A fig tree helps us interpret one of the surest, but not always understood, facts about Jesus’ life. Jesus committed an act of civil disobedience in the Temple. We usually call it a “cleansing” but, as Mark tells it, it’s more likely a symbolic destruction. What happens to a fig tree indicates what Jesus thinks needs to happen to the oppressive system that the temple embodies. Eighteenth in a series on “The Worldly Spirituality of Mark’s Gospel”with help from Ched... Read more

It’s Sunday in Passover Week—later for Christians it becomes the first Palm Sunday—and it’s a big day. It includes a healing miracle, some advance planning, a procession with an enthusiastic crowd, and a disappointing ending. In church Palm Sunday liturgy begins in sync with that ancient mood, but soon we look ahead to the somber mood of Good Friday. Mark’s story of that Sunday before Passover turns sober quickly as well. Seventeenth in a series on “The Worldly Spirituality of... Read more

My catechism doesn’t say it, but being a Christian means that powers of the world will consider you a threat and possibly kill you. That’s the message in a series of lessons on rules Jesus enacts for his followers. It wasn’t strange religious beliefs that set Christians up for persecution but their revolutionary way of acting. Sixteenth in a series on “The Worldly Spirituality of Mark’s Gospel” with help from Ched Myers’ Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s... Read more

Mark has Jesus predict both his passion and his resurrection three times. The disciples don’t understand the first because they don’t want to. They don’t understand the second because they can’t. Fifteenth in a series on “The Worldly Spirituality of Mark’s Gospel” with help from Ched Myers’ Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. The Introduction and a Table of Contents are HERE. I want to work my way into, if not through, a puzzle regarding... Read more

In the Transfiguration scene does Mark give us a brief glimpse of Jesus’ triumph over the cross  and glory in the Kingdom of Heaven? On the contrary, Ched Myers believes it’s the cross itself that comes into view here. I add my own thought about the Kingdom and its power. Fourteenth in a series on “The Worldly Spirituality of Mark’s Gospel” with help from Ched Myers’ Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. The Introduction and... Read more

Jesus’ path gets increasingly dangerous as we move through Mark’s Gospel. At the same time he seems to be more and more isolated from his own disciples. Here we’ll see how Mark gives his readers a little hope. He provides some symbolic clues about a more hopeful direction for Jesus’ story. Thirteenth in a series on “The Worldly Spirituality of Mark’s Gospel” with help from Ched Myers’ Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. The Introduction... Read more

The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of equals. Jews and foreigners, rich and poor, women and men are all on equal footing. Jesus exhibits this reality. He raises the status of women and poor people. Disregarding his own status, he loses an argument with a woman foreigner. Twelfth in a series on “The Worldly Spirituality of Mark’s Gospel” with help from Ched Myers’ Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. The Introduction and, looking ahead,... Read more