Sermons from 2024 (Page 12)

The passage we just read is from Mark chapter 8. This is the last time we’re going to hear from Mark until Holy Week, so I think we should take stock of where we are and where we’ve been in this gospel, so that we can locate ourselves in our story today…

Today we are in a new season of the church year. This is the first Sunday of Lent! And there is something really special about Lent in the year of Mark, something you might not notice unless you pay very close attention. For each of the five Sundays of Lent, every reading from the Hebrew Bible will be about one of the five covenants that God has made with us. And every one of those covenants is about God’s everlasting love for us, and for the world. Each one came to our ancestors at pivotal moments in their journey with God, separated from each other by hundreds of years and from us by thousands…

This is the Year of Mark. And something you gotta know about Mark is that he loves the word “immediately.” It’s a little hard to tell that sometimes in English, because translators have taken that word out in some places to make the text sound better to our modern ears, but if you were to read Mark in Greek, it’s just like a rapid-fire, go-go-go-go kinda story. Something is always happening, something is always changing, something is always moving. I think poor Mark would be rolling in his grave if he found out that we split up all of his immediatelys and read them slowly over a period of months. Poor thing…