Since I am still on vacation, I offer this old reflection now. What was eighteen years in the past is now almost twenty four. Perhaps it is mere coincidence that my sister unearthed an old video cartridge a few days back and after digitizing it so we could view it, discovered our dad’s voice, narrating …
Tag: Mark
Turning Around…
Mark 1:1-8 It is a risky thing, and limiting, I know, to look for parallels between us and the natural world, for I expect the human mind and heart and soul tend to be a whole lot more complex than what can be observed outside my kitchen window. And yet, every time this happens, it …
End Times, Advent and Hope…
Mark 13:24-37 I remember it like it was yesterday, that summer’s day more than fifty years ago. They were rare and precious days, time spent with favorite cousins who lived at a distance. Only now it is not that which stays with me, but a sense of foreboding terror building in my 7 year old …
Looking in the Wrong Direction… Revisited and Revised
To my Companions in Dancing with the Word: I am to be taking some much needed vacation over the next couple of weeks, which will give me the sabbath time to rest and to reflect without needing to put ‘thoughts on paper” in this weekly reflection. In my absence, I wanted to share with you …
The Widow’s All: Revisited and Revised…
To my Companions in Dancing With the Word: I am to be taking some much needed vacation over the next couple of weeks, which will give me the sabbath time to rest and to reflect without needing to put ‘thoughts on paper” in this weekly reflection. In my absence, I wanted to share with you …
The Sons of Zebedee
Mark 10:35-45 Now it is so that I have a rather muddled relationship with these sons of Zebedee, with James and John. A whole lot of the time when I encounter them as we do today in all their ‘obvious lack of humility,’ I shake my head at them, for they are so unlike how …
The Rich Man and Jesus… and Me
Mark 10:17-31 It was decades ago by now when I picked up the phone to talk to a friend who was also a pastor. We were on the edge of the year of Matthew in preaching and I hadn’t spent much time with Matthew in Seminary. For that matter, I only had one commentary on my …
Jesus Gathers the Most Vulnerable Into His Arms: Then and Now
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 …
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 …