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Book: Mark

The Way to Save a Life

Yet this “good news” – profoundly strange, even apparently morbid – promises that, in relinquishing our supereminent concern for the self, pursuing instead the way of peace and justice, we become so free that even a violent end may be an expression of an ultimately joyful reception of the gift of life – that is, it may be the way to save a life.

The Political Theology of Jesus’ Baptism: Towards a Counter-Cultural Lent

Lent can become a season of personal and societal transformation as people of faith respond to the counter-cultural call from Jesus’ baptism. It challenges us to examine our own attitudes and behaviours, encouraging a shift towards a more compassionate and just way of living.

Transgressing ‘white’ Transfiguration

A political theology of the transfiguration of Jesus has to expose and transgress the elevation of whiteness as divine, as a norm and as something superior to multi-coloured local expressions of faith. It also calls us to celebrate the mystery of transfiguration as trans-figuration of the body ethic of Jesus and of all humanity.

Knowing Who You Are

Jesus does not need others to define who he is because he rests in the knowledge that he is called and beloved by God. Jesus does not need the man with the unclean spirit to proclaim that he is the “Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24) in order to own and live this identity for himself.

Advent is a Time of Learning the Skill of Waiting

Hope orients one to look beyond the horizon of suffering and to see the resilient light of new beginnings.

The End of a World is not the End of the World

Jesus’ saying about the destruction of the temple gives us a way to view human structures as the powers they are but also as provisional—as all human things are.

A Widow’s Presence

In her very presence, the widow performs the political act of bringing to light oppression and injustice. Our task is to learn how to see her.

Calling God to Account

Today’s texts are complicated, messy messages of divine justice. Perhaps the best we can learn from Job or Bartimaeus is the courage to call God to accountability.

Christianity Unreconciled with Wealth

Is wealth the opposite of Christianity? Is profit antithetical to the kin-dom of God? A look into Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli’s accounting process – now called reconciliation accounting – reveals that despite Jesus’ words, the practice of Christians in the Western world has emphatically answered: no, they get along just fine. It is high time for a Christianity, guided by Mark 10:17–31, that is unreconciled with wealth.

The Power You Have

Our problem is neither that we have power nor that we lack power. Many factors outside our control determine how much power we actually have. Our problem is that we fail to recognize the power we do have so that we can steward it well.

Disownment and the Discourse of Death

To be personally acquainted with disownment and the discourse of death—simultaneously, from divergent communities—and still desire to be “servant of all” is, perhaps, one way to journey through death on the Way. Nevertheless, Jesus’ teaching to love neighbor and enemy is both beautiful and horrible, not unlike the Christ’s foretelling of his death on the way to resurrection.

Prophetic Truth Telling as a Christian Witness

The God we meet in Amos and John demands righteousness, solidarity and justice as the foundations of faithful living. Neutrality scuppers justice. When we drift away from God, our fellow human beings and the life-giving environment, prophetic truth-telling tempered with an imagination for a different world becomes a necessity.