BibleWorm

This week BibleWorm reads Exodus 1:8-2:10 and 3:1-15, a text that seemed to ask us again and again – what is capturing your attention? We see just how little it takes for the situation to turn bad for the Israelites in Egypt. And in this newly roaring sea of people and power that are bent against them, we read stories of individual people who manage to incline their attention somewhere else – who...

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jacob’s midnight wrestle as told in Genesis 32:9-13 and 22-30. We talk about the way Jacob pauses to pray for God’s protection as he prepares to face his brother Esau, first reminding God of God’s past promises, and then asking for God to save him. We discuss the mysterious figure who appears to wrestle Jacob in the night, whom Jacob ultimately understands to...

This week BibleWorm reads Genesis 18:1-15 and Genesis 21:1-7 – texts that tell us of baby Isaac’s imminent, and then actual, arrival. When the three men come to Abraham and tell him that this baby will indeed be born to these two nonagenarians, Sarah famously laughs.  We wonder what is going through Sarah’s mind and heart at this moment, and what’s in there when she denies it, and again, when that...

This week we begin the new season of the Narrative Lectionary with a look at the story of creation as told in Genesis 2:4b–25. We marvel at the description of an artisan God forming creation from the clay of the earth in an act of artistic improvisation. We reflect on the fundamentally relational nature of the created world in which humans are meant to be in deep relationship not only with God and...

This week we conclude our summer series on The Bible and Economic Justice with a text from John 12:1-8 – not such an obvious text for economic justice, but a really important and challenging one.  How do we hold together Mary’s extravagance toward Jesus with  our moral and practical obligation to use our resources to care for the poor? This text invites us to explore the human need to express a se...

This week BibleWorm continues our series on the Bible and Economic Justice with Matthew 6:7-15, a text known in the Christian tradition as the Lord’s prayer. As we read the prayer through the lens of economic justice, we begin to realize that that Jesus is calling his followers toward a life of simple trust in God. We ask enough food for today, we promise to forgive the debts of our neighbors, we...

This week BibleWorm continues our series on Economic Justice in the Bible with Luke 4:16-21 and 18:18-30. Why does Jesus tell this man that he needs to sell everything he owns? That’s an awfully high bar. And why is that even harder to do when you are wealthy? We consider the sense of safety and independence that money and material resources offer us, and the ways in which that can block us from e...

This week BibleWorm continues our series on the Bible and Economic Justice with Micah 6:6-15 and 7:1-7. Here God brings a lawsuit against the people for treating each other unjustly. They cheat each other with false measures. They bribe judges and officials to render false judgments. They pervert justice to favor the wealthy and the powerful. So what can they do to set things right? Nothing but th...

This week we continue our summer series on economic justice in the Bible with Leviticus 19:9-18 and 33:37– a text that asks us to reflect and embody and channel God’s holiness through the economy we create in the everyday world. What if our means of production – our land, our time – isn’t absolutely “ours” in the way we owners imagine? We all know the commandment thou shalt not steal, but what is...

This week BibleWorm begins our summer series on biblical views of economic justice with Deuteronomy 15:1-11 and 24:10-15.  We begin with the radical command of Deuteronomy 15:1 to forgive the debts of the entire community every seventh year, resetting the debt economy and ensuring that no one either falls into generational poverty or accrues generational wealth at the expense of others. We highlig...

BibleWorm concludes our summer series on women of the Hebrew Bible with the story of Bathsheba as told in 1 Kings 1:1-40. We met Bathsheba first in 2 Samuel 11, but she was more acted upon than an actor herself in that story. This week we meet her again in I Kings 1, when David has gone from a model of virility, power, and traditional (sometimes toxic) masculinity to a fairly pitiable state in his...

  BibleWorm continues our summer series on women in the Hebrew Bible with the story of Rahav in Joshua 2 -- she is a harlot living in the walls of the city of Jericho who is at the very core of Israel's success as they move into the promised land. How are we to understand this character who has so little power in any official sense, but who seems to know more than anyone else among the people of J...

This week BibleWorm continues our special summer series on the Women of the Hebrew Bible with the story of the daughters of Zelophehad as told in Numbers 27:1-11 and 36:1-12. We marvel at these five young women who stand before Moses and the whole people of Israel to advocate for their right to inherit property after their father died without any sons. When Moses takes their claim to God, God resp...

This week BibleWorm continues our special summer series on the Women of the Hebrew Bible with a look at the story of Moses’ sister Miriam as told in Exodus 2:1-10 and Numbers 12:1-16. First we talk about the story of Miriam as a young girl, saving her baby brother Moses by convincing the Pharaoh’s daughter to hire their own mother as her wet nurse. We talk about Miriam’s prophetic foresight and he...

BibleWorm continues our summer series on women in the Hebrew Bible with the story of Tamar in Genesis 38. We bristle immediately at the hypocrisy of the men in the story who only pretend to hold to the societal norms they impose on her, and in doing so leave Tamar stuck in a holding pattern after the death of her husband. We draw out the profoundly different experiences of the man and the woman wh...

Happy summer, y’all, and welcome to our summer series! We’ll spend the next six weeks looking at stories of women in the Hebrew Bible. And we start with doozy – the stories of Sarah and Hagar, which we find in Genesis chapters 16 and 21. It’s so tempting to read these as stories of two individuals – or 3 if you add Abraham in there - but what are the social forces at work here? How much agency do...

This week BibleWorm concludes the regular Narrative Lectionary season with the Pentecost texts: Acts 2:1-4 and Romans 8:14-39. We talk about God’s desire for the redemption of all creation, which has suffered under human neglect since the time of Adam. Paul envisions the day we humans wake up and realize that we were created not to serve sin but to tend creation in order to restore the world aroun...

Today BibleWorm reads Romans 6:1-14, a complicated text whose beauty took both of us for surprise in the end. What does it mean, really, to be dead to sin – to be dead to the world as you have always known it, and live into a different reality? How do we do the work of retraining the habits of our bodies and our spirits to move toward alignment - toward allegiance - to this newly discovered path?...

This week BibleWorm continues our study of Paul with Romans 3:28-30 and 5:1-11 in which Paul develops the idea that God loves us and justifies us even when we haven’t done anything to merit God’s love. We explore the possibility that Paul is critiquing the Empire’s merit system, in which we are asked to give up our lives for the people above us. But Christ is not like that. While we were yet sinne...

This week BibleWorm reads Romans 1:1-17 - Paul’s letter to a relatively small group of Jesus followers within the very large city of Rome. What does it take to carry out this work of spreading the gospel day after day? What do the people there need – and what does Paul need – and how can they support one another? Again and again, this text centered us in mutuality – and not only in the human commu...

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Paul and Barnabas in Lystra as told in Acts 13:1-3 and 14:8-18. We talk about Paul’s public healing of a man who cannot walk and think about the mutual faith that is required between the man and Paul, to trust each other enough for a healing to take place. We discuss the confusion of the townspeople, who want to worship Paul and Barnabas as gods, and recogniz...

This week BibleWorm moves on from the Gospel of Matthew to the Book of Acts, reading Acts 10:1-17 and 34-48. It’s the story of a God-fearing Roman solider and his welcome into the community of Jesus-followers. It raises up for us all kinds of questions about the complex interaction between our identities, ethnic and otherwise, and our faith, including this big one: What if God works outside of hum...

This week BibleWorm finishes our exploration of Matthew’s Gospel with the Great Commission Jesus gives to his disciples in Matthew 28:16-20. We discuss the role of doubt in the life of faith, noticing that Jesus addresses both those who worship him and those who hesitate, seeming to make no distinction between them. We talk about the disciple’s commission to baptize and teach the nations, inaugura...

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 28:1-10, Matthew’s account of the resurrection - or, really, what happens right after the resurrection. It holds so many important questions for us. We ask: What is the role of evidence - of our senses - in our lives of faith? What is the role of fear in our human experience? What does it mean to act with both fear and great joy? And finally, how do we balance the...

This week is Palm Sunday in the Christian tradition, and BibleWorm is reading the story of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem as told in Matthew 21:1-17. While the text is a familiar one for many, Matthew’s version has some intriguing surprises along the way. Jesus seems to ride on two animals at the same time in this text—both a donkey and a colt, and Jesus seems to take these animals from the owner wi...