lectionary
Uneasy friendship (Mark 8:31-38)
Jesus and Peter care about each other enough to call each other out.
Onward to Mordor: 2 Kings 2:1-12
Why does Elijah try to spare Elisha? Does he simply prefer to die alone?
False prophet or true?: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Mark 1:21-28
True prophets have a different bottom line than false ones, but that doesn’t make them any easier to recognize.
The first deacon: Mark 1:29-39
The Christian church was born with Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.
A demanding leader: Mark 1:14-20
If it were me, I would have stayed in the fishing boat or dithered about what to do until Jesus was just a speck on the horizon.
An embodied ideal: Jeremiah 31:7-14; John 1:(1-9), 10-18
It is not enough for the prophet to declare God’s consolation—it is framed in visions of loud singing and dancing.
Christmas and the cross: Luke 2:22-40
Simeon offers a subtle instruction to Mary: remember the cross.
Interrupted: Luke 1:26-38; 47-55
Whether Mary was reading or spinning or planning her wedding, the annunciation came as an interruption.
Messianic complex: John 1:6-8, 19-28
John the Baptist baptized Jesus of Nazareth. The synoptic Gospels all say so, and the kerygma in Acts connects the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with that baptism. But although Mark seems to find it quite right that Jesus should have been among those who heeded John’s preaching, all the other evangelists seem discomfited by the suggestion that Jesus was somehow a disciple of this other preacher.
Violence in the name of love (Matthew 22:34-46; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8)
How, in real life, do we love God and neighbor?
An elusive virtue: Matthew 23:1-12; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Let us imagine that humility was God’s gift to Paul at his conversion.
Five different lenses for reading "render unto Caesar"
No political ethic without social location