The New Testament in 90 Days

That's what the people say at the end of chapter 7.  Jesus has been teaching (and wrangling with the Pharisees), healing and throwing the demons out.  Again, he feeds a crowd; this time it is 4,000, not 5,000, and he has seven baskets left over, not twelve.  The disciples don't understand the significance of the bread, and Jesus asks them so many questions that it appears that he is exasperated. The wrangling with the Pharisees is over the fact that his disciples don't follow all aspects of the law. Jesus points out that the Pharisees themselves have (ahem) loopholes; they are supposed to Honor their parents and help provide for them, but they can declare everything an offering to God, and then they don't have to help their families.  Jesus declares them hypocrites.  Later on, he explains that it is not what goes into us that makes us unclean, but what comes out (of our mouths, he means.) Jesus heals the daughter of a gentile woman -- although he doesn't wan...

The first thing I noticed when I started reading today is that Jesus is preaching these parables from a boat.  Why have I never noticed this before?  And why do I think that it's sort of cool?  So here Jesus is, telling the story of the sower and the seeds, and he's speaking from a boat, to all the people gathered on shore. I know that there's a parable and then there's Jesus' secret allergorical explanation of it, but may I say that I think the original parable is way more interesting?  The focus in the original is on the sower and the fantastic yield at the end, despite all of the obstacles in the way.  In the later explanation, all of the sudden the focus becomes on the different types of soil.  that's okay, but for good endings, an 100-fold yield can't be beat (and impossible to believe, by the way....) Though I am liking Jesus in Mark, mostly, there's a little verse I'm going to have to wrestle with a bit more, in Mark 4:24.  "Those who...

There is no introduction to the Gospel of Mark.  There is no genealogy, no birth story, nothing to pad the entrance of Jesus onto the scene.  Well, that's not exactly true.  There is that one sentence, "the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God's Son," and the prophecy (a mix of Isaiah and Malachi) about the Messenger who will prepare the way.  But that's it. John the Baptist blows in, baptizes, and blows out.  Everything is happening very quickly.  When Jesus is baptized, the heavens don't just open, they are split open.  And the Spirit doesn't just lead Jesus into the wilderness, he drives Jesus into the wilderness.  In Mark, Jesus is tempted by Satan, but we don't get to know the content of the temptations (which I kind of like, by the way; more room for the imagination).  With such a spare description, I notice that out in the wilderness, Jesus is among the wild animals.  This sort of reminds me of "The Peaceable Kingd...

I can't help noticing now that the Sermon on the Mount has bee preached, that Jesus gets busy healing all kinds of illnesses, and exorcising demons.  There are many healing stories, and no two are exactly like.  There is leprosy, a fever, demon possession, paralysis, death, hemorrhaging, blindness, inability to speak. But somehow the healing can't be reduced to the names of the illnesses -- we need to know the people who were healed, and something about them:  so there is a centurion's servant, healed by command from a distance, a twelve year old girl, a man lowered on a mat through a roof by four of his friends, a man who was made an outcast by his skin disease, a woman who touches the hem of Jesus' robe.  Oh, and Peter's mother-in-law.  Among others. In the middle of all these things, Jesus finds times to quiet a storm (my translation says that the waves were "sloshing over the boat"), to call another disciple (Matthew, from his tax booth), to answer...