From the Lectionary for 22 September 2024 (Proper 20B)

Mark 9:30-37 (NRSV Updated Edition)

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, 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.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

~

"So he's beginning to teach [his disciples] that the point of his going to his death is not, “I'm going to leave a vacuum and one of you is going to have to fill it, I wonder who is the greatest,” but it's “You're all going to have to undergo the way of death, dying to yourselves, so as to learn to be what I have been for others.”

"And then he takes a little child, remember, a 'non-person' - the ancient peoples did not have our sentimental ideas about childhood at all, children were non-persons. He takes a child and stands him... among them. So first of all he stands the child, which is the position of one who is going to speak, and then he embraces him, cuddles him in his arms, before them. Now, if what you were was the one who wanted to be greatest, what you were particularly keen on is who was the master's favourite, so here Jesus is actually using [imitative] desire to draw attention to his favourite - his favourite is a little child, it's not one of them, it's a little child - a non-person is his favourite. They are supposed to look at that and be very jealous that they are not being cuddled in Jesus's arms.

"Then he says to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” - it is by receiving a non-person that you receive me - “and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” - if you want to receive the Father then receive this non-person. In other words, this whole dynamic of the relationship between Father and Son is now to be between brother receiving non-person - that's how you enter into the life of the Father.

[...]

"[H]ere we have the unimportant one being placed before them in a position of speaking [ie. in the centre of the circle] and said that the [ones who] want to be great [...] have to occupy that position and learn to speak from that position [of the unimportant one, the non-person]. This is how we are going to learn to listen to Jesus and that means how we are going to learn to obey the Father. This is part of Jesus's teaching technique, attempting to produce a real change in the apostolic group's life so that by the time they get to the cross they might have the first idea of what he's been talking about."

- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 25 in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F6ncp8fbIE)

~

"The poetics of place are essential in the communicative strategy of this determinative pericope. They take us to the sacred center and show us there that the Sacred has been dethroned by the Servant. Jesus and the disciples are in Capernaum, in a house, and Jesus takes his place as teacher by sitting down. The disciples have been engaged in the old argument of envy, about who is the greatest in their little universe (9:34). Jesus calls them into a circle around him (we infer the circle from the placing of the child “in the middle”), and teaches by word and deed. By word he says, “If anyone desires to be first he shall be the last of all and the servant of all” (9:35). Then he teaches by deed what it means to be the servant of all, first taking a child and placing it in their midst, and then taking it up in his arms, with the words, “Whoever receives one such little one in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me but the one who sent me” (9:36-37).

"To receive rather than to expel is the mark of the new community of the kingdom. The message in the symbol of the child is that preeminent dignity in the kingdom goes to the one who is “last of all and the servant of all” (9:35). Jesus’ dramatic gesture of taking a child into his arms says that the greatest in the kingdom is the one who can receive those who have no power or prestige as if they were Jesus himself (9:37). This humility is clearly an antidote to the mimetic rivalry present in the disciples’ argument about who among them is the greatest.

"The poetics of place locate this act of inclusion at the center of space - in the town, in the house, in the circle, in the arms of Jesus. At the center, where in Sacred terms the holy absence skulks, sits Jesus with a child in his arms. The place at the center of the circle is the place of the victim during a stoning. Jesus and the child take that place. The gesture of taking the little one into his arms reverses the order of the Sacred. It dramatizes the inclusiveness of the new community by embracing rather than stoning or expelling the powerless one.

"By means of this symbol and these poetics of space, the Gospel tells us that the new community replaces the conspiracy of the Sacred by neutralizing the power of envy. In the conspiracy of the sacred mob, envy binds the members to one another in the scandalous bonds of rivalry and desire. No one can be found caring for the victim or siding with the weak, because that would be surrendering in the battle for prestige. The Gospel declares that such defeat is not loss but real preeminence in the order of the new community. The pericope of the child at the center is the summary symbol of the church as the nonsacrificial community."

- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pg. 108

[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly quote, and for analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper20b/]