PROPER 20 (25) – Year B
18th Sunday after Pentecost — September 22, 2024
Gospel Lectionary Text
Mark 9:30-37
9:30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it,
9:31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again."
9:32 But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
9:33 Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?"
9:34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
9:35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."
9:36 Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them,
9:37 "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."
Context
Welcome to the 18th Sunday after Pentecost. Last week, we ventured into unfamiliar territory far away from Jerusalem. It was there that Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And it was there that he revealed His identity as the soon-to-suffer Messiah.
This week, Jesus leads them back towards the center of power in Jerusalem. That’s when an argument breaks out among the disciples about who is the greatest. It’s a raw display of ambition that the gospel writers don’t hide.
Instead of rebuking them, Jesus sits down with the disciples, taking a rabbi’s traditional posture for teaching. He places a child — the epitome of social powerlessness in His day — at the center of their circle, and embraces him.
This is not a moral lesson on the dangers of ambition and the quest for power. It is the revelation of God’s very heart, which is revealed in vulnerability, even weakness. Apparently that’s where the heart of God is perfected. As it turns out, the very thing which we so blindly pursue is pursuing us, but it does so with the gentleness of that which we are quick to despise and reject — powerlessness, the one form we could not imagine God to take.
Question
Jesus asks the disciples what they are arguing about. Instead of shaming them, he brings the question of who is the greatest into the light. Why?
Reflections
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
The Ambitious Kangaroo
by Amos Russel Wells
They held a great meeting a king to select.
And the kangaroo rose in a dignified way.
And said, "I'm the one you should surely elect,
For I can out-leap every beast here today."
Said the eagle, "How high can you climb toward the sky?"
Said the nightingale, "Favor us, please, with a song!"
Said the hawk, "Let us measure our powers of eye!"
Said the lion, "Come wrestle, and prove you are strong!"
But the kangaroo said, "It would surely be best,
In our choice of a king, to make leaping the test!"
Each Life Converges to Some Centre
by Emily Dickenson
Each life converges to some centre
Expressed or still;
Exists in every human nature
A goal,
Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,
Too fair
For credibility's temerity
To dare.
Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,
To reach
Were hopeless as the rainbow's raiment
To touch,
Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;
How high
Unto the saints' slow diligence
The sky!
Ungained, it may be, by a life's low venture,
But then,
Eternity enables the endeavoring
Again.
Prayer
Coming soon.