Saturday: First Week in Holy Week Year B

Lent for Everyone
Mark Year B
WEEK 1: SATURDAY...

...Fans of detective stories will know the drill. The main lines of the plot are reasonably clear, or so it appears. But somewhere on the way there will be a clue, a hint, a nudge, which the alert reader will pick up. The culprit will have left a trace; something
said that doesn’t quite ring true, something done which seems a little out of character. The story may well be so gripping that the moment passes and the reader doesn’t notice, or quickly forgets. But when the end comes, and all is revealed, that little incident, that small hint, will come into its own. ‘Yes,’ you will say, ‘I should have known all along. That was the clue.’

At one level, this story in Mark is quite plain. Jesus is telling his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and be killed – and that anyone who wants to follow him must be prepared for the same fate. We might well suppose, granted the violent history of Jewish uprisings in the folk memory of his hearers, that this sort of thing would hardly come as a surprise...

Taken from Lent for Everyone Mark Year B by Tom Wright