Mark 16:1-8 Many of you will know that for most of the years I have been a pastor, I have started Easter Day in a cemetery. Anymore I rather delight in the shocked looks which sometimes cross the faces of others when they hear this. But the truth is, I have always heard the Easter …
Tag: Mark
The Easter Mystery
Mark 16: 1-8 I was visiting with a friend a few days ago. She asked how I felt about the week ahead. I replied that Maundy Thursday and Good Friday seemed to be well in hand. However, I had not yet begun to think about what to offer on Easter. And she replied, “Well, Easter …
Whispering Hosanna…
Mark 11:1-11 We will have missed two Palm Sundays all together in one place now. Many of you are ahead of us in terms of coming together in person for worship, I know. If things keep moving forward in the best way, soon we will join you in that. We are not there yet, however, …
Dying and Living with Arms Open Wide…
Mark 8:31-38 It’s a small memory, this one, and fleeting, to be sure. I remember it being when I was 6 or 7 when I would be playing with my sisters and neighborhood children in the side yard of our house on South 3rd Street. And this surely is a sign of our sheltered life …
God’s Presence In This Wilderness Now…
Mark 1:9-14 Many a February on the first Sunday in Lent, I have found myself speaking of ‘wilderness.’ And while there have certainly been other seasons which deepened my understanding of ‘untamed places’ and ‘wild beasts which threaten,’ I can think of no other season quite like this where the experience of ‘wilderness’ has been …
Light and Mystery and Jesus and Peter on the Mountaintop
Mark 9:2-9 Peter is so afraid that his first impulse is to start building things? Or is he so overwhelmed by what is before him that all he can think to do to try to regain some semblance of control is to keep busy? Or is actually a genuine impulse to be hospitable, or to …
Be Silent! … And Even the Unclean Spirits Were…
Mark 1:21-28 I am trying to imagine the scene before us now with Jesus fresh off his wilderness experience, still newly baptized by John, accompanied by a handful of his disciples, walking together into the synagogue in Capernaum today. Of course we do not hear the content of Jesus’ teaching in Mark’s telling of the …
The Father’s Voice
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 …
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 …