Mark

Why does James begin by addressing teachers?

When I was in first grade, teachers assigned students to reading groups based on how well they could read. They would name all the groups after birds so that everyone would feel equal, but you could always tell how well you were doing by what bird your group was named after. There were the Eagles, the Robins and the Pigeons. The Pigeons were not reading War and Peace

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Jesus is not accusing the Pharisees of an early form of Pelagianism.

If the Ephesians forget who they were, they will presume God owes them something.

Even with Paul's wish to serve, even with his good motives, the Lord does not answer his prayer as he asked or expected.

It must have been the mother of all squalls. Some of the disciples were seasoned fishermen, skilled in the art of navigating dangerous waters. But this was a red alert. They were going to perish—and the one person who might turn the situation around was sleeping peacefully in the boat’s place of honor, the stern. They woke Jesus up with a strident “Don’t you care, Teacher?” But he did not respond to their lack of faith. Instead he responded to the peace within himself, and produced a calm that impacted nature as well as the frightened disciples.

The term better fits Matthew than Mark, and neither Gospel justifies the church’s celebration of Palm Sunday as though it were an Easter before Easter.

Is this any way to run a resurrection? Is this enough to persuade, to stir new life in the followers of Jesus?

In an account in which only Satan, wild animals, and angels are with Jesus, the reader is also present.

From the first instant of creation, water has played midwife to God’s creation story. After the flood, God set a rainbow in the clouds. God saw your people as slaves in Egypt, and led them to freedom through the sea. God brought their children through the Jordan to a promised land. And in the fullness of time, God sent Jesus, nurtured in the water of a womb.

In my Swedish childhood, the signature image of Advent was Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

“Mom! Jesus says that rich people don’t go to heaven!” “We are not rich. Go back to bed.”

The Roman custom of lifting a newborn infant probably underlies Jesus’s symbolic action in Mark 9.