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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 13:24-37
Advent 1B
Maybe nearing the end of 2020 it is not at all difficult to bend people’s thoughts to all things apocalyptic. Most years when the Lectionary reading for the First Sunday in Advent directs us to the Olivet Discourse and Jesus’ words about the end of the world, it can be a stretch to do the…
Four Pages: Afraid and Silent
Anyone who has ever been a teacher or a parent or a leader or an instructor of any kind knows the truth of something I read a while back. The author was a teacher and said, “Sometimes a student will come to you and say ‘I didn’t understand that one point in class today.’ And…
Mark 13:1-8
Proper 28B
Digging into the Text: We have just gone through a tumultuous election campaign in which one of the candidates banked on the theme of fear. He wanted us to see that our country is going to hell in a handbasket, and he was the one who will save us. Most of us have had enough…
Mark 12:38-44
Proper 27B
Our text’s Jesus is in Jerusalem during the last days of his life. He figuratively stands in the shadow of his upcoming betrayal and denial, trial and torture, suffering and death. Jesus is, in other words, preparing to give up virtually everything for the sake of the world he so passionately loves. The specter of…
Mark 12:28-34
Proper 26B
Digging into the Text: The first thing I noticed about this text is that this is that while all the other encounters Jesus has with the Scribes and Pharisees, the Jewish leaders, are adversarial, this one is positive. This particular Scribe had been listening to Jesus discuss theology with the Jewish leaders, and he was…
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