Mark 10:12-16 I find I struggle for words today in the midst of this national conversation which cannot help but stir us up, some more viscerally than others. Indeed, this is true. I have been shocked and yes, sickened, by much of what I have seen and heard played out on the national stage in …
Month: September 2018
“And That the Lord Would Put His Spirit on Them, On Us…”
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29 I find that I am simply captivated by the scene painted for us in Numbers today: The faulty memory of the Israelites weeping over all they left behind in Egypt: the fish which came free, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, and the garlic. And their weeping complaint that now ‘there …
Who is the Greatest?
Mark 9:30-37 The disciples are thick-headed, of course. Or at least that seems to be the impression Mark wants to leave with us as he portrays their conversation with Jesus now. I mean, can there be any other reasonable explanation for the content of their conversation immediately in the wake of Jesus’ harrowing description of …
Then and Now: Picking Up Our Crosses
Mark 8:27-38 When I was in my first year of seminary, it was ours to translate these powerful, oh-so-familiar words from Greek to English. Indeed, by now these words from Mark’s Gospel have been part of me for so long it is hard sometimes to find anything new to say about what it is to …
What to make of Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman?
Mark 7:24-37 First, this: I have struggled with my writing now for like many, I hardly know what to make of the scene we witness in Mark’s Gospel today. What you have here are my first thoughts on a difficult passage. I would welcome your thoughts as well. I know the woman Jesus meets in …