PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2025-2026

So much happens in this chapter that I am surprised that it is all in one chapter. That happens to me sometimes, that I read a chapter and there are so many stories that I love and remember in that single chapter that I forgot that they were all there. Jesus’ temptation must be addressed in a way that reminds us that this is how he begins his ministry. He is in hand to hand combat, or mind to mind combat with the devil and Jesus wins. I didn’t notice before but when it is over it says the devil went away waiting for another opportune time. Maybe that is when Judas decided to betray Jesus?

His reading of Isaiah in Nazareth, his hometown is significant because all were impressed with him until he tells them something that should make them do some self-examination. Instead they decide to take it out on him. Jesus doing healings in the synagogue in Capernaum is significant since we read in Matthew that it was his hometown, and apparently it was Peter’s hometown as well since his mother-in-law was sick and Jesus had to heal her right after his visit to the synagogue. Keep in mind, that if Peter had a mother-in-law then it meant that he was married. Little known fact.

We find John the Baptist aptly described after our Gospel, that is Luke, begins with a long version of his birth in chapter 1. John’s birth narrative is almost as long as Jesus’, and here we find him, the cousing of Jesus, in the wilderness with his very clear task of baptizing those who come to him for the repentance of sin. We see Jesus is baptized by him and in this Gospel there is no protestation like in the others, it simply happens. The Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus for the world to see and then the scene ends quietly. We also have Luke’s rendition of Jesus’ genealogy which is from the side of his mother, Mary, as opposed to his father’s side which is seen in Matthew.

Once again we see so many details that no other Gospel contains. We see the census that forces Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. We see the shepherds who visit Jesus, the details of the presentation of Jesus at the temple and the day of purification for Mary. None of these details do an of the other Gospels contain. We also see Jesus as a preteen who gets lost and isn’t discovered until days later. He does go home and obey his parents after that, so that was nice to read.

The opportunity to gain insight into who Jesus was from a very young age and the type of family that he grew up in is unique in Luke. He is thought to have been a physician, that is the traditional reading because of the type of Greek that he uses and the learned way in which he writes and the details that he will later include in the healings. But what I see that stands out is a real person who lived in real times who was just like one of us and did all the things that a child that age would have done in order to be a good Jewish boy. It is no wonder that people missed the Messiah, he wasn’t much different from any one of us, except for the whole miracle thing and the whole resurrection thing. But we will get to that.

We are officially half way done our Gospel challenge after having read both Matthew and Mark. We begin Luke today, and it is a super long first chapter. It contains the only details that we have of the birth of John the Baptist which includes his mother and his father. We also find here the encounter between Mary and the angel, as opposed to Joseph and the angel in Matthew. We have the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth and the ensuing magnificat where Mary uses the phrase: my soul magnifies the Lord. What a beautiful chapter, and what a chapter filled with details that none of the other Gospels might contain. It ends not with the birth of Jesus, but with the birth of John. Zecharia also finds his voice after he is filled with the Holy Spirit. This is a Scripture that is rarely used for a sermon, I should do that once.

We come to the end of Mark, and it ends in a multiplicity of ways, unfortunately. We have what are called the shorter and the longer endings. What is that all about? Well, you do know that we do not have the actual original Gospel that Mark wrote down, like the one that he put pen to ink. These Gospels are a passing down of these writing for over 2,000 years. It should not be threatening to us that in that passing down over the years that some renditions say one thing, and another rendition says another. That is exactly what we have here. Mark has two different endings according to sources that documented the Gospel hundreds of years ago. For some it is a scandal, for me, it is proof once again that God is at work both in the writing and the readinf of these materials.

And so the life of Jesus ends. Last chapter was filled with court appearances and accusations and false witnesses and attempted purjury. This chapter is filled with opportunities of the people of God, who had been chosen from God through Abraham and all the coveanants that had been fulfilled by the hand of God, to see who Jesus really was. We know that Joseph of Arimathea knew who he was, since as this chapter describes him, he was someone who was: “waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God.” What a great description for each of us. We should be people who are waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. We leave this chapter on Good Friday, the Christ, the Messiah is dead. There is no getting around that, and the women were witnesses to it since all the men had abandoned Jesus.

The intensity of the Gospel has wratched up quite a bit. We have in this one chapter the last supper, the prayer in Gethsemane, the arrest of Jesus, and him being condemned to death. All of this takes place in less than 24 hours, which tends to be lost as we read through the chapter. It feels like so much more time has passed, but remember, Palm Sunday, the day that Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, marks the fact that Jesus had less than a week to live and that in a week he would be resurrected. The Gospels tends to spend much more time in the last week of Jesus’ life than on any other time in his life, including his birth. Mark doesn’t even mention his birth, and here we find ourselves in multiple chapter describing how the last week of his life an his resurrection take place. This might be important for us to recognize that the importance of the incarnation and the importance of the resurrection is not necessarily measured by the amount of type it gets.

It is appropriate that when we find ourselves in the last week of Jesus’ life that he would tell his disciples some news about when all of this will come to an end and when he will come back again. This last chapter is replete with hints at the second coming and when the end times will be. We have descriptions of stars falling and the desolating sacrilege taking up shop in the temple. That latter event happened in the 1st century right before the temple was destroyed. Jesus also says something quixotical when he mentions that this generation will not pass away before these things take place. But the generation did pass away, and the end times did not come, so maybe he was talking about his death.

But the best insight into the timing of all of this is heard at the end of his chapter when Jesus says that he does not know when this will all happen. This is so important for us to understand as we have had people from the time that Jesus ascended into heaven thinkin that they were able to predict or tell when the end times actually were coming. If Jesus himself doesn’t know the timing of it then the hubris that any of us could have thinking we would know is extraordinary.

Remember we find ourselves travelling no longer. Jesus is in the temple and he is teaching and there are rabbis and their disciples all around the temple, so it was very, very crowded. Remember, it was right around Passover, so things would have been loaded with people. He teaches his disciples, and anyone who would listen, and it sounds like he had quite a crowd. In this context he gives the greatest commandment, which is twofold: love God and love neighbor. There is really nothing controversial about this commandment, just that it does sum up everything that we ought to be doing.

Today we find ourselves in the day of Palm Sunday, but it is different from the other Gospels. In Matthew and Luke Jesus clears out the temple of the money changers right after his ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. In John, it happens at the very beginning of his ministry in chapter 2 of John. But here in Mark, it happens on the Monday of Holy Week, where we read that Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, looks around the temple to check on things, notices that it is getting late and then returns to the next day to clean it out. Different, but each Gospel has it at a time when it is most needed and important for that Gospel.