I can still remember my favorite class from high school. It was a Humanities class that was co-taught by a couple Social Studies teachers. It was a class only for Seniors, it required an application, and a minimum GPA. Those things were required because, for the class to work everyone in the class had to take it seriously and work hard. The class primarily consisted of reading classical works of social philosophy like; Plato’s “Republic,” Dante’s “Inferno,” Thomas More’s “Utopia,” and Aldus Huxley’s “Brave New World.” After reading each work the class would discuss and debate the ideas that had been presented. At our conferences I remember one of the teachers, Mr. Anderson, saying I had become the resident Bible Scholar for the class. I was 17. I didn’t think of myself as a scholar of anything, besides maybe sleeping until noon. When my mom pressed him on what he meant he explained that as our class discussed the books and their ideas, I would introduce material from the bible. At the time I was working very hard at developing a bible reading devotional life. I found that our class discussions connected to what I was reading in the bible. The bible offered meaningful insight on the discussions.

It’s not a complicated idea, but we often miss the basics. I was only able to see the insight the bible offered because I was becoming increasingly familiar with what was said in the bible. During this season of Lent, we are going to begin a sermon series designed to explore what is said in the bible, specifically what is said about Jesus by Mark. Mark is the shortest Gospel, at only 11,304 words, only 58% of Luke’s 19,482 words. Mark’s version of the Jesus story rushes from scene to scene, and event to event. Mark’s desire is to tell us exactly what we need to know about Jesus, and get us to the Cross as quickly as possible. Even Mark’s account of the resurrection is very brief. With all this in mind, During Lent, we are going to begin a sermon series in Mark we’re calling “Rushing to the Cross.” But, we are not going to rush through Mark. We are going to look at the entire story that Mark tells us about Jesus, and that is going to take us nearly a year of Sundays. We will carefully explore what Mark said about Jesus in his hurried story about Jesus’ life, ministry, death, and resurrection.