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In Mark 14, you get the story of the woman at Bethany who pours a whole jar of perfume on Jesus’ head and gets praised for it. (In fact, I’m always struck by 14:9 and its equivalents: “[W]herever the gospel is preached all over the world, what she has done will be told in memory…
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I’ve hit the part of Mark that recounts Holy Week, and while there are still plenty of things to notice there, since those stories get so much focus every year, less jumps off the page to me as fresh and new. But Mark 13:32-37 is one of those passages where Jesus tells the disciples to…
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Mark 11:11 is a verse I never noticed. At the end of the Palm Sunday parade, Jesus enters Jerusalem, goes into the Temple, “and looked around at everything. But since it was already late in the day, he went out to Bethany with the 12 disciples.” It sounds like he changed his mind because of…
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Mark 10:42-45 – “So Jesus called them all together to him and said, ‘You know that those who are considered rulers of the heathen have power over them, and the leaders have complete authority. This, however, is not the way it is among you. If one of you wants to be great, you must be…
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There’s a really neat, beautiful line in Mark 10, after Jesus tells the rich man to give everything to the poor and the guy slinks away instead. Jesus laments how hard it is for the rich to be saved, which is 180 degrees from what everyone though then (well, and now, if you’re a fan…
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He might be a dark horse candidate, but if I could pick one apostle to meet and talk with, it might be Andrew. And I’d ask him about the journey he must have gone through of burying his ego. In the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Andrew and Peter get picked together, brothers summoned…
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There’s a form of imaginative prayer in which you take a Gospel passage and put yourself into the scene, imagining what it would be like to be a disciple of Jesus, or a Pharisee, or a bystander, or whatever. I’m really bad at that. But in Mark 6, there’s one line that dragged me into…
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Sometimes the wrong answer is the best answer. I’m still working through reading the New Testament. I’m not as fast a reader as Betsy, but I promise I’m not THAT slow. Even so, I had to quit after two chapters of Mark, because there is just SO MUCH in Mark 4 and 5 that you…
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Three little notes: 1) Actually, this isn’t so little. In the first three chapters of Mark’s telling of the story of Jesus, watch how this plays out. Earlier, in 1:17, Jesus tells his first followers (Peter, Andrew, James and John, all fishermen), “Let me show you how to catch people instead of fish.” Mark says…
