From the SALT Blog, Sept 22, 2024
Jesus for the second week as directing the disciples on the path forward as well as teaching about discipleship. The desciples are not engaging with Jesus and are in their own little world.
SALT Blog – “This week’s reading is the second of three successive cycles through a distinct pattern: a) Jesus predicts his suffering and resurrection; b) the disciples clumsily misunderstand him; and c) Jesus offers a clarifying teaching on discipleship.” We saw this last week Mark 8:27-38. Mark knows Jesus is the Messiah but they don’t understand how they fit in. Theis focus should be on the community and not on themselves and rank.
SALT Blog – “The disciples are more worried who is the greatest. They are falling back on traditional thoughts. SALT Blog – ” their argument on the road share a common root: a vision of greatness as marked by the conventional trappings of power and prestige. Associate with the relatively powerful, and thereby gain power. Look down on the relatively powerless, and thereby take up a position on a rung above them. Conquer and win, and you climb. Be vulnerable and lose, and you fall.”
“It’s as if Jesus says: You have heard it said, “Conquer and be great!” — but I say to you, God will redeem the whole world not with a mighty army but through a suffering servant. You have heard it said, ‘Be dominant, and get what’s yours!’ — but I say to you, live your life in gentleness and love, not as a master but as a “servant of all’ (Mark 9:35). You have heard it said, ‘Consort with the powerful, and gain power!’ — but I say to you, welcome the powerless, the outsider, the ones whose supposedly low status offers you no promise of conventional advantage in return. Otherwise your hospitality may well be a thinly-veiled, self-serving maneuver. Take this child, for instance, a person with perhaps the least social status in the neighborhood. ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me'” (Mark 9:37).