2.22-3.6

 Community Building

• Welcome new participants.
• Review the themes of Marking Your Mark and any opportunities to practice what we discussed last week: spend any time with tax collectors and sinners? Find anything new about Jesus that stretched your mind, or tore away a preconception?

The Text: Mark 2.23-3.6

• Ask some who enjoys reading aloud to read these verses.
• What impacted us from Lou’s sermon on these verses? 

Discussion Questions:

• Review the context of these stories: do you see any connections back to what we’ve discussed so far in Mark?
• Make some basic observations: who, what, where.
• List exactly what Jesus teaches about the Sabbath. What are the sources for authority that Jesus mentions to corroborate his understanding of how to observe the Sabbath?
• Why do the Pharisees become so upset that they team up with the Herodians to plot Jesus’ destruction?

Application reflections

• What is your church history? Have you experienced times when you felt like ‘the sabbath’ was made for you? Or times when you felt like you were serving the ‘sabbath’? What contributed to your experience?
• What could we do to make our ‘sabbath’ experience focused on doing good and meeting human needs?
• Have you ever had an encounter with Jesus that completely overturned your understanding of what it means to worship God? Would you be willing to tell us that story?

Pray