We begin a new series in the Gospel of Mark. It is often called the "Action Gospel" because the first half is a frenetic series of events, showing Jesus to be a miracle worker, inviting folks to ask the deeper question: Who is this? From the first verse of this Gospel, Mark's goal is to proclaim the good news of the coming of the Son of God - but even that phraseology has grown stale in our ears. How can we hear it as they did? If this has come to sound merely like religious jargon today, why was it so life-altering for them? What are we missing? Our hope this week will be to set the table for this entire series, where it is my sincere prayer that we encounter Jesus with fresh eyes and ears. So let's dive in and ask: "Who is this?" (Mark 1:1).
