Sermons from
Mission Hills UCC
San Diego, California
Rev. Dr. David Bahr
david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org
August 16, 2026
“You Already Are Somebody”
Matthew 18: 1-5 – Common English Bible
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 Then he called a little child over to sit among the disciples, 3 and said, “I assure you that if you don’t turn your lives around and become like this little child, you will definitely not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Those who humble themselves like this little child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
Two weeks ago, a Canaanite woman refused to be dismissed. Jesus told her, “Great is your faith.” Last week, Jesus called the disciples, “You of little faith.”
Peter correctly answered a question about who Jesus is: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” But a few verses later, Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.”
Great faith. Little faith. The disciple who gets it right and then immediately gets it wrong. It’s all more than a little bit disorienting. So, as they try to understand what all of this means, this week the disciples ask Jesus: “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
We’ve heard that question before in Mark and Luke. But in those gospels, the question came after the disciples were caught arguing with one another about who is the greatest. Not in Matthew. Here they simply ask the question. And by now, perhaps they knew enough to expect that Jesus' answer might surprise them. And it did.
He said, “Those who humble themselves like this little child will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” To our ears, it sounds quintessentially Jesus. Of course, that’s something he would say. To the disciples, they were still figuring this all out.
But let me first be clear that this isn’t about some heavenly afterlife. The kingdom of heaven is about the kind of world we live in now.
Here’s a line I’ve used before to help understand: “not pie in the sky by and by when we die but something sound on the ground while we’re still around.”
So when they ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” we’re talking now. Not someday.
Jesus calls the little child over: “You must turn your lives around and become like this little child.”
Jesus knows we must turn around because we so often look in the wrong direction. And he then gestures and answers their question: “those who humble themselves like this little child will be the greatest.”
Who are we accustomed to looking at as the greatest? The ones with the most trophies or awards or degrees. The ones at the top of their fields of study. We measure by money. The ones whose names everybody knows. They are really somebody.
But turn around, look over here. Jesus may have a surprise for you.
One of Henri Nouwen’s jobs at the monastery was washing raisins. He wasn’t a monk. He was a successful author and professor at Yale University. He was also a psychologist and Catholic priest. But in 1974 he stepped away for seven months to live in a monastery in upstate New York – Genesee. He entered the monastic rhythm of work and prayer because he wanted to learn how to simply be with God.
But even while washing raisins and kneading dough in the monastery’s bakery, he couldn’t help wanting the abbot to approve of him. His attention kept being drawn away by his nagging need for the monks to like him. He yearned for his work to be more useful. He was gifted at teaching and writing and counseling. But manual labor, not so much.
He found the repetitive rhythm of prayer and work more tedious than spiritually profound. Ultimately, he discovered how badly he needed to know that people liked him, valued what he offered, and needed what he could give – to be recognized as somebody.
And he realized that silence doesn’t remove all that insecurity. In fact, it makes it harder to avoid. And so, he often found himself lonely, disappointed, and frustrated with himself.
And yet he also spoke of those months as truly transformative. There were deep friendships. Moments of grace. A growing awareness that his worth might have nothing to do with how useful he was.
After seven months, he returned to Yale and continued to write and teach but found himself still wrestling with those questions. Eventually he left Yale and after a period of searching about what might come next, Harvard invited him to teach there. The man who was trying to learn that he didn't need accomplishments to tell him who he was kept becoming more accomplished. And yet, still unhappy.
He could so beautifully tell other people about prayer, community, and the love of God, but he remained less certain how to receive it himself.
After only a couple of years, Nouwen left Harvard. He moved to France and lived for a time with the L'Arche community. Eventually he became pastor of the L'Arche Daybreak community outside of Toronto – a place where people with intellectual disabilities live together with those who assist them.
At Daybreak, Henri was asked to help care for a young man named Adam Arnett. Adam couldn't speak and needed assistance with nearly every part of his daily routine. Every morning, Henri would wake Adam and carry him to the bath. Wash him. Shave him. Brush his teeth. Comb his hair. Dress him. Walk him slowly to the kitchen and feed him breakfast. The whole routine could take an hour and a half.
At first, Henri worried the whole time. That Adam couldn't tell him if the bath water was too hot or too cold. He worried he might cut him while shaving. Eventually, he stopped being afraid of getting everything wrong. And when Adam had a seizure, Henri accepted that he simply had to stop doing everything else that needed to be done and stay with him until it passed.
Henri had arrived thinking he was the one with something to give Adam. But in Adam's presence, Henri discovered what it was like simply to be received, not for what he could do, but for who he was.
Years later, Henri would call Adam his teacher, his friend, and his guide. The professor had become the student, learning what he had struggled his whole life to believe: You don't become somebody. You already are somebody. You are beloved.
Nouwen had actually written bestselling books about this for years. But it was Adam who finally took what Henri knew how to say and helped him actually experience it.
Jesus said, turn around. Maybe the problem isn't simply that we've been off the mark about who we call great. Maybe we've confused greatness with worth.
Children were certainly loved in Jesus' world, but childhood wasn’t idealized in the same way as today. Jesus isn't pointing to an adorable little face, full of curiosity and wonder, and telling the disciples to recover their inner child.
When Jesus puts the child in the middle, he points to their place in the world. They had no status of their own. No authority. A child stood near the bottom of the ladder of social status.
And Jesus reverses it. The one near the bottom becomes his picture of the greatest. That kind of reversal runs all through Jesus' teaching. The last will be first. The first will be last. The one who wants to be great must become servant of all.
In the kingdom of heaven, people who have been pushed down are lifted up. People whose voices have been ignored are heard. Reversal is justice. But is the kingdom simply a world in which the people at the bottom finally get moved to the top? Maybe.
But if that's all that happens, we still have the same ladder. We've just changed who gets to stand on the highest rung.
What if the kingdom goes even deeper than reversing places? What if Jesus is freeing human worth from the ladder altogether?
There are differences among us. Some hold positions of great power. Some carry enormous responsibility. Some achieve things most of us never will. Some are honored and remembered for what they've given to the world. But none of those things makes a life more valuable.
So maybe humility isn’t, “I need to move myself lower on the ladder” but discovering that my place on it cannot tell me what I am worth.
And the reverse of that is true too: Failures, weaknesses, dependency, or mistakes don't make my life less valuable. You are already somebody.
There is one more thing I learned about Henri just this week. Having read many of his books and admired his teaching for years, I only now discovered that years before Genesee, before Harvard, before Adam, Henri Nouwen was watching television and saw civil rights demonstrators in Alabama being attacked.
He later told the story of lying awake that night, unable to get those images out of his mind, wondering, “Why doesn't somebody do something?” And then it occurred to him: he was somebody.
In the morning he got into his Volkswagen and drove south. He joined the march from Selma to Montgomery just in time to walk the last day and was transformed by hearing Dr. King speak.
Henri didn’t lead the march. He wasn't remembered for being there. He simply went and stood with them.
The disciples asked Jesus who is the greatest. He said, “You must turn your lives around.” And maybe the turn is to stop worrying about where we stand and simply become willing to stand with one another.
