N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 8.22–30 Peter’s Declaration of Jesus’ Messiahship... ...It’s quite a walk from Bethsaida to Caesarea Philippi. Even in a car, on modern roads, the trip takes an hour or two. Bethsaida is near the north shore of the Sea of Galilee; Caesarea Philippi is away …

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Mark for Everyone - The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 8.11–21 The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod... ...Think of your schooldays. What was your worst subject – the one you always dreaded, the one you longed to give up? Now try (if the memory isn’t too painful) to remember what it was like sitting in a desk wi…

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Mark for Everyone - The Feeding of the Four Thousand

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 8.1–10 The Feeding of the Four Thousand... ...Two more loaves, a thousand less people, and five fewer baskets remaining. It’s almost like a dream; we’ve heard the story before, it seems, two chapters earlier, and yet it’s different. The disciples seem to be…

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Mark for Everyone - A Deaf and Mute Man Is Healed

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 7.31–37 A Deaf and Mute Man Is Healed... ...I received a leaked memo the other day on my fax machine. It wasn’t a very serious leak – something that would be in the papers in a couple of days anyway – but it gave me a strange feeling. It goes on all the tim…

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Mark for Everyone - The Syrophoenician Woman

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 7.24–30 The Syrophoenician Woman... ...Not just another healing, more a political incident. This very odd story has all the trappings of a dangerous event for Jesus, and Mark helps us to understand it by the way he’s linked it to what went before. We’ve jus…

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Mark for Everyone - Clean and Unclean

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 7.14–23 ..Back to jokes again. Have you ever told a joke and seen a row of blank stares? They didn’t get it? What can you do? Explain it? Surely that’ll take all the fun out of it. Yes, but a parable isn’t a joke. This one in particular was no laughing matt…

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Mark for Everyone - God’s Law and Human Tradition

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 7.1–13 God’s Law and Human Tradition... ...I read a book about jokes the other day (not just a book of jokes, you understand, though there were plenty of them, but a philosophical book about jokes; humour is, as you might say, a very funny thing). One of th…

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Mark for Everyone - Jesus Walks on Water

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 6.45–56 Jesus Walks on Water... ...I listened last night to an organ recital, given by one of the world’s leading organists on a truly great instrument. Bach, Reger, Bruckner – wonderful composers, wonderful music, a magical evening. But there was one piece…

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Mark for Everyone - Herod and John the Baptist

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 6.17–29 Herod and John the Baptist... ...What sells newspapers? Three things, and if they’re combined, so much the better. Royalty: almost any story about a member of a royal family will sell, not only in Britain or Norway or wherever it began, but around t…

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Mark for Everyone - The Speculations of Herod

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 6.14–16The Speculations of Herod... ...Private life is a modern invention. Until quite recently, most people lived in small communities where everyone knew every- one else’s business. Until a few hundred years ago, everybody heard what was going on in the w…

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Mark for Everyone - The Twelve Sent Out

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 6.7–13 The Twelve Sent Out... ...‘No time for coffee this morning,’ I told my teenage son today. ‘You’ve got a train to catch. You need to be at that meeting.’ He had emerged, sleepily, half an hour before his train left; it takes at least 20 minutes to get…

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Mark for Everyone - A Prophet in His Own Town

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 6.1–6 A Prophet in His Own Town... ...Most preachers can remember the first time they stood up to preach in front of their own parents. It’s not the same as with other things people do. If you’re a musician, they probably heard you practising when you were …

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Mark for Everyone - The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 5.35–43The Raising of Jairus’s Daughter... ...Right on cue, as the suspense heightens, messengers come to tell Jairus that his daughter has now died. He shouldn’t bother Jesus any longer. Telling Jairus not to be afraid, and just to believe, in that setting…

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Mark for Everyone - Jairus’s Daughter and the Woman with Chronic Bleeding

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 5.21–34 Jairus’s Daughter and the Woman with Chronic Bleeding... ...We really should take this passage with the next one, since in Mark’s mind they are all part of the same story. But both are so full of interest that it’s worth holding them apart for the m…

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Mark for Everyone - The Healing of the Demoniac

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 5.1–20 The Healing of the Demoniac... ...The east side of the Sea of Galilee, rising steeply up to the Golan Heights, is still disputed territory, 2,000 years on from this story. For many years, it belonged to Syria; the Israelis took it in the war of 1967;…

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Mark for Everyone - Jesus Calms the Storm

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 4.35–41 Jesus Calms the Storm... ...It isn’t only boats that are in danger on the Sea of Galilee. To this day, the car parks on the western shore have signs warning drivers of what happens in high winds. The sea can get very rough very quickly, and big wave…

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Mark for Everyone - More Seed Parables

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 4.26–34 More Seed Parables... ...I have always enjoyed listening to good choirs. I have even, on rare occasions, sung in one or two, in fear and trembling lest my amateur ability should reveal itself by a wrong note, a fluffed entry, or – that dread moment …

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Mark for Everyone - A Lamp on Its Stand

by SPCK - N T Wright

Mark For Everyone MARK 4.21–25 A Lamp on Its Stand... ...Yesterday I took part in a procession. It started outside St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, and as Big Ben struck the hour we began to move, singing hymns, around the green and into the great west doors of Westminster Abbe…

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