Mark 10:35-45

A request from James and John

James and John, Zebedee’s sons, came to Jesus and said, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”

“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.

They said, “Allow one of us to sit on your right and the other on your left when you…

Our ninth graders at Salem have spent the last month or so writing their statements of faith. They will share them with us during services on Oct. 21, in preparation for their confirmation the following Sunday. One of these amazing kids happens to be mine, and she has invited me on her journey to discover what she believes, and how to put it into words.

Have you ever attempted to share…

As I noted last Sunday, we are in the midst of reading through a portion of Mark’s Gospel in which Jesus is trying to teach the disciples about how God desires we live and care for the world. This series started with Jesus predicting his death and resurrection, but the disciples didn’t understand and instead of pursuing what that meant, they began arguing among themselves about who would be…

October is here! And for me, when we get to October, I immediately think about confirmation. Our tradition here at Salem is to celebrate confirmation on the last two Sundays of October, so this month there will be a lot of activities with the confirmands. One of the activities for me is to read through all of the sermon feedback booklets. Although it is time-consuming, I love doing it…

For the past several weeks we have been reading about how Jesus has been trying to teach the disciples about God’s way of thinking and turn them away from human ways of thinking, but he hasn’t been very successful. Our story ended last week this way, “[Jesus] sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took…

Mark 9:38-50 Common English Bible (CEB)

38 John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.”

39 Jesus replied, “Don’t stop him. No one who does powerful acts in my name can quickly turn around and curse me.40…

I love that our youth are leading worship this Sunday with this scripture from Mark 9:37: “Whomever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me … and the One who sent me.”

Our church works hard at being welcoming, and if you want to see that in action, come on Sunday and watch our youth joyfully lead worship. They have been encouraged since they were little to stay in…

Three weeks ago we heard John’s Gospel’s version of Peter’s confession of faith. This week we hear Mark’s version, when Peter says, “You are the Messiah.” If you remember in John, Jesus’ words about eating his flesh and his blood offended many of his followers, and so many of them left, but when Jesus asked the twelve if they, too, wanted to leave, “Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord,…

There is an old story about a wealthy man who owned his own business. Each year at the annual company picnic the man would spend most of the day going around and talking with his employees and their families. One year, as the day was coming to an end, the man finally wandered into the food tent to get some food. As he went through the line, he was handed a plate with a chicken leg, potato…

As I noted at the start of my sermon last week, there are going to be several times this fall that we are going to have to directly address some language issues in our stories if we are going to make sense about what is being said, and today is one of those days. To begin our story, Mark tells us that Jesus heads to the region of Tyre and then Decapolis. In other words, Jesus left the Jewish territories…