Becoming Small: The Secret to the Kingdom
Isaiah 58:1–12; Matthew 18:1–7
The disciples come to Jesus with the question every ambitious person asks: Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? They expect a hierarchy, a ladder, a ranking. Instead, Jesus calls a child into their midst. Unless you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
This is not sentimentality about childhood innocence. First-century children had no social power, no status, no rights. To become like a child was to become small—not cute, but vulnerable. Dependent. Unable to earn your place at the table.
"I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us." —Anne Lamott
Isaiah 58 provides the counterpoint. The people fast and pray, but God is not impressed. Why do we fast, they complain, but you do not see? Isaiah’s answer is searing: your fasting serves your own interests. True fasting—the fast God chooses—is to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to share your bread with the hungry.
There is a connection between these two readings that runs deeper than it first appears. The child Jesus places before the disciples is not performing righteousness. The child is simply there—small, unimpressive, making no claims. And the fast God chooses in Isaiah is not a performance either. It is a relinquishment. You stop hoarding. You stop posturing. You open your hands.
The desert fathers called this kenosis—self-emptying. Abba Anthony said: I no longer fear God, but I love him. For love casts out fear. The movement from fear to love is the movement from grasping to releasing, from proving yourself to simply being present. It is, in its own way, becoming a child again.
In the film Babette’s Feast, a French chef in exile spends her entire lottery winnings on a single magnificent meal for the austere Danish villagers who took her in. It is an act of extravagant, seemingly wasteful generosity—the opposite of hoarding. She becomes small so that others might taste glory. The villagers, softened by the feast, begin to forgive each other. Abundance, freely given, does what moralism could not.
Lent often feels like a season of doing more—more discipline, more prayer, more effort. But today’s readings suggest the opposite: become less. Become small. Release the grip on your own greatness. The kingdom of heaven, it turns out, is not awarded to the impressive. It is given to those willing to stand in the middle of the room, empty-handed, like a child who has nothing to prove.
The French philosopher Simone Weil wrote that to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. A child is rooted—not by effort but by nature. A child belongs to a place, a family, a moment. The adult must learn what the child knows instinctively: that we do not earn our place. We receive it. The fasting God desires in Isaiah is the fasting that makes room—not the fasting that proves endurance. It is the loosing, the untying, the opening of clenched fists.