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Lent 1B: Where the Spirit Leads
In a well-known sermon, the preacher Fred Craddock once said that you cannot get to Jesus without going through John the Baptist first. Apparently even Jesus could not get to be Jesus without John, either. Because his baptism by John in the Jordan River is included in all four of the Gospels (and that does…
Mark 1:9-15
Lent 1B
Lent begins in the wilderness. And it’s not a terribly safe place to be all things being equal. Some years ago after a seminar I was attending in Tucson, Arizona, wrapped up around the noon hour, my wife and I decided to check out a nearby National Park. We took a big bottle of water…
Mark 1:29-39
Epiphany 5B
Usually we are far too casual about God’s kingdom. “Your kingdom come, your will be done” we say each time we intone the Lord’s Prayer, but when we finish our prayer and open our eyes, we do not see any such kingdom. It is difficult for us to conceive of a kingdom that is not…
Mark 1:21-28
Epiphany 4B
It was the Sabbath and so, naturally, the Jews of Capernaum went to the synagogue. Some of them went sleepily, others went with a great weariness following a busy week of work. Still others trekked over in a rather irritable mood for who knows why–maybe it had been no more than that they were out…
Mark 1:14-20
Epiphany 3B
If Mark were a Broadway play, then the first 13 verses are like the overture. As we come to verse 14, the curtain is about to go up on the drama and when it does we see . . . Galilee. We’re not in a bigger city like Jerusalem or Sepphoris or Rome. Nope, little…
Mark 1:4-11
Epiphany 1B
Fans of Peter Jackson’s films in The Lord of the Rings trilogy will recall the opening sequence in the final film, The Return of the King. As the movie opens, we are taken back hundreds of years from the main action of the trilogy to the time when the Hobbit-like person Smeagol finds the Ring…
Mark 1:1-8
Advent 2B
Imagine yourself a Kindergarten teacher who gathers a group of wide-eyed five-and six-year-olds onto the square of carpeting in the classroom that is reserved for “Story Time.” You smile into their innocent faces and begin your story. “Once upon a time a little girl named Goldilocks was fast asleep in a lovely little bed—a bed…
Mark 1:9-15
Lent 1B
Lent begins in the wilderness. And it’s not a terribly safe place to be all things being equal. Some years ago after a seminar I was attending in Tucson, Arizona, wrapped up around the noon hour, my wife and I decided to check out a nearby National Park. We took a big bottle of water…
Mark 1:29-39
Epiphany 5B
Usually we are far too casual about God’s kingdom. “Your kingdom come, your will be done” we say each time we intone the Lord’s Prayer, but when we finish our prayer and open our eyes, we do not see any such kingdom. It is difficult for us to conceive of a kingdom that is not…
Mark 1:21-28
Epiphany 4B
It was the Sabbath and so, naturally, the Jews of Capernaum went to the synagogue. Some of them went sleepily, others went with a great weariness following a busy week of work. Still others trekked over in a rather irritable mood for who knows why–maybe it had been no more than that they were out…
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