Luke 7:24-35 | Philippians 3:2-11
It’s not that Jesus doesn’t use superlatives. He just doesn’t use them the way we usually would.
We love superlatives. From the classic high school year book - Most Likely to Succeed, Most Popular, Best Dressed - to entertainment award shows, to political elections, we humans crave determining the best. We even do it within the Church.
Jesus uses a superlative of sorts here - least in God’s Kingdom - to determine the “placement” of John the Baptist. But it really doesn’t make logical sense. We have to wonder if Jesus is really using best/least language like we do. His goal doesn’t seem to be a competition or contest, but a range of inclusion.
Jesus’ wisdom, which is the wisdom of God, is beyond human comparison. He has no interest in crowning the best. He has all the interest in the world in calling out human discrepancy.
Luke 7:24-35
After John’s messengers were gone, Jesus spoke to the crowds about John. “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A stalk blowing in the wind? What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in refined clothes? Look, those who dress in fashionable clothes and live in luxury are in royal palaces. What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. He is the one of whom it’s written: Look, I’m sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way before you. I tell you that no greater human being has ever been born than John. Yet whoever is least in God’s kingdom is greater than he.” Everyone who heard this, including the tax collectors, acknowledged God’s justice because they had been baptized by John. But the Pharisees and legal experts rejected God’s will for themselves because they hadn’t been baptized by John.
“To what will I compare the people of this generation?” Jesus asked. “What are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace calling out to each other, ‘We played the flute for you and you didn’t dance. We sang a funeral song and you didn’t cry.’ John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ Yet the Human One came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved to be right by all her descendants.”
Philippians 3:2-11
Watch out for the “dogs.” Watch out for people who do evil things. Watch out for those who insist on circumcision, which is really mutilation. We are the circumcision. We are the ones who serve by God’s Spirit and who boast in Christ Jesus. We don’t put our confidence in rituals performed on the body, though I have good reason to have this kind of confidence. If anyone else has reason to put their confidence in physical advantages, I have even more:
I was circumcised on the eighth day.
I am from the people of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin.
I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
With respect to observing the Law, I’m a Pharisee.
With respect to devotion to the faith, I harassed the church.
With respect to righteousness under the Law, I’m blameless.
These things were my assets, but I wrote them off as a loss for the sake of Christ. But even beyond that, I consider everything a loss in comparison with the superior value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have lost everything for him, but what I lost I think of as sewer trash, so that I might gain Christ and be found in him. In Christ I have a righteousness that is not my own and that does not come from the Law but rather from the faithfulness of Christ. It is the righteousness of God that is based on faith. The righteousness that I have comes from knowing Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the participation in his sufferings. It includes being conformed to his death so that I may perhaps reach the goal of the resurrection of the dead.
Prayer
God,
Comparison is a human game. But it’s really no game, is it? We make our lives depend on it.
Help me grow in the comfort of inclusion above and beyond the superlative. Remove from me the desire for idols, which is to covet anything other than you in the highest of places. Remind me over and over that my Lord is a man from Nazareth with dirty feet and bloody hands.
By his spirit and in his name,
Amen.