In Mark 8, Jesus warns his disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod. The meaning of this warning may be as cryptic to us as it was to Jesus' disciples. Herod and the Pharisees, after all, didn't have very much in common. The former was a pagan hedonist and the latter…

When Jesus feeds a crowd of more than 5000, from someone's lunch, we can see that God is capable of miraculous provision. But the well-known story is trying to tell us something more. If we read ahead in Mark's gospel, Mark makes bread into a powerful symbol. At the last supper, Jesus uses bread as…

We might have an idealized picture of what it might look like when we do mission. But in the story of Jairus and the bleeding woman (Mark 5:21-43) we see that mission is messy. The gospel doesn't tell us what Jesus intended to do when he landed on that beach. But whatever plans he had,…

Religion often tells us that we need to be Holy. And we often interpret that to mean that, as religious people, we should, first and foremost, avoid sinful behaviour. When this is the centre of our faith, we practice personal holiness by avoiding interactions with people who might tempt us to sin. So we disengage…

When Jesus' disciples are gathered together in a boat to cross the sea, they have no idea a storm is coming.  When it does come, they do everything in their power to stop it. That is, except to call on Jesus. It's only when they despair for life that they even bother to wake him.…

The places where things happen in scripture can provide us with clues about the meaning of what happened. One example of this is the boat in Mark's gospel (specifically between chapters 4-8). Things that happen in a boat or places where Jesus and his followers go in a boat tell us about Jesus' intention for…