Tuesday: 7^th Week in Ordinary Time-B:

I Reading: James: 4:1-10: When you do pray and don’t get it, it is because you have not prayed properly.

Gospel: Mark 9: 30-37: The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men. If anyone wants to be first, he must renounce himself the last of all.

The Second Prediction of Death: Intensive Training in the Death of Christ (Mk 9: 30-32)

The thrust of this passage is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus drilled the truth of his death and resurrection into his disciples. It is absolutely essential that every man grasp the death and resurrection of Jesus.

A person’s eternal destiny depends upon his/her grasping the truth.

The fate of the Christian message depends upon the believing the truth.

The fate of the world, mortal truth and justice, depends upon people’s grasping and believing the truth.

1.     The preparation: Jesus got alone with his disciples (v.30)

2.     The lesson: Jesus taught his disciples that he was to die and arise (v.31)

3.     The response: The disciples rejected what they did not wish to see (v.32)

The Disciples’ Terrible Ignorance of Messiahship: A Problem of Ambition (Mk 9:33-37)

The disciples, on more than one occasion, argued over who should hold the highest position in the kingdom (Mt 18: 1-2; 20: 20-8; Lk 22: 24-30). Their desire was for recognition and honour in an earthly kingdom. Jesus had to re-educate their thinking. The same re-education is needed by all people. All people have the same needs of for some recognition, prestige, authority, position, money, esteem, physical satisfaction, pleasures etc.

There is nothing wrong with these needs. They are human and legitimate and must be met, but people allow their hearts to be overtaken with selfishness. People begin to want more and more to the point of lusting and consuming and hoarding. They become prideful, covetous, worldly, ambitious, envious, and hurtful even to the point of destroying and killing in order to fulfil their lusts (Jas 4:1-3).

What Christ sets out to do is to challenge the lives and re-educate people’s concept of greatness.

1.     Jesus returned to Capernaum (v.33)

a.     The disciples argued

b.    Jesus questioned what they were arguing about

2.     Ambition can shame (34)

3.     Ambition needs instruction (35)

4.     Ambition is a virtue, but it must be directed toward the right goal: To SERVE (35)

5.     Ambition for serving proves a person’s discipleship (36-37)

a.     The illustration: Welcoming a child

b.    The lesson: Proves one’s discipleship

i.                   Proved one has received Christ

ii.                 Proved one has received God

Thought: Ambition that leads to argument and division is wrong. Every ambition needs instruction and right direction by the teaching of Jesus Christ.