This past Tuesday I came into the office fairly early in the morning. As I walked from the door toward my office, it was dark inside. No problem. It’s a wide passage, one I’m familiar with, so I don’t feel the need to walk carefully. Only on this Tuesday, some cabinets were going to be…
Category: Mark
Mark 3:20-35
There are only three possible responses to the question of who Jesus is: Either Jesus was crazy, or he was evil, or he was – and is – the son of God. Consider Eric: Eric came from a little village to the city about a year ago. He began attending various churches from week to…
Mark 2:13 – 3:6 The Irreligious Jesus
How is it that someone can grow up in a Christian church and, as soon as they are able, can leave it entirely and live without it? That question hits home for many of us today: · Some of you have watched your children abandon God and church, and you still pray for them…
Mark 2:1-12 The paralytic
In the summer of 1967, a teenaged girl named Joni had her whole life ahead of her. She was attractive, athletic, part of a secure, affluent, and strongly Christian family. She was headed for the Olympics as part of the US show-jumping team. But on a July afternoon that summer, her life changed. Out with…
Mark 1:21-39 Three-fold discipleship
In the last passage we looked at, Jesus had just called his first disciples. Remember, Simon and Andrew, James and John were at the Sea of Galilee, plying their trade as fishermen, and Jesus issues a compelling call: ‘Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once, they drop what they…
Mark 1:14-20 To be a disciple
When Christmas descends on us, as it seems to do so suddenly every year, it presents us with a picture of life. And Christmas now doesn’t look much different than it did at the first Christmas 2000 years ago: Bethlehem was a bustling town, buzzing with commerce. The announcement of a census brought an influx…
Mark 1: Prologue
Over two thousand years ago, in a land on the Mediterranean Sea, a king was born. His name was Alexander, heir to the throne of his father, Philip of Macedon. Philip had unified the Macedonian people under his rule, and had gone on to conquer the other Greek speaking people in Greece. When he was…