The Gospel reading is very familiar to most Christians. You could probably recite most of it along with me as I read it. As with so many portions of scripture, this familiarity makes it difficult to really examine what is happening and what God’s message to us might be. That is the joy of the scriptures – discovering time and again the truths behind the story. And each time we approach the story, we may see different details as our own situations change. Such is the case with this reading – we can hear something new every time we approach it.
This reading comes right in the middle of Mark’s Gospel. It is the halfway point and, for many, the turning point in Jesus’ ministry. We are midway between the baptism and the resurrection of Jesus and both of those events are mirrored in this story. But, on the grander scale, this story plants us in the middle of the core of Jewish faith.
