is at the resurrection. After the resurrection, they’re going to go, “Ohhhh….”. It’s going to fall into place. Because all of this has always been true. This is part of the Counsel of God, right?

So like in the hymn that we say, “The mystery which was hidden forever, lasting and unknown to the angels was revealed through thee, through the Theotokos”. Meaning the incarnation of Christ, the redemption was going to come in Christ. It’s not like that was something God came up with at some point; that was eternally true. That was the plan, that was always taking place. But it was unknown to those who dwell upon earth, and it was unknown even to the angels. It was unknown to them. It was hidden from them until it was revealed, when Christ was conceived in Mary’s womb, until it happened, and then it was revealed. The incarnation, the mystery of incarnation was revealed. So it goes from hidden to revealed.

So that’s the idea there, right? Now, it’s still hidden and they don’t get it, right? But it’s going to be revealed later. So then the dispute arose among them as to which of them would be greatest. So this shows us just how little they understand, right? Because what was it before the mountain? So we’re talking nine days later, nine days ago, Jesus tells them, “If you try to save your life in this world, you’ll lose it. What does it profit you if you gain this whole world, to lose your soul.” And to show you how much that sank in: “I think I am the greatest of us because…”

So, completely on the wrong track. “I think I’m Jesus’s First Officer”, “No, I think I am, because….”

And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart,

We see this also in St. Luke’s gospel. Another thing that Jesus does, that God does is he knows what people are thinking and feeling and what’s going on in their hearts, even if they don’t say it out loud.

Interlocutor: They were apparently saying it out loud to each other but not in front of Jesus.

Fr. Stephen: Right. Which shows they weren’t completely dumb. It would be a bad idea to have this argument in front of Jesus, but when they’re off by themselves, the one-upmanship begins. So Jesus perceives that this is what they’re thinking and feeling.

[So he] took a little child and set him by Him, and said to them, ìWhoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For he who is least among you all will be great.î

We’ve talked about this before that the ancient world in its view of children was very different than our modern world in its view of children, especially about modern American culture. We like to reorganize everything around children. We pass laws and things to protect the children. What about the children? And we have to make everything sort of rubberized and rounded and put covers on all our electrical outlets and everything in public and threaten to sue Walmart if they don’t, right? Because everything has to be safe for children. Everything has to be geared to our children. We have to make sure nothing’s visible the children shouldn’t see, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So we’ve sort of elevated children and protecting them to be one of our major things, which is not all bad. I’m just trying to make a comparison, right?

On the other hand, if that’s one end of the spectrum, the ancient world, the Roman world, is sort of the other end of the spectrum, where children, especially children who are sort of wandering around in public, were sort of seen, like Dickensian street urchins, right? These are sort of like the Artful Dodger and his crew in Oliver Twist, right? Kids were sort of one step up from the stray cats and dogs. Children should speak when spoken to, if at all. They were seen as sort of parasites, they couldn’t really contribute anything to society. These were the lowest ranking people.

An example I like to give is my grandmother, when she was growing up on a farm, when my great grandmother would make a meal, they bring the food out. Her father would eat first and eat whatever he wanted, then the farm hands would eat because they needed the energy to go work the farm. And then whatever was left would be eaten by the children, starting with the oldest, and working their way down. So the kids were last on the list. The employees went before the kids.

The Roman world, very much that way. So when Jesus takes a child, that’s why he ends it with talking about the least of these. Your kid, especially the kid he would have grabbed being in Galilee, so this is a peasant kid. This isn’t like Caesar’s heir, right? This is some peasant kid who, if he manages to grow up, is going to be basically nothing as far as the Romans are concerned, as an adult, let alone as a child. So this is bottom of the totem pole here. And so Jesus says to them, essentially, very similar to what we read in the Gospel today from Matthew, that what you do to this child, what you do to this least important person in the world, least valued person in the world. What you do to them, how you treat them, is how you’re treating me. And how you treat me is how you treat the one who sent me, meaning God the Father.

Because man is made in the image of God. The image of God is Jesus Christ, right? And this is a concept they understood from, again, we’ve talked before about pagan religion, how idolatry works. What you do to that idol, what you do that statue is what you’re doing to that God. There’s a statue of the emperor, and you come up and vandalize it, it’s very clear you’re making a comment about the emperor. The emperor is going to treat you as if you had done that to him. And so what Jesus is saying is, this is my image. What you do to this person, what you do to any person, the least person, that’s what you’re doing to me. That’s what you’re doing to God.

And so what does that mean in terms of the argument they were having? You want to be great, then you’re going to have to, again, going back to what he said before, he who tries to save his life and lose, and he who loses his life when he’ll save it. So you want to be great, then you’ve got to put this child, this least person, ahead of yourself. You’ve got to treat them the way you would treat God Himself.

That’s kind of putting yourself beneath someone, if you treat them… Because I don’t know about you, but if Christ Himself came and knocked on my door and asked me for $20, I would probably not respond with, “Are you going to use this to buy booze?” I would probably not respond with, “Have you bathed lately?” Christ’s point here is when anyone shows up on your doorstep, when anyone comes and talks to you, when anyone needs your help, that is Jesus Christ standing on your doorstep, asking for your help, needing you.

And how you respond to that person, whoever that person might be, whatever you say to them, you’re saying to Christ. Whatever you do to them or for them, you’re doing to Christ or for Christ. That’s what he’s saying here. So if your concern is with being great, you’re going to have to put yourself behind everybody else, because that’s what Christ himself is doing. He’s God who created the heavens of the earth, and he’s right now living as a homeless peasant in Galilee for the sake of these people, of this sinful and corrupt genos that he was just talking about, right? He’s put himself last, dead last.

So that’s probably a good place to wrap up for this evening. So thank you, everybody.