Welcome, happy morning!

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Sunday again, every Sunday is Easter: "Welcome, happy morning!" age to age shall say. My lifelong favorite Easter hymn.

It's 4:52 AM heading for breakfast and rush Time to finish getting ready to talk about Mark and his book "according to Mark" with the adult Sunday school class at church. This will be session four and is meant to take us from chapter ten through chapter thirteen, right before the start of the end at Mark's account of "the passion of the Christ." 

For a pastoral reason that I found out about when I opened my telephone just now, we need to get there a bit earlier than planned. 

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Outside on 7H porch is nice, lightning in the distance, and a tad too cool for me to sit comfortably sipping my hot & black while I took into the blackness of the Universe and contemplate how important we think we are. My view: ants hating the ants in the next anthill and fighting with them over territory.

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Florida 29, Texas 21: yay! even though I feel sad for young Manning, who had all kinds of offers and I think he expects an early draft? maybe still. Michigan 24 Wisconsin 10. Sorry FSU, Go Noles anyway.

Sort of an intro to Mark, I try to say something brief as we open class:

Good morning, we are talking about Mark the gospel writer AND how he presents his book “according to Mark.” Many folks who are organized like to perceive “according to Mark” divided into three parts, sort of loosely defined.

Part ONE is Mark trying to convince you that Jesus is Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, and showing you that even though YOU get it, his disciples are too obtuse to get it no matter what they see going on right in front of them.

Part TWO begins at the Transfiguration and they are on the way to Jerusalem. God himself tells disciples who Jesus is, but they still don’t get it, Jesus is Messiah, Son of God, but they’re expecting an earthly kind of King no matter how many Times Jesus tells them that NO, he’s the suffering servant king who will be put to death and rise again. And Mark makes us more and more aware of the hostility of the Pharisees and Herodians.

Part THREE you can begin either with the arrival in Jerusalem OR with chapter 14, which begins Mark’s Passion Narrative about Jesus, and ending abruptly at chapter 16 verse 8 with the scared women running away from the empty tomb. 

RSF&PTL

T90

pic: 1958/59 Opel Rekord. Linda and I had a car exactly like this one, we bought it on impulse one Sunday afternoon while we were living in Norfolk and I was stationed aboard USS CORRY, my beloved destroyer!