Conversation Points for Mark 1:29-39

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Mark’s Gospel alternates between stories of Jesus surrounded by large crowds and of him teaching his disciples alone inside a house (ex. 4:10, 34; 7:17).
• Mark’s Gospel is sometimes dismissed as being anti-family, but many times the healing revolves around a child. Here, the person being healed is a mother-in-law, and in Peter’s own home.
• The word translated as “lifted her up” in v. 31 is the same word later translated as “raised.” It shows up often in healing stories in Mark (Mark 1:31, 2:9, 2:11, 3:3, 5:41, 9:27), and also has resurrection tones.
• When Peter’s mother got up to serve them, she was reclaiming her place of honor as the matriarch of the family. The word “serve” also shows up in Mark’s Gospel in reference to the angels waiting on Jesus in the temptation in the wilderness in 1:14, and as a description of Jesus’ ministry (“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many,” Mark 10:45.) In serving, Peter’s mother-in-law is a model of Christian discipleship.
• In v. 34, we once again see Jesus preventing demons (the only beings who recognize who he is) from speaking of him, just as happened in the previous story of the man with an unclean spirit.
• In v. 35, Jesus retreated to “a deserted place” to pray. This is less a literal geography—there are no desert places around Capernaum—than it is a parallel between Jesus’ ministry and John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness.

Works Sourced:
Kittredge, Cynthia Briggs. “Commentary on Mark 1:29-39.” Working Preacher. . Accessed: 29 January 2018.

Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

The Man with an Unclean Spirit: A Sermon on Mark 1:21-28

This week I found myself captivated by the man with the unclean spirit. Specifically, with how little detail the writer of Mark’s Gospel gives us about him. Mark’s Gospel is so brief that lack of detail is one of the hallmarks of this gospel, but still. Jesus entered the synagogue to teach when “Just then there was… a man with an unclean spirit.” The spirit cried out to Jesus, Jesus rebuked him, the spirit came out, and “They were all amazed.” And just as suddenly as he was noticed, the man was forgotten, as the Gospel writer’s attention switched back to the crowd and their astonishment over Jesus’ teaching—with authority.

The Gospel writer’s obsession with Jesus’ teaching is strange because what Jesus was teaching is never stated. We think we know, because we’ve read the other Gospels which include all sorts of teachings, but imagine for a moment you’ve only read Mark. Last week in verse fourteen we heard that Jesus came “proclaiming the good news of God.” Today “he entered the synagogue and taught… as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” But no content is every given for that teaching, no explanation of the “news” part of the “good news of God”. The focus of the story is not on the message, but on the result of the message, that Jesus’ words contained the authority to control even unclean spirits.

Which is cool, except what about the man with the unclean spirit? So focused was the writer of Mark on the power of Jesus’ word that the man ended up as a prop, rather than a character in his own story. And since we know from pretty much every other story about Jesus that Jesus did not treat people as props, I want to use what theologian John Bell calls our “scriptural imagination” and flesh out who this man was and how this encounter might have affected his life.

Verse twenty-three tells us that while Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on a Sunday, “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.” Just then, how? Capernaum was not a large community. Even today it is a small fishing village on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, back then it was no more than a small cluster of houses, around the size of the Adventist Village over on Van Buren. It’s possible this man was a wanderer, driven from village to village by the demands of the spirit. It is just as possible that he was from Capernaum, that everyone knew him. That he was like the woman who lived on the front step of my home church and insisted on calling everyone Stan, or the man who stops in to get free coffee at the Y, just a harmless bit of local color, so well-known and familiar as to be nearly invisible, part of the scenery of the community. And how did he “just then” end up in the synagogue? Had he been there all along, was he there every Saturday, and no one paid much attention to him? Or was this the first time he’d entered? Where before he had stayed out, feeling himself unwelcome, unwilling or unable to come into the crowded space, on this morning he crossed the threshold, drawn in by the presence of Jesus, by the authority of his teaching?

We don’t know, we can’t know, the answers to these questions, the background story of the man’s life. How he came to have an unclean spirit, what effect it had on him, and what brought him to the synagogue on that particular morning. What we do know is what happened next. Because suddenly, however he got there, the man cried out and was invisible no more. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” What is so striking about these words is this is the second confession, the second revelation, of the true and complete identity of Jesus. The first came at his baptism, when a voice from heaven declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved.” The second came not from his disciples—they won’t get even close for another seven chapters—but from the mouth of a man with an unclean spirit, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Again and again in Mark, we’ll notice a pattern. It was not his disciples who fully knew who Jesus was. And it was certainly not the religious leaders, who we already see being set against Jesus in this story when he taught “not as the scribes.” The only ones who will see Jesus and know who he is, fully and completely, and what that means, will be the demons. Which if you think about it is not surprising; they had the most to lose, and the most to gain.

After this outburst, “Jesus rebuked him, saying ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.” And both man and spirit disappeared from the scene. There is no mention of what happened to the man after the unclean spirit departed. Did he stay in the synagogue, joining the crowd of onlookers, amazed at this “new teaching—with authority”? Did he become a follower of Jesus, part of the unnamed crowd that gathered wherever Jesus was? Did he go back home, take over his role as the husband and father he’d been before this unclean spirit drove him away? Was he happy to be free? Or was he terrified, because now that the unclean spirit was gone, he was going to have to start showing up for his own life?

When the man with an unclean spirit was a prop it was easy to dismiss him, to focus on Jesus, on the power of Jesus words to affect change on someone else. Poor, helpless unclean-spirit possessed guy, good thing Jesus came around and straightened him out. He was certainly stuck Jesus’ help, he definitely needed of Jesus’ authority. I’m so glad that Jesus fixed him. But when we start to think of the man with an unclean spirit as a man, the events of this story can become much more personal. It was easy when he was a prop, to push him aside as a victim. But when he becomes a man again, we are forced to reckon with the idea that he may be like us, that we are him.

We make the assumption that this man wanted to be rid of his unclean spirit, and no doubt that is true. It is true, but it may not be as easy and as comfortable as we might be thinking. That unclean spirit was probably familiar, and the familiar is comfortable. Thinking of this man as a man and not a prop gives us space to consider the unclean spirits that haunt our own lives. Because we all have them. Not ones that make us convulse or cry out maybe, but spirits such as greed, pride, fear, thirst for power, ignorance of oppression, or guilt by commission, just to name a few options. These unclean spirits rule our thoughts and our actions more than we may want to admit, keeping us silent to the needs of others, holding us captive to the very forces we profess to oppose. Sometimes their familiarity makes them invisible, other times we chaff at their presence, but fear what will be left in their absence. Because then, like the man, we will have to stop blaming them for our failings and start showing up in our lives and in the world.

It took tremendous courage to do what this man did. To just show up in the presence of Jesus, to bring to him our unclean spirits, knowing that Jesus will cast it out. And so the challenge this text presents to us is to resist the temptation to distance ourselves from the man, and instead to put ourselves in his place, to take a long hard look at our own lives and ask, do we have the courage to bring our unclean spirits to Jesus? Will we be brave enough to lay ourselves bare to this authority, to let Jesus cast aside all that holds us captive, no matter how familiar, how comfortable it might be, for the chance at freedom? It is a risk, dear people of God, because like the man disappeared in this story, we don’t know what will be left when our unclean spirits are gone, we don’t know where we will go, who we will be, when these controlling parts of ourselves are cut away and we are left to stand on our own.

It will take tremendous courage from us, but here is the good news. Jesus has the authority to do it. Not only does Jesus have the authority to do it, but Jesus has already done it. This “new teaching” is not so new after all, it is the story that sang over the waters of creation, that journeyed with the Israelites to exile and back again, that greeted shepherds with the birth of a baby in a manger, that was silenced for three days on a cross, only to sound all the more loudly from the hollows of an empty tomb. When we look closely, dear sisters and brothers, we will find that the things that hold us captive are not things at all; they are nothing more than our memories of things. We can be set free, because we already are, we already have been. And when you forget. When the unclean spirits of doubt or fear or hopelessness creep in and remind you of how you were, you can come to the font, you can come to the table, and you can be reminded. The definition of a sacrament is an element which contains Jesus’ word and promise. Baptism and communion are Jesus’ words made tangible, they are the physical presence of the promise of God. The reason the “good news of God” the “new teaching-with authority” in Mark’s Gospel is never heard is because it transcends hearing. The good news of God, the new teaching—with authority, is Jesus himself, the Word made flesh. So have courage, dear people of God, to lay bare all that holds you captive and step forward boldly into God’s new tomorrow. Like the man with the unclean spirit, we do not know where it will lead us. What we do know is that we are already free, so what have we got to lose? Amen.

Conversation Points for Mark 1:21-28

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• While Jesus’ ministry started in v. 14 with him “proclaiming the good news of God,” Mark’s description of his ministry is much more focused on the power of his words and his actions, then on any explanation of the content of his words. This story starts with Jesus entering the synagogue and the crowd being “astonished at his teaching” but there is no explanation of what his teaching was other than it was “with authority.”
• This scene sets up what will be an on-going conflict in the Gospel between Jesus and the religious leaders. Here Jesus entered into a synagogue, where he “taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes, who certainly would have understood themselves to be people with the authority to teach.
• The exorcism, which is accomplished by nothing more than Jesus speaking, is proof of the authority of Jesus’ word.
• A reoccurring motif in Mark’s Gospel is demons being more theologically perceptive than the disciples. Here the demon correctly names and identifies Jesus (“I know who you are, the Holy One of God”) well before anyone else does. Jesus responded by silencing the demon, building the theme of no one else knowing who Jesus is.

Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

You are Not Powerless: A Sermon on Mark 1:14-20

Last week we heard John’s version of Jesus calling the first disciples, and this week the Gospel reading gives us Mark’s account of the same story. And I bet if I asked any of you to tell me what you remember about Jesus calling the first disciples, this is the story you’d think of. It’s so familiar, this beloved tale of Jesus coming across Simon and Andrew, James and John on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and saying to them “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Fishers of men in the older translations, but I’ve come to love the NRSV’s translation “fish for people.” Something about it makes me chuckle. Anyway, whether they’re fishers of men or fishing for people, the response is the same, “immediately they left their nets…they left their father Zebedee in the boat…and followed him.”

I’ve preached and taught on this text so many times, and I always make the same points. I talk about how striking it is that Jesus called fishermen from Galilee to be the first leaders of his new movement. Not powerful political figures or brilliant scholars or strong warriors, he called fishermen from rural Galilee. These guys were definitely not wealthy, they were probably not well-educated, and they were certainly powerless in the grand scheme of the Roman Empire, or the Jerusalem political scene. They would not be the first on anyone’s list of likely candidates to lead a revolution, yet Jesus came and found them. If these guys are Jesus’ first choice for disciples, this should give us all sorts of confidence in being part of the movement. That approach would make a pretty solid sermon.

The other thing this story is great for is talking about commitment. Jesus came and said “follow me,” and immediately they left everything, even their poor dad sitting in his boat, and they followed. The story of Jesus calling the first disciples can be a good challenge for us in thinking about our own discipleship. Maybe we are not being called to literally leave our dependents sitting alone by themselves while we go off on some grand adventure, but certainly all of us can think of things that we know we should drop in order to follow Jesus more closely. Our pride maybe, or our guilt, or our desire to be self-sufficient, or our feelings of unworthiness. That too is a good starting place for preaching.

But here’s the thing I love about the Bible. The more you dig into it and learn about it, the more layers it reveals. In all the years and all the study I’ve put into the Gospel of Mark, I learned two new things about this text this week, and it caused me to read this so familiar story in a whole new way, opening up new thoughts, new questions, a new sense of hope, and a new challenge. So here are the two new things I learned.

First off, and I’d never thought of this before, but this call by Jesus to have the disciples fish for people is a radical departure from how fishing imagery was used in the Old Testament. There are lots of examples of fishing imagery in the Old Testament, but we don’t talk about them very often, because they are all negative. To the last, when fishing is referred to in the Old Testament, it refers to trapping or catching someone against their will, like you might a mouse in a mousetrap. Just a couple examples. From Ezekiel, “I will put hooks in your jaws…I will draw you up from your channels…To the animals of the earth…I have given you as food.” Or from Amos, “The time is surely coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks.” Or from Habakkuk, “The enemy brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net.” There’s more but you get the point. Now we think of fishing for people as this great thing, but when Jesus told the disciples he would have them do it, he was bucking all the traditional narratives.

What is so amazing about what Jesus did here was he took these guys with this skill set that had always been considered negative and showed how it was positive. Fishing in scripture had always been viewed in this negative way, in trapping or capturing, but Jesus showed how it could just as easily be viewed in positive light, this expansive gathering of all sorts of different people, drawing them in to the kingdom. Jesus didn’t undo years of scriptural understanding, he just expanded it, complicated it. We see in Jesus’ ministry that he was not advocating for the things fishing had historically stood for. Jesus wasn’t telling the disciples that they should go out and hook people with their nets and drag them against their will to Jesus. But what I think Jesus was saying was the narrative used about fishing was too simple. This worn old imagery could be interpreted in a new way, a way that brought life, and hope, and promise.

So that in and of itself I found super interesting and powerful. But here’s the thing that tipped it over the edge for me. I had always thought of the disciples as powerless. These poor, uneducated, subsistence fishermen, slaving away in their boats at weird hours of the night, rough and gruff and uncouth. In my mind they were nobodies until Jesus called them to follow. But here’s what the commentary I was reading pointed out. These guys were not poor, subsistence fishermen. They weren’t wealthy, sure, but it wasn’t like they had nothing. In verse twenty-nine we’ll find out that Simon and Andrew owned a house. Home ownership is a big deal now; it would have been a huge deal in the first century. And James and John left their father in the boat with the hired men. This meant they were successful enough fishermen to be able to pay other people to fish for them. So no, Simon and Andrew, James and John, were not Herod or the High Priest or anything like that. But they weren’t the leper or the man born blind begging at the city gates either. They had power, they had skills, they had some resources. Jesus didn’t call them from nothing; he also did not call them to give up their power. Jesus called them to use the power and the skills they had in this totally new and different way, a way that no one had thought of before.

This is good news because so often I think we feel powerless. Or, at least I know I do. I look around at a broken world and I feel like there is nothing I can do to change it. So much of our current political climate is fueled by fear. Fear of the other, fear of change, fear of losing what we have, fear of being powerless. And rather than retreating or giving up or fighting to hold on to what it feels like we’re losing, recognizing that the disciples had power, and that Jesus called them to use it, invites us to think about the power we have, and how we might use it to bring about the kingdom. Jesus was not some lone do-gooder wandering around the Galilee healing sick people so they could go about their lives as they had been before. Jesus was a community organizer, he brought people together, he showed them how to advocate for themselves, to use their skills, to work together for change, and through that community to change the world.

Dear sisters and brothers, the good news is not that Jesus calls the powerless. That is good news, but this good news is better than that. The good news is that we are not weak, that we have power. God created us with power. That power is different for all of us. Andrew and Simon, James and John, were fishermen, they had skills and gifts for gathering in diverse crowds. In chapter two, Jesus will call Levi. Levi was a tax collector, he had gifts with budgets and finances. Paul was a zealot. No one would have thought that was exactly a useful gift, but look what Paul was able to do, once he figured out how to channel his zealotry in the right direction.

We have power. You are powerful. The God who spoke the universe into being formed you in God’s own image and endowed you with your own skills and gifts, talents and abilities, that you can use. The challenge, then, is to not give in to the fear. To not give in to the rhetoric that the world is off its axis and there’s nothing we can do. As resurrection people, we testify that there is always something we can do, and this story of the calling of the disciples assures us that, as unorthodox as it might seem, we have the skills and the gifts to do it. Sure, maybe no one’s done it that way before, but no one had ever thought of fishing as a good metaphor for evangelism before and look how well that turned out. So claim your power, dear people of God. Claim the skills and gifts, the talents and abilities, that God has given you. Claim them, and let’s go out and bring in the kingdom of God. Amen.

Conversation Points for Mark 1:14-20

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Jesus’ public ministry begins, even seems to be triggered by, John being removed from the scene by his arrest. The Greek word translated “arrest” (paradidomi) shows up later in Mark to refer to Jesus being handed over to the authorities during his Passion (Mark 9:31, “for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again’”; 10:33, “saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles”; 14:21, “For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born’”, 41, “He came a third time and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”).
• Jesus came to the Galilee from Jordan. However, it’s clear Jesus did not go to the Galilee to escape danger, since Herod Antipas, who arrested John, ruled Galilee and Perea.
• Jesus’ message in v. 14b-15 is a combination of John’s repentance preaching in v. 4, 7-8 and the proclamation at the beginning of the Gospel in v. 1. In early Christian preaching, repentance and belief are linked (Acts 11:17-18, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’ When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life’”; 20:21, “as I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus”; Hebrews 6:1, “Therefore let us go on towards perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith towards God.”)
• Capernaum is a fishing village located along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.
• There are similarities between Jesus calling the first disciples from their work as fishermen and the prophet Elijah calling Elisha from plowing his field (1 Kings 19:19-21, “So he set out from there, and found Elisha son of Shaphat, who was ploughing. There were twelve yoke of oxen ahead of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him. He left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, ‘Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.’ Then Elijah said to him, ‘Go back again; for what have I done to you?’ He returned from following him, took the yoke of oxen, and slaughtered them; using the equipment from the oxen, he boiled their flesh, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out and followed Elijah, and became his servant.”)
• There’s an interesting contrast of wealth and poverty in this lives of the fishermen. On one hand, the family of Zebedee had enough wealth to employ “hired hands” in the work of fishing, a rarity in the subsistence culture. On the other, the sons were still involved in the fishing process, thus leaving the family could put the welfare of the entire family at risk.
• In the Old Testament, fishing references were generally negative, talking about ensnaring people (ex. Jeremiah 16:16, “I am now sending for many fishermen, says the LORD, and they shall catch them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks, “ Ezekiel 29:4-5, “I will put hooks in your jaws, and make the fish of your channels stick to your scales. I will draw you up from your channels, with all the fish of your channels sticking to your scales. I will fling you into the wilderness, you and all the fish of your channels; you shall fall in the open field, and not be gathered and buried. To the animals of the earth and to the birds of the air I have given you as food”; Amos 4:2, “The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness: The time is surely coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fish-hooks”; Habakkuk 1:14-17, “You have made people like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. The enemy brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net, he gathers them in his seine; so he rejoices and exults. Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his seine; for by them his portion is lavish, and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net, and destroying nations without mercy?”). In contrast to these negative portrayals, Jesus told the disciples a positive function of fishing for people. He took old imagery and remade it.

Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Evangelism is Way Simpler than We've Been Led to Believe: A Sermon on John 1:43-51

The next couple of weeks we’ll be hearing stories of Jesus calling the first disciples. So I thought I might set the stage by telling you a bit of my own call story. There are a lot of twists and turns to my call to pastoral ministry, but it started out, which probably by now will come as no surprise, with a really nerdy conversation about doctrine and a miscommunication.

My freshman year of college I was talking to the pastor at my parents’ church about apostolic succession. During the ordination service, the bishop lays their hands on the person being ordained. Apostolic succession is the idea that you can trace the laying on of hands all the way back to St. Peter. This is a fairly unimportant concept, except that I got confused and thought apostolic succession meant you had to be a genetic descendent of Peter in order to be ordained. “Wait,” I said to Jana accusingly, “you’re telling me that because I’m not genetically related to some first century Palestinian guy, I can’t be a pastor?” It wasn’t not being able to be a pastor that bothered me; it was the injustice of genetics having a role in vocation. Jana missed the nuance, “you want to be a pastor?” “No, no, oh no,” I quickly backpedaled and clarified my question, which she then dutifully explained. Twelve years later, Jana presented me to the bishop at my own ordination, to have hands laid on me as I took my own place within the apostolic succession.

I love call stories. They seem to have a power greater than themselves to lead us into deeper ways of thinking about who we are and how we got there. I remember in seminary sitting around one evening with two pastors and a young college student, sharing call stories. After the two pastors and I told ours, we turned to the student and asked him, “how about you, tell us your call story.” He proceeded to tell us not about choosing his major, but about coming to recognize himself as a gay man, about coming out into that identity. He talked of the fear he felt in embracing this identity, but also the sense of truly becoming the person God had created him to be, and the freedom that assurance brought him.

That’s one of the other interesting truths about call stories. As radical as the change may seem, there is a way where in hindsight, the signs were there all along. These stories are about becoming more fully ourselves, of coming back to who we are. If anything, the person we shifted from was the aberration, not the person we are becoming. Even Paul on the road to Damascus was both profoundly changed and not changed at all. Once a zealous persecutor of the Gospel, he became just as zealous a promoter. His zeal did not change, what changed was its expression. Where once his passion had led him to violence, now it led him to risk everything for peace, for hope, for love, out of the conviction that who he was becoming was more true than who he had been.

What strikes me about the call stories in our Gospel this morning is how straightforward they are. “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’” And Philip got up, and he followed. Following in John’s Gospel has layered meaning. It means to physically follow someone, to get up and walk in the same direction they are going. But it also means to become a follower of that person, to learn from them, to model their actions, to try to conform to their image. Jesus asked Philip to follow him to Galilee, a simple enough invitation for a boy from Bethsaida. But he also asked Philip to follow him as a disciple, a much bigger request. That meant to give up everything, to reorient one’s direction in the direction of Jesus, it meant change.

But even more than the word follow, what struck me was the word “found.” Jesus found Philip. Philip wasn’t looking for Jesus. In fact, besides being from Bethsaida, the same town as Andrew and Simon Peter, two others who weren’t necessarily out looking for Jesus, there is no obvious connection between Jesus and Philip. But Jesus found him, found him and said to him “follow me.”

And Philip responded to this invitation by going and finding Nathanael. Here’s where the calling of the disciples begins to resemble a game of Telephone, Jesus found Philip, and Philip found Nathanael, and Nathanael, as often happens in the game of Telephone, became confused. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It is worth noting that this is the first time in John’s Gospel that Jesus’ message is met with resistance. But the question Nathanael posed is honest enough. All of the scriptures had indicated the Messiah was to come from Bethlehem, but this guy was from Nazareth, a backwater town from a backwater corner of the region, as far from a place of power as one could get. What could possibly come from such an out of the way place?

A question to which Philip replied simply, “Come and see.” Philip didn’t argue with Nathanael, rebuke him for his questions, or require him to give some statement of faith, he simply invited him to come and see for himself. What Philip’s invitation demonstrates is that faith rarely comes through rational explanation or intellectual assent, rather the first step to faith is seeing. Seeing, experiencing, being in the presence of Christ leads to believing, not the other way around. Because faith is not something we do, it is something Christ does in us, you cannot believe without having first experienced him.

And maybe the greatest miracle of the story is not that Jesus knew who Nathanael was before Nathanael approached him, but that Nathanael responded to Philip’s simple invitation by coming and seeing. Something about the way Philip made the invitation, his openness to questions, his honest lack of judgment, gave Nathanael the space come despite his doubts, concerns, and questions, to see for himself the one of whom Philip spoke.

I find in this story both good news and challenge. The good news is that Jesus finds us. Neither Philip nor Nathanael went looking for Jesus, they were not seeking high and low, not questing for some hope they could not see. They were immersed in their very normal lives when Jesus came and found them, and nothing was ever the same. Jesus finds us. I was in the back of a car on a really long road trip when I first heard a call to ministry. I could tell much more of the story, I did not go from misunderstanding apostolic succession to ordination, there were numerous fits and starts along the way. Philip and Nathanael were minding their own business, James and John were fishing, Paul was on the way to persecute people. None of them, none of us, was, is, prepared when these moments of change come. The point isn’t to be prepared, the point is that Jesus uses our unpreparedness, calls us not despite but because of what we lack. Because people who have it all together have no place to grow.

Jesus does not call those who have it all together; he calls those who have somewhere to grow. Which is good news, but it is also challenge, because it means we will find ourselves needing to begin before we are ready. I said that Nathanael was found when he was not looking, but notice who did the finding. It wasn’t Jesus who found Nathanael, who sought him out and brought him to belief, it was Philip. What this story reminds us is that sometimes the people who Jesus uses to bring people to himself are people like us. The relationship between Philip and Nathanael demonstrates that Jesus is calling disciples, and he’s calling them through us. We are the ones whom Jesus is sending to find others and bring them to Jesus.

Which sounds terrifying, until we remember how simple Philip’s words were. Philip didn’t have to teach some complicated catechism lesson, or explain some deep aspect of theology, or convince Nathanael of anything, he simply invited him to come and see. My own call narrative is even more obscure than that, I am a pastor because of a misunderstanding. These stories assure us that evangelism, that sharing the good news of is way easier and less scary than it seems. It is as simple as inviting people to come and see the places where God is at work in our lives, and trusting that God will do the rest.

This passage is one of my very favorites, I think because of how much it relates to the places I have found myself spending my professional life. Think about this, Nazareth was a small, economically challenged community. Not on the lake or on a trade route, you didn’t stumble into Nazareth, you had to want to go there, and nobody did. In contrast, all the scriptures had promised that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Nathanael’s question was honest; can anything good come out of such a place as Nazareth? Now think about where we are this morning. In a small, out of the way neighborhood, cut off from the economic development efforts of downtown by two railroad tracks and a field. No one stumbles into Post Addition. You have to want to get here, and generally nobody does. Can anything good come out of Post? And yet, think of all that is happening here. Every day people’s lives are being changed, communities are being created, relationships are being formed. Women are learning skills, gaining confidence, becoming more fully themselves. All of the literature says change should be coming from downtown, but transformation is happening here, in Post every day. So the opportunity for us is just to invite others to come and see. You don’t have to teach them a catechism lesson, or explain how they need to know Jesus, or wow them with your amazing faith. Just invite them to come and see the amazing things that God is doing in this place and in your life, and God will take care of the rest. Amen.

Conversation Points for John 1:43-51

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The verb “to follow” (akoloutheo) is used symbolically in John’s Gospel to indicate discipleship (examples 8:12; 10:4, 27; 12:26; 13:36).
• Philip finding Nathanael and bearing witness is a repeat of Andrew finding Peter in v. 40. All of this follows out of John’s witness in v. 35 (John who came to “testify to the light” v. 5). Nathanael is not part of any of the traditional lists of the Twelve, but in John’s Gospel there is no hard twelve, discipleship is more open-ended.
• Philip’s identification of Jesus is in two parts: 1) as the fulfillment of scripture (“whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote”), and 2) by his father (“son of Joseph from Nazareth”). This duel identification is the first introduction of a conflict that will run throughout the Gospel, Jesus’ divinity in tension with the knowledge of his human origin.
• In v. 46, Nathanael’s questioning of Philip is the first time testimony about Jesus is met with question. To resolve this, Philip offered the same invitation Jesus gave to Andrew and Peter, (“come and see,”).
• V. 47-50 is the longest conversation between Jesus and a disciple in chapter 1, which means Jesus revealed the most about himself to the one who expressed doubt and skepticism. Jesus called Nathanael an “Israelite.” This is the only time the term is used in the Gospel, and it seems to set Nathanael apart from the more complicated “Jew,” which can be a general term meaning “Judean” or a harsh label for religious leaders who do not accept Jesus. Jesus praised Nathanael for seeking him out even while he had doubts.
• Nathanael’s response to Jesus is a multi-layered confession of faith. “You are…” as opposed to “this is…” “Rabbi” echoes the first disciples in v. 38. “Son of God” (v. 34) is a central identity for Jesus in John’s Gospel. “King of Israel” is a term of derision on the synoptics, but in John’s Gospel it is a positive, highlighting Jesus’ importance to the people of God.
• Jesus responds to Nathanael’s confession in v. 50 not with criticism, but with promise that Nathanael is only at the beginning, he will experience “greater things.”
• “Very truly I say…” is a common start to Jesus’ speeches in John’s Gospel. The Greek is actually amen, amen. In John’s Gospel it introduces an important point. My Greek professor in seminary described it as Jesus saying, “what I’m about to say is going to be so great, that at the end you’re going to want to say Amen.”
• V. 51 draws on a lot of Old Testament imagery, including the descent of the Son of Man in Daniel 7:13 (“As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him.”) and Jacob’s ladder dream in Genesis 28:12 (“And [Jacob] dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”).
• There are a lot of different titles for Jesus introduced in the first chapter: Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (v. 29), Son of God (v. 34, 49), Lamb of God (v. 36), “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher) (v. 38, 49), “Messiah” (which translated means Anointed) (v. 41), Him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote (v. 45), Son of Joseph from Nazareth (v. 45), King of Israel (v. 49), Son of Man (v. 51). Each disciple saw something different in Jesus and bore witness to him in their own way, each came with different needs and expectations, and Jesus met all of them. “The imagery of v. 51 suggests that the reality of God in Jesus outruns traditional categories and titles.”

Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail R. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Epiphany: A Sermon on Matthew 2:1-12; Mark 1:4-11; and John 2:1-12

This morning we’re celebrating Epiphany. Bit of a church liturgy lesson for you before we begin. Contrary to what the advertising industry would have you believe, the Christmas season starts on Christmas Eve and lasts twelve days, culminating in Epiphany. You know the super annoyingly repetitive Christmas song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, that’s what it is about. These twelve days between Christmas Day and the Feast of the Epiphany. This, fun fact, is why I won’t let you sing Christmas carols in December, because it’s not Christmas in December, it’s Advent.

The Feast of the Epiphany marks the arrival of the wise men to visit the infant Jesus. The wise men’s arrival is important, not because it fills out our manger scene and provides lectors everywhere a chance to stumble trying to pronounce frankincense, but because it demonstrates that the king of the Jews is not just for the Jews. Gentiles too are drawn into this rising light. Some Christian traditions also celebrate the baptism of Jesus and his first miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana. These three events, known as the three great epiphanies, all mark the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, as a creator of communities, as a provider of abundances, and as the beloved Son of God. It is a nod to these traditions, that I scrapped the normal readings for today in favor of these three Gospel stories.

All this is super interesting, but why does it matter? Liturgy shouldn’t be something we do just because this is the way we’ve always done it. If the practices stop having meaning to us, then the practices themselves should stop. What does Epiphany really mean?

Well for that question, I used one of my favorite techniques. I looked up the definition of the word “epiphany.” Epiphany, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “an usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.” Which, again, interesting, but it still felt lacking. OK, so Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ. That makes sense. There’s a hymn about it, which we would definitely be singing today if I’d written this sermon before the bulletin went to print, but alas I didn’t so we are not, “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise.” It goes, “Songs of thankfulness and praise, Jesus, Lord to thee we raise; manifested by the star to the sages from afar… Manifest at Jordan’s stream, prophet priest and king supreme; manifest in pow’r divine, changing water into wine.” And then you might remember the chorus, “anthems be to thee addressed, God in flesh made manifest.”

But describing Epiphany as “the manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of Christ” still didn’t do it for me. It still felt too formal, too academic, more like a moderately interesting theological talking point than something that really mattered to my being. So I took my dictionary definition one step further, and I looked up the word manifestation. Which Merriam Webster defines as “an event, action, or object that clearly shows or embodies something.” And for whatever reason, that definition did it for me. Suddenly the whole thing clicked into place, the whole purpose, the whole reason, that Epiphany is helpful and useful. Because Epiphany offers us yet another way, maybe even three more ways, to see the central promise of Christmas, that the Word became flesh, that the divine came into our world and was embodied before us in the person of Jesus. The event of Christ’s birth, the action of his being born, the object of Jesus himself clearly shows us, embodies for us a God who loves us so much that God comes down to us, in an embodied form.

The birth of Jesus is the great epiphany, the great revelation, the great manifestation of God with us that began this Christmas season. And just to make sure we cannot miss it, this season of Christmas, of Christ with us, ends with three more epiphanies, each revealing a different and deeper aspect of this thing that is God. My pastor in California once described God as a theater in the round, looking at what is directly in front of us only reveals a portion of the scene. These multiple epiphany stories let us move our field of vision to see more of the nature of God in Christ. In the coming of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus we see a God who is not just for the chosen people of Israel, but is for all people, both Jews and gentiles. The wise men followed their own path, their own knowledge of the stars, and it led them to Jesus. We see the building conflict between King Jesus and King Herod, between the kingdom of the world as portrayed in Herod, a character portrayed as seemingly powerful and independent, rich, heartless and cruel, and yet in reality he was a prisoner of his own paranoia, and the kingdom of God, a kingdom ruled inexplicably by the weakest, most dependent being imaginable, a newborn human infant. The event of the Wise Men coming to Jesus, the action of Herod’s inability to contain it, clearly show for us a God that is so powerful that even in the form of an infant, God causes the rulers of the world to tremble, so expansive that gentiles following their own traditions find a place for themselves around the manger.

In the event of Christ’s baptism are clearly shown a God who comes to where the people are gathered, who enters into the people’s own traditions, who models for us the importance of engaging in ritual activities to experience God’s promise in our own embodied beings. In the action of the heavens being rended, we are clearly shown a God who will tear apart heaven and earth to be with us. In the object of the Holy Spirit descending, in the sound of a voice from heaven we hear the proclamation, you are my Son, my Daughter, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.

And Jesus’ first miracle, which in John’s Gospel are appropriately called signs, in the action of turning water into wine, we are clearly shown a God who provides in abundance, more than enough and the best of the best. A God who brings joy, and fun, and celebration.

All of these different aspects of God are shown to us in these epiphany stories. They do not reveal everything about God, for God is too vast, too deep, too rich for our comprehending. But they make manifest, they clearly show God embodied with us in the person of Jesus, and what that embodied love looks like in our world.

All these stories, all these different glimpses of the way God is made manifest, is making God’s presence known, is clearly showing up and being shown to us, helps us learn to look for how God is revealing Godself to us still. In the waters of our baptism, in the bread and wine of communion, in a gathered community who stands up for the alone and outcast. Throughout this season after Epiphany, we will be celebrating that while we live in a world of competing values and conflicting loyalities, God still shows up here, in this place, to us. You’ll notice we have a new banner this morning. Today the banner is white and gold, a sparkling reminder of the divinity and kingship of God. As the season goes on it will grow greener as we move deeper through the season, the green a reminder of our own walks of faith, the daily practice of discipleship and spirituality that grows faith in us. Then it will slowly transition back into white and gold as we transition into the Transfiguration. This shifting, dancing blend of green and gold echoes the movement of God in our world, growing us, moving us, yet still ever, presently, solidly God. For it is not God that changes in these epiphany stories, it is us. We who have more of God revealed to us, find ourselves growing, changing, shifting, to encompass our uncovering understanding of God’s love.

Dear people of God, the good news of the Epiphany is not that God is now with us, it is that God always was with us, and we are learning more the depth of what God’s presence means. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Conversation Points for Matthew 2:1-12; Mark 1:4-11; and John 2:1-12

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphaneia, meaning appearance or manifestation. Manifestation is also a word that could use defining, it means a perceptible, outward, or visual expression of something. On Epiphany, we celebrate the manifestation, the tangible, visual expression of God’s presence with us through Jesus.
• The festival of Epiphany celebrates the arrival of the Wise Men to Jesus. Some Christian traditions however, celebrate the three great epiphanies, great revelations of God’s presence, on this day, the magi’s adoration of the Christ child, Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, and Jesus’ first miracle of turning water into wine.
• One epiphany (tangible, visible expression of God’s presence with us) that we experience is in the sacraments. When we remember our baptisms, when we take the bread and wine of communion, we hold a manifestation of God.

Matthew 2:1-12
• Though the wise men appear in most manger sets along with the shepherds, it is important to remember that the story of Herod and the magi is unique to Matthew, as the shepherds, the census, and “no room at the inn” is unique to Luke. Rather than attempt to harmonize these two very different stories, we should allow each to stand alone as indicators of the larger narrative of their writer’s unique perspectives. Luke’s Gospel focuses on outsiders, thus Jesus was born in a barn among shepherds. Matthew is concerned with the conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world, thus the emerging battle between King Jesus and King Herod.
• Matthew 1 started out by placing Jesus in the on-going story of God, from Abraham through David to Jesus. Now in chapter 2, the story is given place (Bethlehem) and time (the days of Herod the king).
• One of the few commonalities between Matthew and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ birth is the location of Bethlehem. This is important because one of the Jewish objections to Christianity’s claim of Jesus as the Messiah was that Jesus was from Nazareth, whereas the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem (see John 7:42, “Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”) Matthew highlighted the importance of the question by having the very first word spoken by a human in the Gospel being a question about the location (“Where…” v. 2). Later in chapter 2, Matthew will clarify that Jesus, while born in Bethlehem, came from Nazareth, by having the holy family move there following their escape from Herod (2:24).
• The magis’ referred to Jesus as the “king of the Jews,” a reminder that Jesus is the next step in the promise of a royal line from David. It is also a foreshadowing of the crucifixion, when he will be crucified as “King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:11, “Now Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus said, ‘You say so.’” 29, “and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’” 37, “Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, ‘This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.’”).
• The characters in this story are often interchangeably referred to as “kings,” “wise men.” Or “magi.” Magi is a transliteration of the Greek word μάγοι, which means “wise men” or “astrologers.” The same word appears in Acts 13:6, 8 (When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they met a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet, named Bar-Jesus… But the magician Elymas (for that is the translation of his name) opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith), where it is translated as “magician” or “sorcerer.” The word magi designates a priestly class of Persian or Babylonian experts in astrology and the interpretation of dreams. In other words, Gentiles who, despite not having special revelation of God through the Torah, nevertheless come to Jerusalem following the light they have seen to worship the new king. The word “king” is not connected at all. The idea of the men being kings comes from a later application of Psalm 72:10-11 (“May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts. May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service”) and Isaiah 60:3 (“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn”) on the story.
• We also don’t know how many of them there are, despite the song “We Three Kings.” The number of them is never listed. All we know is they brought three types of gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. More important than the number is what the gifts reveal about the recipient. Frankincense and myrrh are both expensive aromatic gum resins, not native to Palestine, that were used for a variety of religious and medical reasons. Those, along with gold, would be gifts for royalty.
• The magi see the star “at its rising” or “in the east” (depending on which ancient manuscript you read). Either way, the idea is to unite gentile pagan astrological hope and Jewish biblical promise. Ancient pagan beliefs associated the birth of a new ruler with astrological signs. Jewish tradition related the hoped for Messiah to the “star out of Jacob” (Num 24:17, “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near—a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel”).
• There are lots of historical reasons why Herod the Great was not the hoped for king of Israel. For starters, he was not Jewish, he was an Idumean (descended from Edom, one of the ancient rivals of Judea). Also, he was backed by Rome, having established himself as king by military conquest of his “own” people. The people wanted a Jewish king who was not beholden to Rome. But Matthew was less concerned about Herod as a historical figure than as a representative for the kingdom of the world, which is in conflict with the coming kingdom of God. Herod represented the resistance of the world to the divine kingship of Jesus.
• The “chief priests and scribes” (v. 4) play a similar role to Herod in representing Jesus’ struggle with earthly leadership.
• In v. 5-6, Matthew has the religious leadership quote Hebrew scripture to Herod to tell where Jesus was for a couple of reasons. 1) Because in Matthew’s time, most of the resistance to Jesus came from religious leaders who claimed he couldn’t be the Messiah because he was from Nazareth, not Bethlehem. This verse affirms the birthplace of the Messiah and places Jesus’ birth there. 2) To portray the religious leadership as hypocrites who know the messianic promises, but do not follow them.

Mark 1:4-11
• John the Baptist did not bring the repentance that heralded God’s judgment. Rather, John’s preaching brought forth repentance and an anticipation that prepared people to recognize Jesus.
• Jesus’ baptism by John seems out of place after all of John’s talk of Jesus’ greater status. The other gospels work around this in various ways, and since Mark’s is the earliest, it probably reflects the historical tradition the others tried to obscure. Jesus’ baptism by John suggests that Jesus associated himself with the need to gather the elect and prepare for the Lord’s coming with a gesture of repentance.
• Unique in Mark’s Gospel is that the descent by the Holy Spirit is visible only to Jesus. The readers are shown his identity while the rest of the characters in the narrative are not.
• The description includes lots of apocalyptic symbolism—the open heavens (Isaiah 63:19), the descent of the Spirit, the divine voice. These continue the opening theme of Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets.

John 2:1-12
• This is the first of Jesus’ “signs” (signs being the word used for miracles in John’s Gospel). Describing Jesus’ miracles as “signs” makes viewing this as an epiphany, as a revelation of Jesus, even more understandable. Especially in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ signs/miracles are not about the action itself, but about what the action reveals about the identity of Jesus. Placing the miracle at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry demonstrates everything Jesus will offer.
• Jesus’ response to his mother sounds harsh or rude to modern ears, but it is more disengagement than rudeness. Addressing her as “woman” plays down their familial relationship with a more formal title. And “what concern is that to you and me?” may have been a common expression, again to create distance.
• “Hour” (hora) in John’s Gospel is used to refer to Jesus’ death, through which he will be glorified. In the beginning of the Gospel, during the time of Jesus ministry, it was not time for his glorification. (7:30, “Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come,” 8:20, “He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.”) The resurrection of Lazarus marks the turning point in John’s Gospel, after which Jesus began his movement to the cross. (12:23, “Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” 13:1, “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father,” 17:1, “After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.”)
• Jesus’ mother’s words to the servants to “Do whatever he tells you” (v. 5) echo Pharaohs words about Joseph in Genesis 41:55 during the famine in Egypt. Like Pharaoh’s confidence that Joseph could solve the problem of food scarcity, Jesus’ mother is confident in Jesus’ ability to provide whatever is needed.
• The description of the miracle itself begins with a very close description of the jars. Stone jars (as opposed to earthenware) is important because they wouldn’t run the chance of not meeting levitical standards for cleanliness. Even with the size of the wedding, everything about v. 6 is overdrawn, from the description of the jars, to their size, to the amount of space dedicated to describing it. The narrative technique echoes the size of the jars to emphasize the vast scope of the miracle. A similar expansiveness is found in the feeding of the 5,000 (John 6:1-4). There is a superabundance in Jesus.
• It is interesting to note that while Jesus did use jars used for ritual purification to turn water into wine, he did not change water used for ritual purification. Rather the jars stood empty, waiting to be filled. Jesus is not undoing Jewish law; he is creating something new in the midst of it.
• The question of where the wine came from (v. 9) is an important one, as it leads to a reoccurring theme throughout John’s Gospel of the question of where Jesus comes from. Throughout the Gospel, there is conflict between Jesus’ knowledge that he is from God and the ignorance of others (similar to the priests/scribes in the Matthew 2 story earlier).
• V. 10 speaks not just of the amount of wine, but the quality. In the Old Testament, an abundance of good wine is often a symbol of the joyous arrival of God’s new age. This miracle then is not just revealing Jesus, but revealing the opening of the new promised age of the kingdom of God.
• The Greek word for “first” in v. 11 is arche (the same word used in John 1:1, “In the beginning…”). It signifies beginning, rather than first in a sequence, which would be prote.

Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

O’Day, Gail R. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.