NOTES for Luk 9:46-50

The apostles ask Jesus one of those questions whose answer was meant to flatter their pride. They evidently considered themselves special, “advanced,” particularly close to the Teacher, and therefore more important than other people. But Jesus’ answer proves completely unexpected, overturning all their assumptions and reducing every kind of vanity to nothing. It turns out that on the divine scale, what the world regards as small becomes great and what it regards as unimportant becomes important. The disciples looked for the answer among adults like themselves, people made wise by experience, whereas they simply needed to look at something entirely different. To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it is useless to develop to the utmost those qualities that society values. Christ calls us to be “born from above,” becoming altogether different. It is astonishing that the image closest to us, showing what such a new person should be, is a helpless child who can simply be “taken and placed before Him.”