My friend Benny is putting together a baseball team. But he’s going about it all wrong. His team is comprised of a bunch of misfits, and their “field” looks like a dilapidated abandoned lot. The fact that Benny’s team and field LOOK shabby, silly, and small is bad enough, but on top of that – he’s putting people in harm’s way! The decrepit field backs up to BEAST TERRITORY! The Beast is the biggest, meanest, junk yard dog who ever lived! He is a true killing machine! The Beast has killed somewhere between 120-173 guys! It’s true! He ate them bone and all!

So the team is eccentric (to say the least), and the risk of getting tetanus or attacked by The Beast is ever-present! And to make matters worse, recently Benny added a kid named Scotty Smalls to the team, and this kid doesn’t even know how to catch and throw! We are fooling ourselves if we think this is a topic that we need not worry about!

So I attempted to confront my friend Benny about his backwards methodology.

Benny explained that He had been trained by a fella named Nehemiah.

I’d never heard of this Nehemiah character.

Benny explained that Nehemiah took a team of perfumers and goldsmiths (and sundry other unqualified peoples) to rebuild a city wall back in the olden days, and there were powerful, beastly, hostile, forces who rigorously and relentlessly opposed Nehemiah’s project.

Apparently this Nehemiah guy was influenced by another guy …a fella by the name of Jesus. This Jesus character was EVEN MORE unconventional than Nehemiah! This Jesus bloke was ALL ABOUT going SMALL!

He was born in Smallsville (a.k.a. Bethlehem), and then He was a refugee/exile for a few years. He spent His formative early years in a small, stinky, silly-looking place called Nazareth (and He forever retained this nasty nano city’s name as an identity marker). He was obscure and unknown for approx. 30 years. Then, for 3 years He aggressively talked about the inauguration of an EPIC end ETERNAL KINGDOM, and He put together a leadership team for this Kingdom – comprised of a bunch uneducated fisherman and misfits! And then He told this already small and silly looking society that they must strive to become even smaller! Really! It’s true! He was emphatic about it! He said,

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven!”

– Jesus of Nazareth

And He always, always, always stressed the quintessential SMALLNESS (and subversiveness) of this Kingdom. For instance, He said,

“The kingdom is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

– Jesus of Nazareth

Moreover, He was always talking about how the citizens of this epic and eternal Kingdom were like feeble, foolish, creatures – namely sheep! For example, He said,

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.”

– Jesus of Nazareth

And He was deadly serious about all this SMALLNESS business! He Himself exemplified and embodied this methodology! He unequivocally called Himself the KING of the epic and eternal Kingdom – and yet – though He was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, and He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross!