A father opens the door to greet his daughter's date. There stands a young man, cap on backwards, jeans that sag practically to his knees, a diamond stud in his lower lip, and wearing a set of earphones. The young man grunts hello and comes in. 

The father is more than a little taken back. He goes upstairs where his daughter is putting the finishing touches to her make-up.  "I don't think you should go out with this boy," says Dad. "He doesn't look like a nice person."  The daughter is shocked. "Daddy," she says, "If he wasn't such a nice person why would he be doing 500 hours of Community Service?"  Sometimes you can judge by appearances. Sometimes not. 

In our lesson for today from Mark's Gospel, the Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law had come from Jerusalem. They gathered a…