The Year of Mark is the third in a series of commentaries on biblical scripture found in the three-year cycle of Christian liturgical readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Following the RCL provides a convenient format for Bible study for clergy and lay leaders ("believers in exile") who are drawn to the social justice mandate found in Jesus's teachings, but who no longer find meaning in orthodox interpretations of scripture. The continued existence of a Christian "faith" as a religious system of belief is clearly under siege by twenty-first century Biblical scholarship as well as the continuing evolution of scientific knowledge. The question addressed by this series is whether and how ancestral scriptures remain relevant and revelatory to twenty-first century cosmology. The project is grounded in the postmodern biblical scholarship of Karen Armstrong, Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and the Jesus Seminar, as well as the transforming work of Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, whose theology of Creation Spirituality has reclaimed Catholic mysticism for the third millennium.