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?
Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit, wild and free. Do as you please. Shine your light on me that I might see things as they are, not as I am. Free me to act in your name with courage, creativity, and compassion. See the complete prayer
Word from Below Reflections
Being Real
By Pat Thompson |
Imagine if just one of the disciples had been able to set aside their insecurity to ask Jesus if he would say a little more? Would that have freed up the others to ask their questions? What kind of conversation might have ensued? Would it have fostered more trust and greater understanding between the disciples...
Child in the Middle
By Scott Dewey |
Reading Jesus's comments about children, we are prone to overlay modern notions of the innocence, wonder, and simple delight of childhood. Social historians tell us that at least in the West, this conception especially arose and flourished with the "cult of the child" in post-Enlightenment Victorian times. Romanticized, idyllic images of the child abounded in...
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Weekly Homily by James Alison