WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: Think for a moment about how important to you is your status, either at work or in church. Pray for a true spiritual evaluation of your status. Fearing the future Jesus’ second prediction of his suffering begins this passage and it is soon clear that the disciples still don’t understand it at all. Indeed, it engenders fear (v 32). Is this fear on his behalf or for themselves? A measure of their failure to grasp Jesus’ meaning is that their conversation is not about his suffering but about their own future prospects. Perhaps they saw this language of suffering as a threat to their future. Servant status Jesus, however, never lessens the nature of his absolute demands for his disciples. Instead he introduces the notion of servanthood for the first time (v 35; 10:45) and uses the metaphor of a small child to illustrate the inversion of rank and status in the kingdom of God (vs 36,37). In Jesus’ day no one regarded a child as having any particular status or importance other than for the future. A measure of their distracted and status-seeking mindset is further revealed as they then complain to Jesus about a potential rival whom they have seen driving out demons in Jesus’ name (vs 38–41). Crushingly, for them and for us, not even being a close follower of Jesus is allowed to become a mark of status. Respond: Pray especially today for your own desire for status and significance. What would Jesus say to you concerning this most human of weaknesses? http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-09-17