Book: Mark

God in Jesus Christ touches our grubby humanity to make it clean, so that human beings and human community might regain their colour, shape and original purpose.

The demonic forces of our culture and time colonise our lives but if we turn to Christ, he will drive away the demons and fill us with his Spirit. His truth will set us free.

We are called to take sides in a conflict between the prophet of love and peace and the prophets of hatred and violence.

In the midst of horror and despair, Christ arrives with love enough, with peace enough, with hope enough to make things very, very, very different.

The Advent season is a gift that illumines our present with light from our promised goal, to shape us as a people of patient and vigilant faithfulness.

Love is both command and promise and is what gives meaning to all our offerings to God.

Summing up the previous section of the gospel, Bartimaeus is a model disciple – one who sees who Jesus is, has no pretensions to power, leaves everything, and follows Jesus on the way.

Jesus is not calling us to self-mutilation, but he is saying that our efforts to root out sin in ourselves need to be as rigorous as it takes, even if it means appearing like a fanatic.

The challenge of relinquishing selfish desire is a crucial key to a deeper journey into the life of Christ.

The Bible highlights the consequences of the world’s unjust economic system, and we, as the church, are called to find ways of living out our prayer for justice.

We need to be willing to hear truth whether it comes from an expected source or an unexpected source.

Self sacrifice and asceticism are not incompatible with the call to care for oneself and live life to the full.