The boat returns to Judea and crowds immediately confront Jesus. Jairus pleads for Jesus to come and save his daughter, which Jesus agrees to do. Our narrative skips until next week the inserted story of the woman who touches Jesus hem. But part way to her they are informed that she has died. Jesus continues …
This story follows the amazing story of the storm, with the story of thousands of dead pigs. The boat makes land in the country of Gerasene’s near a cemetery. What ensues is beyond perplexing, but it ends with Jesus first evangelist sharing the good news with people who were not aware of Jesus at all.
Peter’s boat is often the scene for Jesus events. Today, Jesus calms the storm. I added conversation with Andrew and Peter to augment the first person narrative without changing any meaning. At the end Jesus just goes back to sleep like nothing ever happened. But for the Disciples something amazing had just happened. They are …
Peter remembers some of the parables Jesus shared with him. Having recounted the Parable of the Good Soil, Peter rattles off a whole list of them in quick succession: lamp, providence of the farmer, mustard seed. Then he adds, that Jesus always explained to them in private, so they could understand.
The Parable of the Sower might more appropriately be called The Parable of the Good Soil. The sower is foolishly extravagant, he has so much seed he scatters it everywhere. The word of God is the seed and God showers all of us with it. The question for us is what kind of soil are …
February is Black History month. All churches have been wrestling with how best to do online worship during the pandemic. In my discussion with Cedrick Bridgeforth of Grace UMC Los Angeles, we talked about the struggle and how Grace Church evolved their worship while staying authentic to their Black Church roots.
Two dramatic events take place today: Jesus has a run in with the family and he arrogantly taunts the Scribes who have come to denounce him. I both cases Jesus is not bowing down to people who would like to wield some authority over him. His words about family must have hurt Mary, but they …
Jesus selects twelve apostles. Unsaid is that there were so many followers of Jesus that he had to select the twelve from the many. Each Gospel has a slightly different list of the twelve, indicating that maybe the list changed over time, or it wasn’t as hard and fast as some might think.
Today Jesus continues his “Amazing Healing Show” but also continues to infuriate the authorities. The God of Laws the authorities believe in is dramatically different than the God of Love that Jesus is teaching. Today’s healing of the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath is a head on confrontation of these two concepts.
Jesus calls Levi the tax collector to follow him. Levi invites Jesus to dinner with other notorious rich sinners, which upsets the Scribes. Then the scribes get upset about eating wheat on the sabbath, too. But Jesus isn’t taking the bait and explains every event to them.