Like a Little Child
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September 21, 2024The twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time for Year B brings us to the second passion prediction of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. Notice that we call it the passion prediction but we really should call it the passion and resurrection predictions because Jesus never just predicts his death and leaves it there. Healways links his passion with his resurrection.
He says, “The Son of Man is to be handed over tomen and they will kill him, and three days after his death the Son of Man will rise.” The title “Son of Man” has been interpreted from the ancient time as the Messiah, the future King of Israel who would receive the everlasting Kingdom at the time of salvation. The title comes from the Book of Daniel 7, 13-14. “As the visions during the night continued,I saw coming with the clouds of heaven one like ason of man. When he reached the Ancient of Days and was presented before him, He received dominion, splendor, and kingship; all nations,peoples and tongues will serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away,his kingship, one that shall not be destroyed.”
But you notice that the disciples did not understand him. It is because Jesus was taking an image of messianic glory from the Old Testament Book of Daniel and uniting it to an image of suffering and death in the prediction of his passion. For the disciples, the two ideas did not simply match. Further,they were also afraid to ask him, perhaps because that was an ominous prediction and they were afraid of its consequences as Jesus’ disciples.
Jesus helps them understand by taking a little child,putting it in front of them, and saying: “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name,receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” This is a powerful saying, if you think about it. Jesus is saying that he is like a little child – obedient and humble – and whoever receives him should also be obedient and humble. The plea to imitate the humility of Jesus is best expressed in the letter of Paul to the Philippians 2, 5-11:
“Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”Amen.
