Mark 5:21-43 Dear Partner in Preaching, Mark doesn’t begin these two inter-connected stories by saying, “The kingdom of God is like…”, but he might have. Indeed, compared with his Synoptic cousins, Mark doesn’t share all that many of Jesus’ parables (and most of the few he does we’ve already touched on), and yet weaving together of these two stories feels rather parabolic, as it offers one picture of Jesus’ ministry and God’s reign that we preachers might “throw alongside” (the literal meaning of παραβολή) the picture of our life in the world. Central to this parable is the vulnerability of the characters and,...

Dear Partner in Preaching, Do you remember what they called Harry Potter early on in the stories that bear his name? Folks called him “the boy who lived.” He wasn’t supposed to, you see. He had been struck by a killing curse from the dark wizard Voldemort and should have died, but he didn’t – he lived. And so that became his name. Names – especially nicknames that are given by others to describe something about us – can be pretty hard to shake. Whether they are accurate or not, whether we like them or not, whether they are flattering or not, the descriptors hung on us have significant power. Why? Because in naming one reality...