We took a bit of a side quest together, because the big question when reading Genesis 18 is what's up with these three guys called Yahweh? Well, Christians often unsurprisingly see Trinity here, three figures that, at least on the surface, are collectively called by the divine name. That must be father, son and spirit, and that's not an unreasonable conjecture at all. However, it's also like almost certainly not what the writer of this story had in mind at all.

Have you ever noticed the asterisk in the Gospel of Mark? It's right there at the end of chapter 16, verse 8, and it signifies that this is where the Gospel originally ended. The tomb is empty, but Jesus is nowhere in sight, and the women are running in fear. What a strange place to end. It's so strange that a couple of centuries later, someone took it upon themselves to add a better, happier ending. But I like the original version because I think it reminds us of the difference between our reactions and our responses and what we chose to allow to become our story.

For 8 chapters now, he's been walking around healing people and excising demons. Mark has hinted at references to Hebrew scriptures and divine theophanies. Both crowds and critics all know exactly where the story is going. But thus far no one has put breath behind the hope they hold.

At the end of the day what God cares about most is not that you follow all the rules it's who you become over time. How you learn to treat the people near you the love that flows out of you steadily always. And so Jesus says nothing that goes into you, nothing anyone does to you, nothing anyone could ever say to you, no circumstance in your life, none of this could ever diminish you in the eyes of God. But how you choose to live and how you choose to treat people, how you move through the world in the choices that you make that can, if you let it, make you very very ordinary. Because that's the thing, this word defilement that's what it means.

I had the chance to teach about the letter to Thyatira at Woodland Hills Church in Saint Paul recently. And that was fun, except the passage they asked me to teach on is honestly one of the most difficult in the book of revelation. So here's some excerpts from my sermon on Revelation chapter 2: the problem with Jezebel and some insight into how we approach the violent imagery in the book of Revelation.

Eye of salves containing spit were actually a pretty common story. There's this really interesting mention in the book of Revelation where the Spirit writes to the church in Laodicea. Now, in the city of Laodicea, there were 3 major industries. There was a robust banking sector. There was a lucrative trade in wool that came from a particular black sheep that was cultivated in the region. And there was an ancient ophthalmology school that specialized in this particular Phrygian powder that they used to make a soothing eye salve that was put on eyes.

Self-care is one of those phrases that has deeply embedded itself in our cultural consciousness. There's a massive self-care industry trying to sell you on how you can care for yourself well. So what does Jesus think about all this?

In his recounting of Jesus walking on water, Mark uses a curious phrase. He tells us that the disciples hearts were hard. That's a phrase that shows up a few times in the Bible; think of Pharaoh's heart. However, I think Mark is using this in a different way primarily to talk about a lack of imagination. All the ways that disciples miss the truly miraculous that's right in front of them. The Divine shows up in more ways than we know.

Mark 6 has a pretty wild story. "Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and Jesus was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them." Mark 6:47-48 So what is going on here? Was Jesus really going to pass them by and head onto the shore by himself? Or does the writer have something else here in mind?

Maybe with the profound encounters between Jacob and Esau as a backdrop, we can think about how shedding the weight of former hurts and preconceptions can lead to a more authentic and liberated existence.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love,—I am nothing. 1 Corinthians 13 I might even suggest that if you can do all that, And you don’t have love, You’re not nothing, You’re a net negative.

By Genesis 33, a lot has happened in Jacob's life. He literally wrestled an angel, saw the face of God, and lived to tell the tale, for goodness sake. And yet here in the climactic moment, about to meet his brother, the only story Jacob has available to him is the one that took shape all those years ago when Esau was at his most vulnerable. For Jacob, Esau is still exactly who he was when, in a moment of anger, he lashed out in frustration. And maybe part of the problem here is that Jacob wonders if he's still that same person too. People change. And maybe it's time for us to let go of some old stories we're holding on to about the people in our lives.

I think Esau is the hero of his story. So why does the Bible say God hated him?

The narrative starts with a heart-touching tale of Jairus pleading for his sick daughter's healing. But that's just the set up for the real story. We encounter the tale of a woman struggling with a bleeding disorder for over a decade. Through the interaction of these stories, Mark uncovers the remarkable power of Christ, his deep compassion, and his outreach to the marginalized and ostracized.

We cross Lake Kinneret and delve into the story of Jesus encountering a man possessed by demons. The conversation gets a little scary, political, and eventually, heartfelt. You'll find yourself entranced as we discuss the metaphoric representation of the man's possession and Jesus' role in calming the storm and freeing the man.

At the start of Mark 3, we find Jesus speaking to his distractors, and this time he brings up Sabbath. Here he's back in the synagogue on the Sabbath and in the congregation there's a man with a "shriveled hand", and Jesus asked his detractors this time, which is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to kill. But they remained silent. Now, the reason they remain silent is they know what Jesus is going to do, right, but also because Jesus is referring here to a particular teaching of the Pharisees.

When people try to pit Jesus against the Pharisees, his basic first response is, "well, that's their thing, this is mine." And sure, of course, later Jesus will go after. He will critique particularly those people who he sees wielding power over and against the common people, but generally, as a mission statement for his life, he is not all that enamored with tearing things down, at least not in the way that he's committed to building something new.

There's a neat example in Mark 5 of what I call an enacted parable. An interaction that Jesus is using to speak to something larger. However, part of the symbolism in this parable only becomes clear when looking several decades into the future. So we have two options: 1. Jesus is enacting the parable prophetically or 2. The writer is looking back creatively.

We sometimes have this imagination that the Pharisees were harsh and therefore hated by the people, as opposed to Jesus, who was loved by all the common folk. The truth, however, is more nuanced, and the Pharisees were largely considered the liberals of the day, and that made them quite popular. For example, from inter-Testamental Jewish writings that we know of, the Pharisees were often the group that downplayed religious punishment and were most often criticized for being too lenient with religious penalty.

When scholars look at tightly packed similar stories like we find in the opening of Mark, they will often refer to them as symbolic actions. And that's a tricky phrase, because often people will hear that and latch on to the word symbolic and then assume that what scholars are trying to do is undermine the historicity of these miracles, like they didn't really happen. They're just symbols or metaphors. Personally, I don't think that's really all that scary. To be honest, sometimes the line between what's a parable and what's not from Jesus is nuanced.