Bible Study

 One of the interesting things about Mark 8 revolves around the Revised Common Lectionary – the schedule of readings that many churches (including ours) uses to help guide congregations through the Bible over a 3 year cycle. There are a total of 6 stories in Mark 8, and the first 4 of them are completely ignored by the lectionary, as are any parallel stories offered by Matthew or Luke. So my point in beginning my discussion about the chapter is that these probably are not particularly well known stories to most United Church people, since most United Churches follow the lectionary, and these stories simply do not get read in most United Church services. So, on with these stories!   I find this a very strange way for this Chapter to start – and a very strange story for Mark to tell. Why do we need another feeding miracle? I’m not suggesting that it isn’t a very dramatic event – but when you consider that not that long ago Mark had shared a story about a much more dramatic m...

      I believe it was Ronald Reagan who – about 40 years ago – said something along these lines: “never trust anyone who says ‘I’ve come from the government. I’m here to help.’” I don’t want to launch into an anti-government diatribe or start to advocate for a smaller state apparatus or anything like that. It’s just that Reagan’s comment came into my mind when I read the opening words of Chapter 7: “Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him.” Yes - Jerusalem. Jesus had encountered Pharisees and scribes before; he had been opposed by them; he had debated them. But these Pharisees and scribes were different, because they were “from Jerusalem.” That’s important. First of all, Jerusalem was an important city. It wasn’t the capital of Roman Judea. The capital of Roman Judea was a city called Caesarea Maritima, which was about 125 km northwest of Jerusalem on the coast of the Mediterranean. It also wasn’t the capital of Her...

Chapter 6 is a very long Chapter. In fact, it’s the second longest Chapter in Mark’s Gospel. Only Chapter 14, which recounts the last night of Jesus’ life, is longer. In some ways it also seems to be typically “Mark” – so that you have a lot of different stories thrown together (6 of them in all) with very little seeming to connect them together. So I started to wonder if there were any connecting links, and I realized that while there may not be a lot connecting the specific stories of the Chapter to one another, there actually are connections being made. In some ways, Chapter 6 is looking backward and forward at the same time. Some of the stories point us back to reinforce or expand on things Mark has already told us, and some of the stories seem to be looking ahead to things that are going to happen later in the story. The very first story of the Chapter makes a connection with and expands upon something that comes before. Remember that in Chapter 3 Jesus had an encounter with some ...

Chapter 5 basically has two parts to it – the primary story is that of the exorcism of a man who is horribly demon-possessed, and then there’s a single story with two components: a little girl who is raised from the dead and a woman who is healed from an illness. Since the stories come one after the other one thing we need to try to determine is whether Mark does this deliberately: is there a point being made by having these two stories put together? Keep that basic question in mind as we work our way through the Chapter.   One of the more interesting things that we discover right off the top of the Chapter is that the location has shifted to what Mark describes as “the country of the Gerasenes.” This story takes place immediately after the miracle told in Chapter 4 about the stilling of the storm on the Sea of Galilee. The disciples were in that boat in the first place because Jesus had said that he wanted to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. They had been on the wes...