This morning Meg and I got pictures of our 2-year-old granddaughter wishing us a happy Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday. It seems an odd juxtaposition, but perhaps we can find where they intersect.

The prophet Joel said on the Day of the Lord, “Like blackness spread upon the mountains, a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come,” That put me in mind of something more recent; it seems a recurring theme.

The common, brief explanation for the start of World War I goes something like, Bosnian terrorists assassinated Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, which triggered responses from Germany, Russia and France, then Belgium and England. I’ve even heard it said that the limited communications available in 1914 - letters by courier - played a part in it.

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Today is Super Bowl Sunday. So, who you got? Who is going to win?

And how do we come to such a prediction? We look at the teams – at the experience and the genius of the players and their coaches, what they’ve done this year. And we look further back over their histories to develop a vision about what may happen.

But what if you knew? What if you were given a glimpse of Patrick Mahomes hoisting the trophy? Or Christian McCaffrey holding the MVP trophy? What if you saw a vision of Travis Kelce sobbing on Taylor Swift’s shoulder? Are those tears of joy or tears of sorrow? We don’t know. We will have to tune in tonight if we want to see what happens.

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The first chapter of Mark’s Gospel functions almost like a preview that we might see for a movie. There are two kinds of previews. Sometimes, previews deliberately mask the point of the movie. Take Jerry Maguire. The previews made it look like it was a sports movie. You remember the catchphrase, “Show me the money!” That made guys want to go. But that’s not what the movie was about, was it? It was the second catchphrase that sums it up, “You had me at hello.”

But most previews give you a taste of the movie, a setup of what you’ll see in more detail and depth. Mark’s first chapter is like that, and we’ve been working our way through it. Today we continue the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at Capernaum. Jesus began by calling his first disciples, then teaching in the synagogue where he cast out a demon.

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