BibleWorm

This week we’re reading Luke 4:14-30, the story of Jesus giving his inaugural sermon at his home synagogue in Nazareth. In the Gospel of Luke this passage serves as a kind of mission statement for the ministry of Jesus, which he envisions as fundamentally “good news to the poor.” This is a good measure, we think, for our own communities. To what extent is our work in the world good news to the poo...

This week, we read Luke 3:1-22, a text that orients us first in all of competing political powers at play at that moment in history – and there are many! But then we simultaneously zoom IN to the personal and zoom OUT to the godly with the accounts of baptism. We wonder - Does something change in that ritualized moment, or does the ritual mark a shift that has already happened, or is the ritual la...

This week we’re reading Luke 2:41-52, the story of twelve-year-old Jesus left behind in the temple as his parents return home from the Passover celebration. We talk about the ways repeated rituals like that ancient Passover pilgrimage can open up space for new and profound encounters with God, opportunities to integrate one’s own life into the story of the Torah and into the light of God’s revelat...

This week, we read Luke 2:21-38. The baby Jesus has been born just a week prior, and our reading today is scaffolded by the Jewish rituals that surround his birth. We wonder about the role of ritual in our lives, and about the very different ways that Simeon and Anna, two individuals who seem very close to God indeed, navigate the passing days of their own lives – one in constant ritual devotion,...

On this special Christmas Eve episode we’re discussing the birth of Jesus as told in Luke 2:1-20. We talk about the imperial setting of this story, which takes place during the reigns of Augustus, Herod, and Quirinius but announces the good news of a different lord and savior who brings peace to all rather than to the few. We ponder the way that the message makes its way into the world—through an...

This week we’re reading Luke 1:26-46, the annunciation of Mary and the Magnificat. In this biblical version of the Bechtel test, we find two women, Mary and her older relative Elizabeth, as the only two people on earth who know that God is in the process of upending the world. We marvel at the strength of young Mary, who doesn’t flinch when the angel Gabriel tells her she will give birth to the me...

This week, we read the beautiful and inspiring language of Isaiah 61 – a chapter that made us think about the work and the power of restoring human dignity. We saw in this chapter a call to care for both emotional and physical needs – to attend to people in their wholeness. We were reminded that once people remember their own beauty and dignity, they just might not need someone else to rebuild the...

This week we’re reading Joel 2:12-29, a text most familiar from the Christian celebration of Pentecost as remembered in Acts 2. Read in context, though, Joel is about God promising to restore the land after it has been devastated by a plague of locusts, not only bringing an abundance of grain but also pouring out the Spirit on young and old alike. But now, before the restoration, in the midst of t...

This week we read Daniel 6:1-27. It's the very well-known story of Daniel in the lion’s den, but it seems much more complicated now than it did in that picture book from childhood. How exactly do we hold the power of a king – that's real power! -- alongside the power of God – which is also real? Daniel’s special touch seems to lie in his willingness to engage with both, and precisely not to force...

This week we’re reading a set of texts from the book of Jeremiah, beginning in 36:1-16 and 21-28 and then continuing in 31:31-34. Together these texts tell of Jeremiah’s written prophecy, read by his scribe Baruch in the Temple, calling the people to repentance. But when King Jehoiachim hears of the prophecy, he cuts it to shreds and tosses it into the fire. In Jeremiah 31, God responds by promisi...

This week, we read Isaiah 6:1-13 – definitely an MVP candidate in both the Jewish and Christian communities. We wonder – what can we learn from the way that the seraphim offer praise, and what would it feel like to be a human in the middle of this scene? It’s tempting to stop reading after Isaiah tells God “Send me” – we just want to dwell in the beauty of that moment. but what happens next is imp...

This week we’re reading the story Jonah as told in the book of Jonah chapters 1, 3, & 4. The story opens with God sending Jonah to prophesy against Israel’s greatest enemy, the Assyrians, in their capital city of Nineveh. Jonah at first runs away from God, preferring to take his chances in the sea, where he is famously saved by spending three days in the belly of a fish. But when Jonah finally...

This week, we read 1Kings 17:1-24, and meet the larger-than-life figure of Elijah. How should we understand his boldness – is he a man of God who has taken things into his own hands, kind of gone rogue ... or is he so tied into God’s ideals that he is willing to inhabit them even when they are an awkward fit for the world of humans? And what does it mean this Bold Figure to leave from the presence...

This week we’re reading the story of Solomon dedicating the Temple as told in 1 Kings 5:1-6; 8:22-30, 41-43, and 52-60a. We talk about the task of temple building and the tension that comes with trying to create containers for the uncontainable God, whether that be the sanctuaries we build or the services we design to control our interactions with God. But ultimately we realize, along with Solomon...

This week, we read 2 Samuel 7:1-17 – King David's got an idea, y’all. Having just built himself a house – a palace – he wants to build God a house – a Temple. Is he motivated by a love for the Lord, or by political savvy? Or a little of both? And why does God say no, but then offer David yet another kind of house – a dynasty? With all this house language flying around, we’ve got to ask – where doe...

A special live episode on 1 Samuel 1:1-20 and 2:10, recorded at Heartland Retreat Center in Parkville, MO, with pastors from the Omaha Presbyterian Seminary Foundation's Pastoral Leadership Revitalization Program.

This week we’re reading the story of Hannah as told in 1 Samuel 1:1-20 and 2:1-10. Really we’re supposed to be talking about Hannah’s song in chapter 2, but we find the story of Hannah herself so compelling that we linger over it to see what it can teach us. We ponder the way Hannah prays out of her wretchedness, speaking her truth before God in ways that may at first seem overly bold. But God’s r...

This week we read Exodus chapter 32: 1-14 – the infamous story of the golden calf. Okay, we all know that this was not the best move the Israelites have ever made. But let’s slow down our reading and see what else we can find in here. What are the Israelites feeling, and what do they mean to do by making this calf? Is Aaron sensitive and subtle in navigating this situation, reducing harm – or is h...

This week we’re reading the story of the first Passover as told in Exodus 12:1-13 and 13:1-8. We talk about God setting the people free from Egypt, and wrestle with the violence that seems necessary for God to enact judgments against Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. We marvel at the resetting of the calendar and the ritual of the Passover that are both instantiated before the Exodus even takes place...

This week we are reading the story of Joseph in Genesis 37: 3-8, 17b-22, 26-34 and 50:15-21. This is an emotionally complex story- a novella maybe like none other in the Hebrew Bible. It's a story where love unequally distributed causes hatred among brothers; a story where obligation and affection get mixed up in complicated ways, and people get so turned around that they actually think deception...

This week we’re reading the story of God’s promise to Abraham as told in Genesis 15:1-21. When Abraham expresses anxiety about the future, God shows him the stars as a sign of the good things to come. So, too, we think, the signs of God’s promises are all around us, if only we can step outside of our small worlds to see them. Yet this text also speaks of promises delayed, of generations passing be...

This week we are back to the beginning, reading parts of the second story of creation and the story of the Garden of Eden as they are found in Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17, 3:1-13. For stories that we’ve heard a thousand times, we had a lot of questions. Is there a relationship between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, in the story or in our own lives? What does our knowledge of good and evil –...

This week BibleWorm meets Queen Esther, winner of some biblical version of The Bachelor. We learn about the blood feud between the people of Haman and the people of Mordecai, and see the all too familiar trope that Jews - or anyone deemed an “outsider,” really - is a danger to the kingdom. We see loyalty without uniformity in action. And we see all kinds of different models for standing up to the...

This week BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible with a look at Esther 1:1-22, the story of the Persian Queen Vashti and her refusal to appear before the king. We discuss the fragile egos of the king and his courtiers who fear the capacity of women to say no. We talk about the power of the patriarchy and the lengths it will go to to suppress voices of dissent. We...

This week BibleWorm explores Ruth chapters 1 and 3, trying to imagine Ruth’s own perspective and calling out some of the ways that the book portrays painful parts of the immigrant experience. We see how the scene at the threshing floor plays on the worst stereotypes of Moabite women, and how Ruth’s beautiful statement of loyalty to Naomi also carries with it an erasure of her own heritage. We try...