Proper 28 B - Mark 10:43-45 - John Tauler.

"Whosoever will be the great among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be the servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister."
~Mark 10:43-45

" Let every man lovingly cast all his thoughts and cares, and his sins too, on the Will of God. Moreover, if a man, while busy in this lofty inward work, were called by some duty in the Providence of God to cease therefrom, and cook a broth for some sick person, or any other such service, he should do so willingly and with great joy. If I had to forsake such work, and go out to preach or aught else, I should go cheerfully. I would believe not only that God would be with me, but that He would grant me even greater grace and blessing in that external work undertaken out of true love in the service of my neighbour, than I should perhaps receive in my season of loftiest contemplation. "

Proper 28 B - Mark 10:38 - F.W. Robertson

" The worst part of martyrdom is not the last agonizing moment; it is the wearing, daily steadfastness. Men who can make up their minds to hold out against the torture of an hour have sunk under the weariness and the harass of small prolonged vexations. And there are many Christians who have the weight of some deep, incommunicable grief pressing, cold as ice, upon their hearts. To bear that cheerfully and manfully is to be a martyr. There is many a Christian bereaved and stricken in the best hopes of life. For such a one to say quietly, 'Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt,' is to be a martyr. There is many a Christian who feels the irksomeness of the duties of life, and feels his spirit revolting from them. To get up every morning with the firm resolve to find pleasure in those duties, and do them well, and finish the work which God has given us to do, that is to drink Christ's cup. The humblest occupation has in it materials of discipline for the highest heaven. "

Proper 28 B - Heb. 4:12 - Everyday Life, Leland Ryken

" Virtually the first thing we notice about the parables is their everyday realism and concrete vivdness... The parables take us right into the familiar world of planting and harvesting, traveling through the countryside, baking bread, tending sheep, or responding to an invitation. The parables thus obey the literary principle of verisimilitude ("life-likeness"), and a perusal of commentaries always uncovers new evidence of how thoroughly rooted in real life the parables are...

This minute realism is an important part of the meaning of Jesus' parables. On the surface, these stories are totally "secular." There are few overtly religious activities in the parables. If we apprached them without their surrounding context and pretended that they were anonymous, we could not guess that they were intended for a religious purpose. An important by-product of this realism is that it undermines the "two-world" thinking in which the spiritual and earthly spheres are rigidly divided. We are given to understand that it is in everyday experience that spiritual decisions are made and that God's grace does its work. "

Proper 28 B - Heb. 4:12 - Reading Scripture, Eugene Peterson

" If the Revelation is masterful in getting us involved in a living response to scripture, it is also unavoidable in its claim that scripture is God's word to us, not human words about God. Reading scripture as if it were the writings of various persons throughout history giving their ideas or experiences of God, is perhaps the commonest mistake that is made in reading scripture. And the dealiest.

"God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon's scapel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey."
~Hebrews 4:12 "

Peterson, Eugene, Living the Message; Harper Collins Publishers; New York, N.Y.; 1996.