Sermon Tone Analysis

Message

Welcome Gables campus, Kendall campus, and church online joining us from across the nation and around the world.

Do you want to be great?

I think all of us long for greatness of some kind.

I do, I want to be great.

In my young adult years, I wanted to be great at doing things: I wanted to be a great student, a great writer, a great musician, and a great runner, but now in my adulthood years, my longing for greatness has evolved from doing into being.

Now, I want to be a great husband, a great father, and a great pastor.

I want to be a man of great character and integrity.

But greatness is hard…

Just a few days ago, we returned from the most magical place on earth to celebrate all 3 of my kids’ birthdays, two of our cousins birthdays, and a family anniversary - all between Jan 18 and Jan 27.

All of us were together, and we celebrated with a hundred thousand of our closest friends.

Truly, it was great!

On day 3 of our adventure, we celebrated my daughter’s birthday at the Magic Kingdom.

For days leading up to the event, Hannah reminded us sweetly, but daily, that she wanted a balloon.

It’s a $13 balloon at the Magic Kingdom, but I want to be a great father, so as soon as we walk through the gates, my wife took to buy the balloon of her choice.

Great father, great mother moment, and for the next 8 hours or so, she played with such delight, even nicknaming the balloon, “Ballooney.”

No joke!

As I’m packing the van and reflecting on a great day, I folded her stroller, and then from nowhere, POP, the ballon breaks from the string and flies into the blue sky.

Immediately, my daughter melts down into tears and crying, as if her best friend just abandoned her.

Ballooney!!!

Immediately, I felt the rage begin to well up from deep within me - Dad’s you know that place - the molten lava core from deep within you that wants to explode from the volcano pit of your mouth.

I wanted to break the stroller, and right before I did, somehow by the grace of God, I remember thinking to myself, “Ryan, gather yourself, you want to be a great husband, you want to be a great father, you are preaching on this very topic in 5 days.

This is not about you.

Go and show her your love and get her another balloon.

If you have ever been to the Magic Kingdom, then you know it is impossible to get inside of the Magic Kingdom.

You walk 10 miles and then get on a tram.

And then you get on a ferry boat.

And then you stand in 3 different lines before you walk into Main Street.

So breaking all of the rules, we drove to where the buses turn inside, and then I hopped out, ran about a half a mile to the entrance, found a the balloon guy, told him my story and said, “Bro, please help me out.

Without hesitation, he grabbed an Elsa and Anna balloon, double tied the knot, gave me the balloon, and then told me as I turned to sprint the half mile back: “Have a magical day!”

Greatness is hard, my friends.

But the hard is what makes it great!

Inc.

Magazine published an article about achieving greatness, stating: “Being great is not about ego or selfishness.

The path to greatness consists of having a strong and genuine desire, a good purpose, and also having good company along the way.”

(“27 Powerful Quotes to Bring Out the Real Greatness in You” 27 Aug 2015).

This is La Familia!

Greatness is not about yourself, nor is it a solo sport.

Greatness requires growing emotional self awareness and emotional health, which happens first and foremost in tu familia.

Thus, if you want to be great, then your first step toward your achieving your calling toward greatness begins… at home.

I know for some of you this may be a difficult first step to take.

Regardless of your current parental or relational status, how you received emotional health during your childhood years will determine how you give emotional health during your adulthood years.

Particularly with your family.

Some of you right now are enjoying the benefits of healthy and safe emotional relationships because your parents formed healthy and safe emotional and physical attachments with you.

While others of you… have been hurt… or have hurt others… because you were hurt… either inadvertently or intentionally by the very people who were supposed to love you.

Friend, if this describes you, then hear the good news of Jesus: your past hurts and present insecurities do not have to define you.

The Good News of Jesus announced a way through your hurts into freedom.

You are not merely the sum of your circumstances.

You have been created in the image of your Creator and given a pathway to emotional health.

Recently, my sister in law found her 4 year old son sitting quietly by himself.

When she asked him what he was doing, he said to her, “Mommy, I’m talking to my brain.”

Today, this is a safe place to talk to your brain and your heart by listening to how Jesus taught about greatness through the pathway of emotional health.

Written by one of Jesus’ original disciples, Matthew recorded:

About that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” (Matthew 18:1)

Perhaps the kind of question you might expect from a group of teenage and 20-something adolescent disciples on the very early growing edges of emotional maturity.

:) No offense to my young adult friends in here.

:)

Like children in grown men’s bodies, they asked Jesus one of the most childish, self-centered, ego-driven questions in all of the Gospels: ‘Who’s the greatest in Kingdom of Heaven?’

The irony is that by this time these guys has been with Jesus for more than two years, and their question completely contradicted so much of what they had heard Jesus teach, such as what Matthew recorded in the moments leading to their question:

God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him,

for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

Matthew 5:3

Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.

This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.

Matthew 7:12

For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.

Matthew 9:13

If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.

Matthew 10:39

Do you think Jesus had every right to feel frustrated by this question?

Sure!

But even still Jesus showed compassion and grace to these men, for instead of rebuking them for such asking such a childish question…

Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them.

Matthew 18:2 and said to them: I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Matthew 18:3

True greatness is found in the opposite direction of your ego and pride.

In fact, Jesus calls your ego and pride a sin.

Jesus called out their sinful childish ways and instead challenged them to live child-like.

How offensive to call grown men to become like little children.

During the first century, most viewed children as less than a human being.

In fact, the first century Koine Greek language, which is the language of the New Testament, affirms this by how people spoke about children.

Just like today’s Spanish language, Koine Greek assigned masculine and feminine forms to nouns.

The Greek word for child, however, was a neutered noun, which means that it did not possess either a masculine or feminine form.

Thus, the only way that a Koine Greek speaking individual could refer to a child was an ‘it’ like a thing or an animal.

Society as a whole gave very little to no dignity to children.

Little girls, especially, suffered in the ancient world, and many of them still suffer in our world today.

Girls often cost the family more money to raise than boys, since boys could work and earn additional income.

If parents did not want to raise a daughter, then common practice allowed them to leave their infant girl in a field to perish in the elements or sell her (and sometimes boys, too) into prostitution or additional income.

Given these cultural norms, Jesus called a little child to himself, perhaps a little girl even, and stood her among those men in order to confront their assumptions about greatness and instead show them how child-like characteristics point to true greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven, characteristics such as:

Seeing the world with clear eyes

Trusting with a full heart

Ready to listen

Open to love and being loved

Eager to learn

Creative and imaginative

Captivated by wonder

Marked by growth

Imitate these characteristics, Jesus says.

Don’t become a child, but embody the characteristics of a child, which means learning how to understand and feel your life, your world, your God, and yourself through the other end of the telescope when you appear small, but God appears big!

I understand how foolish this sounds.

Even Paul wrote in the beginning of his first letter to the church in Corinth how foolish the message of Jesus sounded to the Greeks.