Looking at Mark 6:6-13, the Eikon team discusses what Jesus was doing when he sent the apostles on a special two-by-two mission, what they might have thought they were being sent to do, and why Mark crafted this account the way he did. At the heart of this passage is a community that is being created with Cruciformity at its center rather than conversionism. The team then discusses the implications of that reality for today's church.

The Eikon Team takes on the beginning of Mark 6, taking a second look at Jesus in his hometown.

The Eikon Team dives into one of the Gospel of Mark's most beautifully crafted passages. Two women, separated by status, circumstance, age, social position, support system, and many other ways but see their stories intersect as they interact with Jesus. There is much in these two stories that we can miss with a modern eye but as we dive into the text, we have the opportunity to see what Mark did not want us to miss about the kingdom of God and the Messiah that was bringing it into the present age.

Mark 5:1-20 is one of the darker and stranger scenes in all of Mark's Gospel. Jesus encounters a demon-possessed Gentile in a graveyard by the sea surrounded by herds of swine. From a Jewish perspective, it cannot get much worse than that. The Eikon team breaks down this scene as well as discussing who Jesus may have really been confronting here and why he might have sent the legion of demons into the herd of pigs.

The Eikon team moves to Mark 4:21-25 to continue examination of the Parable of the Sower, a parable so important that Jesus said if we don't grasp the heart of this parable, we will misunderstand everything that he is about. They explore what Jesus meant when he said that "whoever has will be given more" and "whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them," and how our individualistic materialism can get in the way of us truly catching his point. They finish with thoughts on the gravity and meaning of this passage for the contemporary church.

Author and Theologian, Tim Gombis, joins the Eikon Living team to discuss the Parable of the Sower. When Jesus first taught the Parable of the Sower, he made clear that not only was it pivotal to understanding his ministry, but also that many who would hear would misunderstand it and not put it into practice. Gombis walks through this foundational parable, showing how it provides a textual map for the rest of Mark, how we can miss important elements of it just as Jesus' disciples did, and how we can rightly understand and rightly respond to the challenge of it today.

Tim Gombis is the host of the "Faith Improvised" podcast and author of several books including, "Power in Weakness," The Drama of Ephesians," and "The Story of God Bible Commentary: Mark."

Looking at Mark 3:20-35, the Eikon team discusses important things to watch for when reading biblical texts. They demonstrate how Mark ties his text together to show that both Jesus' family and the teachers of the law were making dangerous miscalculations about the way of the Messiah. They finish up considering whether we can commit unforgivable sins today.

Jesus constantly seemed to take aim at the Sabbath practices of his day. Before we begin to ask what that means for us and whether or not we should be observing a Sabbath today, the Eikon Living team analyzes what Sabbath was, what it was intended for, and how it was approached by many of the Jewish believers of Jesus’ day. The reality is, they conclude, that Sabbath was a much bigger and deeper concept than we tend to understand today, a reality that has major implications for how we might think about and approach Sabbath today. They then discuss why the early Christians were so opposed to a physical observation of Sabbath and whether contemporary Christians should observe Sabbath, and if so, what it might look like.

One of the primary themes in Mark’s Gospel and one of his main challenges to the church revolves around our view of insiders and outsiders. Jesus constantly challenged those preconceptions about people that were typically excluded and marginalized. Rather than building fences to keep them out, he embraced those very people. But he didn’t stop there. Throughout his gospel Mark highlights that Jesus also challenged the insider status of those that were the most confident about their standing before God. His seeming intention was to critique the church of the generation after Christ and cause them to examine their own views about insiders and outsiders. 

Nowhere is that clearer in Mark’s Gospel than in today’s study of Mark 2:13-17. The Eikon Living Team discusses why Jesus was always hanging around the wrong people, what that meant in his day, and why that should challenge us to think about our own spiritual communities and how we treat others. They discuss the implications of Mark Baker’s book, Centered Set Church when it comes to being a bounded, centered, or fuzzy group.

Do we fully understand the implications of the Gospel accounts surrounding Jesus’ confrontations with the demonic? The Eikon Living Team suggests that there is much more behind those encounters than we might first suppose. They also discuss why Jesus was perceived as having so much authority in his teaching, what we can learn about Jesus’ ministry from the evil use of power by Vladimir Putin, who and what are the divine council, and whether we should expect to perform exorcisms today. But first, Jason explains the context of Psalm 46:10 and why we often find comfort in that passage when the intended response was likely something very different.