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 …
Tag: Mark
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 …
Seeing With the Eyes of Jesus: Like Sheep Without a Shepherd
Psalm 23 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 I only have glimpses of what it is to see as Jesus did — harried as I often am even as those disciples must have been “with many coming and going and no leisure even to eat.” It is far too occasional that I am able to look at the …
The Beheading of John: Why Is This Story Even Told?
Mark 6:14-29 This has been a dark place to ‘live’ this week, with the fateful, gruesome end of John before us now. In fact, I have found myself wondering why Mark and Matthew chose to include this story at all, with all of its awful detail. Perhaps it is simply to ‘close the loop’ on …
Sending of The Twelve: “Nothing” for the Journey
Mark 6:1-13 I have paused in this portion of Mark’s Gospel or Luke’s parallel countless times by now. In fact, this has been the case so many times that by now nothing much surprises me — except for the ways in which it comes alive just outside my door from time to time: I was …
Twelve Years: Pointing to the Fullness of God
Mark 5:21-43 There is so much richness in the stories before us now. There is courage and fear, despair and hope. There is power and generosity and joy in the healing we witness. And there is, as always, our wonderment at all of its meaning for us. I found myself returning again and again to …