In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Malvolio comments: "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." There is a large measure of truth in this observation, but it falls short in any discussion of greatness from the Christian point of view. True greatness is neither born in you, nor achieved by you, nor imposed upon you. It is caught, for it is the byproduct of the deeper qualities of our human nature.

Our text is from a tiny, yet significant, vignette from the course of Jesus' ministry, particularly related to his instruction of his disciples. On an itinerant mission to Capernaum, Jesus overheard the disciples carrying on a rather heady and stealthy discussion of their own. When they arrived at the house (presumably Peter's), he asked them what was the subject of their tete-a-tete out on the highway. Obviously they were somewhat ashamed of themselves, for they met Jesus' question with an embarrassed silence. Apparently Jesus suspected what had been the thrust of their clandestine debate and he broke the silence with this apt comment: "If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all." (v. 35) Then, Mark reports, "He took a child [maybe one of Peter's children], and put him in the midst of them." Amiel, the nineteenth-century Swiss philosopher, once commented: "Blessed be childhood; it brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness."

The issue here was not that the desire of greatness could be sinful in the eyes of God, but concerned something more basic - ambition. This was the underlying and ruling passion with this coterie of disciples. Ambition, however, can be neutral. It is good or bad depending upon what a person is ambitious for and why. Being ambitious for greatness for one's own or for greatness' sake can be destructive of the best within us and of our usefulness to others. Often, as William Barclay said, ambition is, for some, a matter of "How can I shine?" rather than "How can I serve?" Jesus took the concepts of "ambition" and "greatness" and put them into the framework of human conduct, and showed how this ambition to serve alone produces a type of greatness that claims our enthusiasm and contributes mightily to the common good.

We read: "He took a child and put him in the midst of them." How simple a gesture! Yet, often Jesus did this kind of thing. In so doing, he moved a critical matter from the realm of theory and into a living situation: he brought in a person. Remember many other and similar occasions when he did the same: "A certain man had two sons ..." "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho ..." "The land of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully ..." Imagine the effect of putting an innocent little child in the midst of these querulous disciples! What would they see in a child? Plenty: no sifting of qualifications in an effort to be top banana; no struggle to name and rate one's own abilities; no score card listing of personal merits; no top-level plateau from which to lord it over others.

Instead, the child portrayed humility and did so unconsciously, an innocent freshness remote from well-worn arguments of these rustic men, and no hangover of guilt from things said and done in regretful yesterdays. Likely these disciples became aware of what Canon Elliott meant when he said, "There is always something lost in growing up." Jesus (to quote Elliott further) "was calling upon these disciples to cherish and to keep if they could the childlike spirit and the childlike heart, the childlike way of looking at life, the childlike way of believing in life, the childlike way of wating confidently for what life has to bring." To live with a childlike spirit will temper our every ambition and cleanse them from narrow concern for self. Chiefly, however, in conformity with Jesus' teaching and example, Christians will allow themselves to be absorbed into the community of a kingdom where no one fights to be first and where greatness is the legacy of each person who volunteers to be servant of all.

Now, what must we grown-ups resolve to be and to do in order to respond positively when Jesus puts a little child in our midst?

1. We must recapture the sense of wonder. Ours is a materialistic age. Only what can be seen and handled visibly seems to count. Only what is spelled out in black and white is believed. "The world is too much with us," as Wordsworth wrote. We have lost our horizons. The horizon is where the heavens meet the earth. "Trailing clouds of glory" reads silly in these secular times. Such is dubbed as passe. Life is devoid of the element of surpise. Where is the world of wonder of the little child? True, there is the element of naivete in juvenile wide-eyed wonder, but in our quenching it within ourselves, we have almost destroyed beauty with our ugly graffiti, allowed utility to design our buildings, and not gracefulness, and permitted cold facts to create an era of speed. Wonder has gone out of our music and, hence, it no longer soars but trudges in a monotonous beat. Wonder has slipped from our painting and without the "sky" we get senseless daubs of colors. Wonder has left our literature and, instead of great imaginative novels, we are given only the seamy side of life.

Jesus "took a child and put him in the midst of them." This was his way of showing men and women there was another dimension to life than they had ever recognized. Parables, miracles, teaching made them see that life was not merely a-b-c, that there was a world of the unseen impinging upon their ordinary commonplace living and, if they opened their hearts to it, they would see, as James S. Stewart said, "wonder upon wonder and every wonder true." The dimensions of true greatness do not lie in our world of gadgets and things, of push and shove, by which our ego is expanded, but in that scheme of wonder where self-denial makes lesser people great.

2. We must cultivatae openness of belief. Nothing is more detrimental to genuine Christianity than the closed mind. It appears in the fundamentalist who stands rigidly upon the verbal accuracy and inerrancy of the Bible, in the Roman Catholic deification of its own ecclesiastical system, and in the legalists who, as Jesus commented, "strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." (Matthew 23:24) The result is not one kingdom under Christ, but a whole miscellany of defensive kingdoms, each condemning the other for its heretical or offbeat position. Jesus faced a similar hodgepodge in his day; he saw people and movements stultified by human isolationism and separatism. All of it pointed to the tragedy of the closed mind. Again and again he laid his finger upon human attitudes as "the villain of the piece." Little wonder the presence of the little child both judged and enlightened those whose closed minds repudiated the nature and method of Christ's kingdom.

What a difference the childlike attitude and spirit work in the affairs of the kingdom! The child represents openness, a readiness to receive guidance, instruction, and gifts, and in simple trust which accepts without thinking that he or she must now add up the totals in order to be sure to pay God off. Jesus taught that the kingdom of God was offered and given to all who were open to receive it and, unless they accept it without stipulations and conditions, (like little children), they are not eligible to receive it at all.

There is one thing more. Receiving the kingdom does not depend only upon our attitude of openness and humility; something further is there - the possibility of growth into spiritual maturity, to become the persons God wants you and me to be. Christ has set the standard for us and his offer is still valid: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in ..." (Revelation 3:20) True greatness is standing near. Need we ask how to come by it?