BibleWorm

This week BibleWorm reads the story of the Council in Jerusalem in Acts 15:1-21 in which Peter, Paul, and Barnabas debate with the Jerusalem church over whether Gentiles must follow the rules of the Torah. We discuss the need for boundaries and commonly-held practices that bind a community together. We wonder at Peter’s insistence that God works outside those boundaries and wrestle with the balanc...

This week BibleWorm reads Acts 8:26-39, a story of an Ethiopian Eunuch. We discuss the ways in which he would have been pressed to the margins of the Israelite temple community or other communities like it, and share the joy in his realization that there is nothing to prevent him from diving right square into this community of Jesus followers.  We see Phillip’s beautiful example of responsive, res...

This week we read the story of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as told in Acts 6 and 7. We observe the struggles of the early Christian church as it grows from a small and homogenous movement to a large community of both Judean and Hellenistic disciples. We discuss the apostles’ neglect of the Greek-speaking widows and the community’s efforts to care for its own. And we discuss the trial and...

This week BibleWorm reads Luke chapter 24:13-35. We try to put down what we know as readers and step into the moment of this text -- the grief, the swirling confusion, the sadness of Jesus’s followers. We wonder why Jesus disappears just at the moment of recognition and begin to see a faith that will always be a little bit beyond what any individual can grasp hold of. We connect this unfolding, mu...

This week BibleWorm reads the Easter story as told in Luke 24:1-12. We ponder the witness of the women, dismissed by the male apostles as an idle tale, and wonder whose testimonies we may dismiss today. We wrestle with the angels’ question, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” realizing that the Easter story itself would never have unfolded if the women had not gone to the grave to attend...

On this special Good Friday episode, BibleWorm discusses Luke’s telling of the crucifixion in chapter 23:32-49. We notice the haziness around the question of culpability for what has happened - what people or forces are responsible, and did they ever realize they had this power? We see a lot of compassion from Jesus even as he suffers. And we wonder whether the second criminal is really any more h...

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Palm Sunday in Luke 19:29-44—except in this version there are no palms and no one shouts “Hosanna!” Can we even call it Palm Sunday?  We talk about Jesus orchestrating a donkey-jacking and the implicit claim that Jesus is lord of all. We comment on the tenderness of the people in the midst of a tragic story, as they lift Jesus up on a colt and spread their cl...

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 18:31- 19:10. We imagine the awkward silence after Jesus’s followers once again cannot grasp the increasingly detailed prediction of Jesus’s imminent suffering. We pause to think about the faith of the blind man who cries out to Jesus, and wonder about the life experiences that gave him the faith and courage to ask for what he needed. And we meet Zacchaeus - either...

This week BibleWorm reads Luke 16:19-31, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. We discuss the lavish lifestyle of the rich man, who uses his gated home as an excuse to avoid responsibility for the needy man outside his gate. And we talk about poor Lazarus, who suffers at the gate in life and yet would cross a great chasm to show the rich man compassion in death. And we wrestle with our own priv...

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 15:1-32-- three parables of things that were lost and have been found. Somewhat in spite of ourselves, we can’t help but melt into the sheer joy of the finder. We wonder about the experience of those who were never lost. And Amy manages to embarrass herself so thoroughly that this episode is 1 minute too long because we couldn’t bear to cut the story out. It has to...

This week BibleWorm reads Luke 13:1-9 and 31-35, which includes Jesus’s discussion of the causes of suffering, the parable of the fig tree, and Jesus’s lament over the city of Jerusalem. We wrestle with the popular theology that bad things happen to the worst sinners and with Jesus’s apparent counterclaim that all of us, in fact, are sinners who deserve punishment. We ponder Jesus’s parable of the...

This week BibleWorm reads Luke 10:25-42 -- the story of the Samaritan who is sometimes called good, and the story of Jesus’s visit with Mary and Martha. We watch Jesus skillfully reframe the lawyer’s questions, from “how to attain eternal life” to “how to live”, and from “whom  must I love,” to what love of neighbor looks like.  We see ourselves in the very human desire to make and carry out plans...

On this special Ash Wednesday episode BibleWorm discusses Jesus’s journey through Samaria in Luke 9:51-62. We talk about what it means that Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem, and what it means in our own time to find resoluteness in our own journeys toward the fulfillment of justice. We ponder the story of the disciples wanting to call down fire on the Samaritans and Jesus’s rebuke of their inc...

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 9:28-45. As the gospel begins to speak of Jesus’s departure, we climb deep into his connection with the folks he meets up on the mountain -- not only to their shared mountain theophanies, but also to the unexpected ways that each of their days on earth came to an end. We feel for the disciples, who just can’t manage to really take in the world-changing things they a...

This week BibleWorm discusses the two healing stories in Luke 7:1-17. We struggle with the story of Jesus healing a man enslaved by a Roman Centurion. If Jesus is supposed to let the oppressed go free, why does he restore this man to his enslaver? Shouldn’t we expect more than that from Jesus? And we ponder Jesus’s resurrection of a widow’s son, recognizing here the Jesus who acts out of mercy and...

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 6:1-16. We draw out the connections between King David and Jesus early in their careers, both walking through the world as God’s anointed before anyone really knows it. We think of the debates between Jesus and this group of Pharisees as akin to the debates that encircle our public health crisis. And we wonder, for a moment, what it was like for the man who was mind...

This week Bobby and Amy discuss the story of Jesus calling his first disciples in Luke 5:1-11. We think about Jesus, teaching outside the synagogue and surrounded by the crowds, looking for a familiar face to accompany him in his ministry. We marvel at the response of Simon, James, and John, who set aside their tiredness and their obvious technical expertise to respond to the call of Jesus to go b...

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 4:11-30, the story of Jesus’ visit to his hometown of Nazareth. We revel in the moments where everything is good -- where the people are enthusiastically with him -- before things fall apart terribly. Did the people of Nazareth have unreasonable expectations? Did Jesus kind of pick a fight? And really, why is it that with all the healing he’s got planned, none of it...

This week BibleWorm discusses the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus’s baptism as told in Luke 3:1-22. We explore John’s vision of repentance, which balances individual responsibility with commitment to the most vulnerable in the community. We wrestle with John’s insistence that no one should have excess—not just among the ultra-rich but also in the middle class, being pinched from both sides....

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke chapter 2:41-52, the story of Jesus as a 12 year old, sitting in the Temple and learning with the community leaders. We shower Luke with love for including this story of adolescence, this awkward time in between the passivity and infinite possibility of babyhood and the full strength and differentiation of adulthood. We watch the tween Jesus push away from Mary and...

This BibleWorm follows Mary and Joseph as they bring the infant Jesus from the pastures of Bethlehem to the Jerusalem temple in Luke 2:21-38. There we encounter the righteous man, Simeon, and the prophet Anna, both of whom have been waiting patiently for the messiah. We marvel at the persistent years of seemingly mundane religious practice that have prepared these two for this moment, wrestle with...

In this special Christmas eve episode, we read Luke 2:1-20. We imagine ourselves with the shepherds in the field, taking in the mindblowing magnitude of their theophany in the field, and wondering who are the proverbial shepherds in our society today. We see not only the theological but the political revolution bubbling up in the story. And we wonder -- though the text is silent on this point -- w...

This week we find ourselves in Luke 1:26-56, the story of Mary receiving the good news of Jesus’s birth from the angel Gabriel. We talk about the remarkable composure of the young Mary, who boldly takes up her role among the matriarchs and prophets of Israel. We relish the tale of Mary’s visit with her cousin Elizabeth, two women profoundly blessed and empowered by the Spirit. And we wrestle with...

This week BibleWorm reads the short but radiant chapter Isa 61, where the text walks with us incrementally from the indignities of captivity - whether economic, spiritual, or deep in our own bodies - through freedom and clear into glory and splendor. We imagine a jubilee that can reset the ever-growing avalanche of injustices in our world, and envision ourselves as the people who serve those who h...

This week BibleWorm turns to the prophet Joel 2:12-29. There we find Joel prophesying to a people suffering from a plague of locusts, promising that God is about to restore them if only they will return to God with their whole hearts. We wrestle with Joel’s call to “rend our hearts” and ask what it means to tear open the pain, sorrow, and regret we carry deep inside. We relish Joel’s description o...