Commentary on Mark 9:30-37

What if we welcomed children in Jesus’ name? 

On November 22, 2014, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old child, was shot almost immediately while playing with a toy gun in a park. According to data from the Children’s Defense Fund, 16% (11.6 million) of all children in the United States live in poverty. Sadly, we have a long way to go in welcoming children. It seems our treatment of children has gone awry, far from what Jesus desires.  

Though packaged as a single lectionary reading, today’s Gospel is two pericopes situated across two locales: Galilee and Capernaum.

In Galilee Jesus continues the teachings that characterize his travels with the disciples. As we saw last week in Mark 8, He continues to predict his betrayal, death, and resurrection; and the disciples continue to misunderstand his words.  

In the second pericope, Mark returns us to Capernaum, the center of gravity where Jesus began teaching with authority (1:21–28). Jesus addresses an argument that was taking place among the disciples while he was teaching about his death and resurrection. Sometimes we, too, are talking when we should be listening. Imagine how their comprehension of Jesus’ life would have been different had they been listening instead of arguing.

The disciples are reluctant to say what’s on their minds, but Jesus already knows. He sits down and “call[s] the twelve” (verse 35), so it is not apparent who specifically was having the argument. Their focus is on position and status and greatness rather than on Jesus’ ministerial vision concerning those in need. Despite their being witnesses to Jesus’ life activities, they gravitate to the possibility for power and recognition as a benefit of their proximity to Jesus. One scholar questions, “If they had to choose—justice and anonymity, or injustice and fame—which would they choose?” Which would we choose, knowing that the path of justice involves risk and uncertain recompense? 

The proclivity toward power and status is particularly pertinent to contemporary readers in a capitalist society. Gentleness and kindness are virtues that sound good, but grit and ruthlessness are often associated with the most powerful and successful. Ambition is celebrated for some, critiqued in others. Jesus disrupts their notion of greatness and significance with an inversion of the social order: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant [also translated minister] of all” (verse 35). As is common for the Teacher, Jesus doubles down with an object lesson.

Jesus uses one who is considered property, or possibly nonhuman in the first century—a child—to demonstrate the waywardness of the disciples’ contemplations. The reference to children is revisited in Mark 10, yet other mentions of children give us a glimpse into their sickly and oppressed lives in the ancient world (see Mark 5 [the ruler’s daughter], Mark 7 [the woman’s daughter], and Mark 9 [the son unable to speak or hear]). In essence, to follow the way of Jesus is to receive children as human—that is, to treat the most marginalized with care and respect. To minister to the least of these. 

Readers must be careful not to neutralize or sanitize the experiences of children in the ancient world and contemporary society. Children are needy and not often thankful. Children require attention. Children mess things up, speak out of turn, and have no social filter. The disciples were like children in the sense that they were dependent upon the hospitality of others (6:8–11). And children help teach us what it means to be human and faithful. Before they learn to be someone else, they are their full selves. A social agenda for community well-being necessarily begins with considering the treatment of those who are most vulnerable. 

Jesus attends to the least of these, making visible a new kingdom, a new order, a new way of being, in direct contrast to the self-centeredness of his closest followers. Jesus centers children, blesses children, calls children to himself, declaring, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom like a child, will not enter it at all” (10:15). 

Likewise, we are called to welcome the vulnerable, having no expectation of anything in return, and thereby welcome Jesus and the One who sent him. Those who share the way of love without self-interest and hidden agendas partake in the realm of God. Social behavior that bends toward the Divine begins with how we treat those who may need us the most.

References

Allen, Amy Lindeman. The Gifts They Bring: How Children in the Gospels Can Shape Inclusive Ministry. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023.

Allen, Ronald J., Dale P. Andrews, and Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm, eds. Preaching God’s Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year B. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.

Blount, Brian K., Cain Hope Felder, Clarice Jannette Martin, and Emerson B. Powery, eds. True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007.

Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. 20th anniversary ed. Biblical Studies. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008.