Category: Uncategorized

  • Preaching Paths 30 June 2024 Proper 8B

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary In Mark 5:21-43, Mark deliberately embeds one striking healing event inside another. The dramatic tension unfolding in each story is generated by their interplay. They need to be preached together. The supplicants in these interwoven stories could not be more different. Jairus, who seeks healing for his…

  • Proper 7 (12) Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, 23rd June 2024

    Mark 4:35-414:35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 4:36 And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 4:37 A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the…

  • Preaching Paths 23 June 2024 Proper 7

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary The story known as “the stilling of the storm” (Mk 4:35-41) is one of two such stories in Mark (cf 6:47-53). The vast majority of sermons based on today’s text treat this boat-in-a-storm metaphorically: the boat is either the church or one’s life situation; the storm represents…

  • Proper 6 (11) Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, 16th June 2024

    Mark 4:26-344:26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 4:27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 4:28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full…

  • Preaching Paths 16 June 2024 Proper 6B

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary Today’s Gospel reading, Mk 4:26-34 offers us two agrarian parables portraying the reign of God, followed by brief commentary on Jesus’ teaching methods with crowds and disciples, respectively. Both parables—literally,  sketches “alongside-thrown” (para-bole) widespread popular expectations about the reign of God—employ a popular Semitic trope: the marvel…

  • Proper 5 (10)Third Sunday after Pentecost, 9th June 2024

    Mark 3:20-353:20 and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. 3:21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” 3:22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler…

  • Preaching Paths 9 June 2024 Proper 5B

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary The scene of our gospel text, Mark 3:(19b) 20-35, is Jesus’ home town. No warm welcome awaits. In a chiastically structured narrative, Mark presents three groups that, in one way or another, impede Jesus’ ministry of healing and exorcism. First, the admiring crowds (vv 20, 32) press…

  • Preaching Paths 2 June 2024 Proper 4B

    Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary Today’s text, Mark 2:23-3:6, presents two scenes in which questions around sabbath observance are at stake. If we trace our way backward through these scenes and the preceding ones, we discover a concatenation of issues, each “nested,” in a sense, within a broader one.  We find that…

  • Proper 4 (9) Second Sunday after Pentecost, 2nd June 2024

    Mark 2:23-3:62:23 One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 2:24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” 2:25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did…

  • Trinity Sunday, 26th May 2024

    Romans 8:12-178:12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh– 8:13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 8:14 For all who are led…