Mark 13:1-8 This time through I find myself wondering why these words from Mark’s ‘little apocalypse’ do not strike stir up the same kind of terror or at least discomfort in me as they once did. For while I know that what I have seen and heard and experienced until now is but a glimpse …
Tag: Mark
“My Teacher, Let Me See Again…”
Mark 10:46-52 “My teacher, let me see again.” And then he did. Here is what I know of being blind, for I have seen it to be so in those I have known and loved. When the gift of sight is taken away, other senses compensate as much as they can so that the one …
Where the Old Measures Don’t Matter…
Mark 10:35-45 The other disciples don’t really ‘get it’ either, of course. If they did, they wouldn’t be angry with these two brothers now. Indeed, if they had any deep sense of what mattered most, it seems to me they would instead be puzzled by the request to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand …
An Invitation to Taste Eternity
Mark 10:17-31 It is theoretically possible, I suppose, to live a ‘flawless’ life and still miss the point of it all. Or to think one has, as seems to be the case in the conversation that plays out between Jesus and the one who catches up with him here at this point in Mark’s Gospel. …
Wondering about Divorce and Welcoming Children and the Kingdom of God…
Mark 10:2-16 Even after all these years of going around and around with the cycles of Gospel readings, I am still and always drawn up short by this one. Oh, one cannot argue with the truth of what is spoken here. Without a doubt, God does not intend that what is meant to be such …
Cutting Off or Tearing Out and the Wholeness God Intends
Mark 9:38-50 Truth be told, I struggle to follow Jesus in his teaching now. Perhaps this is because it is just so much to take in, for we begin with someone casting out demons who is not a follower of Jesus, we move to the acknowledgement that something as simple as a cup of cold …
Welcoming Jesus…
Mark 9:30-37 I attended a community meeting last Wednesday night. The purpose was to introduce the city’s and the university’s new chiefs of police. The purpose was also to continue a dialogue about the apparent rise of violence in the community — much of it centered near the university. More than 350 people crowded into …
Cross-Bearing: 2021
Mark 8:27-38 I am doing something new this year. We have just a small group of young people who are ‘affirming their baptism’ this fall: four fourteen year old’s who will stand before our congregation and claim for their own the faith they have been raised in. Or maybe it is better to understand this …
Driven by Love…
Mark 7:24-37 Love drove her. Of course it did — an elemental, primal kind of love of a parent for a child, a mother for a daughter. Love. And, no doubt, lingering memories of a better time. And hope for all that child could be, surely would have been, had not a demon taken possession …
What Matters and What Doesn’t…
I am sharing an old blog this week as I am on vacation in the days leading up to when I would normally write. While this one was written several years ago, the questions posed seem especially timely given the opportunity we have now to sort through why we do what we do and the …