In the mid nineties two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, sat in their dorm room at Stanford University and pledged themselves, “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The result was Google, the most powerful and widely used search engine in the world. The word Google is a term […]
God’s Dirty Hands (Mark 7:31-37)
It’s fascinating to think about how much time Mark spends demonstrating Jesus’ encounters with human pain and suffering. According to one early church tradition, Mark himself had deformed hands. This may explain his special interest in Peter’s eye witness accounts of Jesus’ healings. Throughout the gospel, we regularly see Jesus encountering the blind, the lame, […]
Seeing Only Jesus (Mark 9:1-7)
The following is the my Sermon I preached in chapel on the Orlando Dunnam campus on February 9, 2010 and in Estes Chapel in Wilmore, Kentucky, on February 11, 2010. You can listen to the address on iTunes by clicking here. __________________________________________________________________________________________ This Sunday is the Sunday when the church around the world remembers the […]
The God Who Passes us By (Mark 6:45-56)
The title of this reflection is “The God Who Passes Us By.” This is the kind of title which may cause a few readers to move quickly on to the next chapter. However, this particular passage falls into a category of miracles in the New Testament of which there are very few examples. Indeed, this […]
The Three-Mile-Per-Hour God (Mark 5:21-43)
Christianity, when it is true to itself, proclaims the power, healing and transformation which is found in Jesus Christ. The moment that any Christian movement loses its focus on the person of Jesus Christ, it ceases to be fully, wholly Christian. It is the person of Jesus Christ which makes us the people of God. […]
The Indestructibility of Christ (Mark 4:35-41; 13:1,2)
In these two texts from Mark’s gospel we find a stunning contrast. We are met with that which appears to be indestructible, but is, in fact, quite destructible; and that which appears so vulnerable and destructible and which is, in fact, indestructible. In Mark 13 the disciples are walking with Jesus and they are admiring […]
The Extravagant Sower (Mark 4:1-20)
Jesus’ parable of the Sower is often treated as the parable of the Soils. We spend a great deal of time analyzing the different soils in the passage, because after all, the Sower and the seed are always the same; it is the quality of the soils that results in different levels of responsiveness. Jesus […]
The Lord of the Sabbath is Here! (Mark 2:23-3:6)
This passage opens with Jesus simply walking through a field with His disciples. Mark, along with the other gospel writers, takes note of several times when Jesus is just walking along, going from one place to another, and along the way things happen and lives are changed. Recall the time Jesus was walking along on […]
The Temple is Here! (Mark 2:1-12)
We have seen in the first chapter of Mark that Jesus speaks as God speaks, sees as God sees, and touches as God touches. Mark is revealing the character and divine dignity of Jesus Christ at a breathless pace. Jesus is turning the tables on sin and disease and the power of Satan. As this […]
Jesus Sees as God Sees (Mark 1:29-45)
In this passage, we witness Christ’s first public healings. The whole town gathers at Jesus’ door to bring their sick and demon-possessed to Him. The apostles observe this and begin to realize that Jesus has the power to draw a really big crowd. They put themselves forward as managers to help schedule and maximize His […]