[Propertalk] Gospel - Quotes for 9/20, Mark 9:30-37, Part 4

[Joe Parrish]

Jesus returns to some fundamental sense of communication, be it human or divine, in this instance through the concept of welcoming. The content of the teaching is humility, but the vehicle for its expression is receiving children, being in communicative relationship with the small or marginalized.

http://jointhefeast.blogspot.com/2009/08/september-20-2009-mark-930-37-grant.html

Grant Holbrook, 2009
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Edwards (The Gospel according to Mark) concludes about Jesus having the child in his arms:
The child is not used, as is often supposed, as an example of humility, but as an example of the "little" and insignificant ones whom followers of Jesus are to receive. ... Disciples are thus not to be like children, but to be like Jesus who embraces them. It is Jesus, not the child, who here demonstrates what it means to be "the servant of all." It is in the small and powerless that God appears to the world, as Jesus so trenchantly described in the parable of the nations (Matthew 25:31-46). (p. 288)
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I have recently been quoting from John and Sylvia Ronsvalle's book, Behind the Stained Glass Windows: Money Dynamics in the Church. The following statistical quote involves children, so I though it an appropriate for this text.
We live in a world where it is estimated that thirty-five thousand children under the age of five die daily around the globe, most from preventable poverty conditions and many in areas where no church has been planted to tell them of Jesus' love. We can be confident that such conditions are not God's will: Perhaps one idea that would not be debatable in any part of the church is that Jesus loves the little children of the world. The financial cost to end most of these child deaths, it has been proposed, is about $2.5 billion a year, which is the amount Americans spend on chewing gum. 

http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark9x30.htm

Brian Stoffregen
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   To welcome a child is to extend the simplest of acts to an individual that society normally dismisses as perhaps cute but ultimately insignificant, someone who entirely lacks any accomplishments, greatness, status, or pretensions. By extension, Jesus invites us to welcome every person in the same manner, without regard for external measures of their worldly importance, status, success or failure. Lately I have tried the following experiment. Whenever I am repulsed by a homeless bum who loiters near our home, or nurse a grudge against a friend who spurned me, or envy someone more successful than I am, I try to picture that person as a little baby or child. I then find it far easier to welcome or receive them only as a precious human being, rather than someone who can help or harm me, as someone I might ignore, fear or flatter. 

http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20060918JJ.shtml

Dan Clendenin, 2006 
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-And he/Jesus took a child and put him in the midst/by his side. Jesus' teaching about the spirit and humility of a child fits naturally into this gospel story. It appears that Peter, James and John, who experienced a miraculous mountaintop event, used that event to elevate themselves above the other disciples. The other nine disciples did the opposite. They other nine perhaps blamed themselves for not being able to heal the lunatic boy. The other nine may have begun to doubt the quality of their own faith. The other nine may have begun to compare themselves to the "big three" who experienced the Transfiguration and saw themselves as having lesser faith than the "big three" disciples. Both sets of disciples were wrong. Both sets of disciples were into the "mind games" of  "superiority" and "inferiority." 

http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/series_b_first_shall_be_last_GA.htm

Edward F. Markquart
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True greatness
      Following the death of Diana, princess of Wales, Kate Legge in the Australian newspaper made this comparison between Diana and Mother Teresa. "One was young and beautiful and did good works. The other was old and ugly and did good works. One had a First World eating disorder called bulimia. The other lived in the Third World where people starve to death. One wore designer clothes and once sold her dresses for $7.8 million. The other left behind two saris and a bucket. One made headlines with simple gestures such as touching a person with AIDS. The other lived her life among lepers and the diseased." "In one sense there is no comparison between the two women and yet the expiry of the elder missionary, as a postscript to the dislocation over Diana's death, seems to taunt our godless worship of glamour and style."

http://www.lectionarystudies.com/studyg/sunday25bg.html

Bryan Findlayson
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