Not only do we have two healing miracles in today’s gospel lesson, the stories are actually nested one within the other. Jesus is on his way to help one person in need when he gets interrupted by another one. And these are the last two of a group of three healing miracles in Mark’s gospel. Immediately before today’s lesson is not…

  And Jesus said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground:…

In today’s Gospel lesson, Mark tells us how Jesus began teaching in parables. As the summer goes on, we’ll be reading Mark’s gospel straight through, and you will get to hear plenty more of these stories – Mark reports that although Jesus gave explanations and interpretations to his disciples, to the general public he spoke only in parables. So just what is…

It is sorely tempting to ignore the famously difficult gospel lesson for today and focus entirely on the first reading from the book of Samuel, with its rather straightforward argument between God and the Israelites. I’m not going to give in to that temptation, but before we move on to Mark’s gospel, I do want to call your attention to the first…