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More than 600 years before Jesus was born, King Josiah ruled the land of Judah. He was the last king of Judah to be faithful to God. His father and grandfather had been horrible rulers. Under their reigns, many of the people had turned to idolatry. So, when Josiah became king, he tried to transform his people by leading them to greater…
When you compare the story of Bartimaeus with the stories that come before it in the gospel of Mark, the first thing that might stand out is that nothing goes wrong.
I think I’ve told you part of this story before, but when our daughter Katie was in preschool, she had a very clever teacher. In the corner of the classroom was a life size poster of a cartoon cowboy. It was only the top half of his body so, the average four-year-old could look him right in the eye. When one of…
In our gospel readings for the last few weeks, Jesus has done quite a bit of traveling. He went back and forth from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other. Two weeks ago he went to Tyre which is a city in Lebanon and then he went to the cities of the Decapolis which was on the far Eastern…
Today’s gospel has more than one memorable verse. More than one piece of this passage has been quoted, repeated and woven into our cultural understanding of Jesus, Christianity and the church. The phrases are a part of how we may define ourselves and most certainly have had an impact on the way our culture views us as Christians. And curiously, two of…
When we last heard from Mark, he was reporting on Jesus’ conversation with the Judean mucky-mucks who wanted to know why the disciples were eating without washing their hands? Why were they not following “the tradition of the elders?” Why weren’t they following the rules for cleanliness?
We never think it can happen to us – until it does. Good people behaving badly.
At the start of the chapter, there were people following Jesus. They had seen him heal people who were sick and they wanted to see what else he could do. They wanted to experience more miracles and they were looking to Jesus to be the miracle maker. Unfortunately, when they started following him, they didn’t think it through.
One of those ongoing debates had to do with the words of institution at communion. In most Lutheran congregations, the pastor presiding at communion uses the words of Jesus, “Take and eat, this is my body. Take and drink, this is my blood.” These words have been key to our understanding of the sacrament for two thousand years. Christians don’t all agree…