A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. And Jesus said to the crowds, truly, I say to you, among those born of women, there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and men of violence take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.
And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has his ears to hear, let him hear. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. This first sentence of our blessed lord where he first of all gives highest praise to John the Baptist and then quickly adds, however, in the kingdom of heaven, the least person there is greater than John.
What sense do you make of that? Well, an obvious meaning is this, that there is a distinction, a separation, a chasm which requires a complete transformation to go from one to the other between John the Baptist, greater than whom no one was born of a woman and the least in the kingdom of god. That's what our lord is saying. If we today, whether we like it or not, we are living in a world not that is pagan. Keep this in mind, this is a terrific misapprehension.
For example, on my last trip to Rome, I went on a on a tour of the city and the the the guide almost it does seem he was saying it almost all the time. He was pointing out the temple dedicated to this god or goddess from ancient Roman days. We call it ancient, not so many hundred years ago. Then he'd point out to another one and there we're going on. Finally, somebody said, the Romans certainly must have had a lot of faith in their gods and goddesses.
You can't get away from them. Remember, I that was the pagan world. We're not living in that kind of a world. We're living in a world that renounces god and gods and goddesses and admits only one, man, the human being. We're the center of the universe, not god.
You can call it secular humanism, you can call it what you want. Secular humanism is a very good secular meaning worldly and humanism mean meaning human beings. That's the name of the game that we're playing in this in this world and especially in USA nineteen hundred and eighty, December. That is not the world of Jesus Christ, and yet we are in his world. And so immediately, you have a dichotomy.
You have a built in opposition between you and the world you're living in. And if there is no opposition, then one of two things is true. Either you have surrendered to the world or you or the world has changed and come over on your side because you cannot be on both sides. No man yet has straddled the Grand Canyon, and the Grand Canyon isn't anything in significance as meaning separation as the natural from the supernatural, from John the Baptist to the least in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Now one of the things one of the things, one characteristic or quality of a believer in Jesus Christ, the son of god, should be faith and love and trust.
This is that first sentence of Jeremiah this morning. I, the lord and this is to the ancient world. This is Isaiah speaking, and he is voicing, he is speaking in the name of God almighty. He's his prophet. He says, I, the lord your god, hold your right hand.
It is I who say to you, fear not. I will help you. Aren't those simple words? There's not a word there that is has more than one syllable. I, the lord, your god, hold your right hand.
It is I who say to you, fear not. I will help you. Now do we really believe this as Christians? This was spoken to the non Christian world. What do we believe when we add that to our lord who fulfilled that prophecy?
When our blessed lord drove it home time and again with such figures of speech as not a hair falls from your head without your heavenly father's permission, not a sparrow falls from the sky, and in those days there were plenty of sparrows. He even likened this to the grass of the field, which he says today is blooming and lovely and green and verdant and the more we throw into the fire. But god almighty even has care for that. And then our lord says, how much more care does he have for you, o you of little faith? This is this is something we ought to think about.
If our Christian religion means anything, and if it doesn't mean something, what are we bothering with it about? Oh, I know it's a cultural thing, it's a sociable thing. I say, as I said Sunday, if some people had their way, the church would be a YMCA or a Rotarian Club or a welfare organization or what or a country club or something. But that's not the way Christ wanted it. To be a Christian means to be following Jesus Christ.
If it means anything, and it means we take him literally in what he said. And therefore, our whole view of life, our whole apprehension, our getting a hold of it as it as it confronts me, not as it confronts as life gets a hold of other people, but the way it grasps me here and now, 12/11/1980. Do I see it under the vision of God holding my right hand? Am I without fear? Notice that play on the word fear.
That's a that's another buzzword. But what we mean by fear here, we know we it means lack of trust, it means fearfulness, it means timidity, it means anxiety, it means being downright scared. That's what the word fear here means. Are we different from the unbelievers? How do we view what we call these great catastrophes?
Are we as ignorant as they who know not God? Or have we the faith to say, I don't understand how all of this works out, but if it's under God's control as I believe, it is in the end for man's welfare? Do we believe it? Or do we sit back and say, is there a God who can allow such calamities? Think of the great earthquake over in Naples, or think of anything.
Let me give you an instance of how our perspective changes. Just yesterday I heard some statistics and of course you know what I think of statistics. But anyway, for what they're worth, we are very much impressed by these figures given when tornadoes and deluges and floods and earthquakes hit. But someone gathered these figures are gathered, of course, from insurance companies so that you may say they are reliable as minimal. That in the last ten years, a great number more have been killed by abrupt change in the seasons from hot to cold and cold to hot than have been killed in all natural catastrophes.
Not to mention the slaughter on our highways, But we don't notice these things. We take the slaughter on the highways as normal. We'll be coming into one of them in two weeks. So, anyway, listen to Isaiah. It is beautiful.
It is so simple, and yet so hard to get into our lives. It is not easy to have this kind of trust. We have to pray for it, but we ought to want it. We ought to know that this is our inheritance as Christians, that we take literally, I believe that the lord my god does hold my right hand and that with his help, I have no reason to fear anything. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.
Amen.