Old First

2 Samuel 23:1-7, Psalm 132:1-12, Revelation 1:4-8, John 18:33-37
Today I’m going to talk about the king and then I’ll talk about the kingdom.
Pontius Pilate says to Jesus, “So you are a king!” Pilate would not be impressed that Jesus was a king. Petty local kings were the bother of Roman governors all the time, to be used for imperial advantage—manipulating them, subsidizing them, even executing...

1 Samuel 1:4-20, Canticle of Hannah, Hebrews 10:11-25, Mark 13:1-8
Wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, earthquakes and famines. It was the story then and it’s the story now, the same old story and the story of our lives. Buildings built up and buildings demolished. The post-war order coming down,...

Ruth 1:1-18, Psalm 146, Hebrews 9:11-14, Mark 12:28-34
In the Gospel of Mark we have jumped two chapters to the other side of Palm Sunday. We have left the villages of Galilee, and finished the road to Jerusalem, and entered the Temple.
The Temple, where the rabbis taught and the schools debated, where the priests killed the animals and burned the flesh and offered the blood to sanctify the defilement of the people to permit them to worship the living God, and the focus of all the hopes...

Job 38:1-7, 34-41, Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b, Hebrews 5:1-10, Mark 10:35-45
I think the take-home message from this Gospel lesson is fairly straight-forward: if you want to be great in the Kingdom of God, be a servant; if you want to be first, be a slave. How far can we take this, beyond our individual persons?...