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This Sunday the lectionary invites us to ponder the gospel according to Mark 4:35-41. The English Standard Version supplies the passage with the heading “Jesus calms a storm.” The gospels are stories chosen and assembled to show who Jesus is. The gospels were designed to comfort and embolden Christians, church members, persecuted for their commitment […]

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder Mark 4:26-34. The English Standard Version divides the selection into two parts. It supplies each part with a heading. The heading for the first part, verses 26-29, is “The Parable of the Seed Growing;” the heading for the second part, verses 30-34, is “The Parable of the

This Sunday, the lectionary calls us to ponder Mark 2:23-3:6. The English Standard Version breaks the selection into two parts. To the first, it assigns the title “Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath,” and to the second, the title “A Man with a Withered Hand.” In the first part, we read that Jesus and his

This Sunday, the lectionary invites us to ponder John 3:1-21. The English Standard Version supplies the heading “You must be born again” to verses 1-15, and the heading “For God so loved the world” to verses 16-21. In my column titled “The Serpent, the Son, and Nicodemus,” I explained the background to verses 14 and

“In our view, a Christian who is not charismatic – in the full sense of the word, that is to say, open to the Spirit and docile to his promptings – is a Christian forgetful of his baptism. On the other hand, a Christian who is not ‘socially committed’ is a truncated Christian who disregards

This Sunday the lectionary invites churches to reflect on Acts 2:1-21. J B Phillips, in his paraphrase, divides the chapter under five headings: (1) “The first Pentecost for the young Church (1-4),” (2) “The Church’s first impact on devout Jews (5-13),” (3) “Peter explains the fulfilment of God’s promise (14-36),” (4) “The reaction to Peter’s

This Sunday the lectionary invites us to ponder John 17:6-19. It’s the middle portion of a prayer Jesus made to God, a few hours before he was arrested. Most Bibles supply it the heading “The High Priestly Prayer.” For Christians, the most important question of life is “who is Jesus?” The answer lies in the

This Sunday, the lectionary invites churches to reflect on John 15:9-17. As I said in my column last week, most bibles group verses 1-17 together, with the heading “I am the True Vine.” Every Sunday we look upon a huge cross in our meeting place. Yet, we miss the horror lurking in verse 9, which