Members:
Robert L. Friedly, the lectionary interpreter, is a retired layman who, along with having been an award-winning newspaper reporter, Disciples public relations vice-president, editor of The Disciple and founding editor of DisciplesWorld, has taught Bible to both young people and adults in church school for more than half a century. He applies his best understanding to these scriptures identified by the Vanderbilt Lectionary Project.
The good news of Jesus Christ begins not with Jesus but with a strange man who may or may not have been his cousin. In Mark’s gospel he hatches full-grown from the desert, simply “appearing” to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah (and Malachai; he conflates the two into one). Unlike the prophets of old, who stood at the gates of the city or the steps of the temple, John roams in the wilderness, preaching his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He is the voice crying out in the wilderness, the manifestation of Elijah, the forerunner of the messiah whose whole purpose, it seems, is to prepare the way of the Lord.
