Crazy Faith Talk

Jesus' teaching about justice doesn't just show up in one passage or one parable--it's everywhere.  So in their ongoing series exploring biblical voices that speak of justice, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve keep digging through teachings of Jesus.  After having spent time in the Sermon on Mount in their last episode, the three friends around the table look at teachings and stories of Jesus that h...

For twenty centuries, people have been challenged by Jesus' teachings about turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, and offering cloaks and shirts to those who take them.  They are difficult, both on their face, and seen against the backdrop of the Torah's regulations about retaliation (an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth).  And they definitely have something to say about the subjec...

The prophets were, let's face it, troublemakers.  They overturned people's expectations. They questioned the official decrees of kings and religious professionals with their own minority reports.  And they were willing to question whether God's priorities were the same as what everybody assumed they were.  And over and over again, the prophets--voices like Amos, Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah--called...

In their new series on how different biblical voices talk about the notion of "justice," pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve look to the first five books of the Bible, often called the Torah, the Law, or the Pentateuch.  And even though these books sometimes get a reputation for requiring brutal and bloody retaliation, we'll see that the picture is actually a lot richer and deeper than that first impr...

Justice.  It's one of those words that everybody throws around, but perhaps only rarely do we think about what we actually mean.  TV shows and pop culture use the word "justice" as a shorthand for getting even, getting revenge, or sending "bad guys" to jail.  But the chorus of voices in the Bible means something more when they say things like, "Let justice roll down like waters..." Maybe it's less...

After spending our last conversation telling stories around the well-known Christmas carol "Silent Night," in this new episode, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve each take a look at three other carols with some surprising twists--one with an unexpected name change, one written just in the last generation, and one that has been floating around for seventeen centuries!  Together we'll explore how we n...

Merry Christmas!  This week's episode of "Crazy Faith Talk" tells some stories around the much-beloved Christmas carol, "Silent Night," including the story of the birth of Jesus two thousand years ago, the story of the writing of the song itself two hundred years ago in an unexpected situation, and the truly remarkable story of the way "Silent Night" created a peace in the trenches of World War I...

Once again around the table, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve take a closer look at some of their favorite songs of the season--the Advent season in which we look not only to Christ's coming at Christmas, but also of Christ's promised coming in glory to make all things new.  Today we'll be looking at a new hymn to many English speakers, but one that is rich with imagery of new creation and of God's...

It's hard enough sometimes to remember that Jesus, and not Santa, is the center of Christmas.  But sometimes church folk stop there and say, "Christmas is about Jesus," without saying just why it is good news that Christ is born, or who this Jesus person is.  And one of the ways the church has answered thsoe questions over time is to write songs about Christ and his long-awaited coming.  So in the...

While the "Holiday Station" playing on your radio dial and coming through the speakers at every department store blares out the latest remake of "Santa Baby," or "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire," the church keeps time differently, singing a surprising collection of ancient and modern songs of hope.  Instead of rushing to be "Christmas-y" right away, the church marks off four weeks before celeb...

God is first introduced in the Scriptures as an artist, a designer, or a craftsman--creating the world and celebrating its beauty and goodness.  And then, in the very next thought, human beings are created "in the image of God," with some capacity of our own to create, to appreciate beauty, and to practice arts of our own.  That capacity for creativity isn't reserved just for "professionals," "mas...

In this concluding episode of our series looking at the different kinds of literature we find in the Bible, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at a kind of literature often called "apocalyptic" writing.  It includes the book of Revelation, parts of Daniel, and sections of the Gospels as well, and it's the kind of literature that often uses coded language that would have been clearly under...

Reading someone else's mail is like listening to one half of a phone conversation: you might be able to guess at what is being said on the other side, but you have to tease it out.  Reading the letters and epistles of the New Testament can feel like that sometimes: we hear someone like the apostle Paul giving counsel or directions for specific situations that his readers have asked him about, or h...

Part biographes, part movie directors, and part street evangelists, the writers of the four Gospels in the New Testament were doing something unique when they compiled the stories, sayings, and signs of Jesus of Nazareth.  They were, for starters, certainly recording the oral traditions that had been circulating by word of mouth by the earliest followers of Jesus, but they were also making choices...

They were less soothsayers and more truth-tellers.  The prophets of Israel and Judah were willing to speak a minority report over against popular opinion, the decrees of the market, and the official position of the palace. And they keep speaking to us.  In this latest episode of "Crazy Faith Talk," pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve continue looking at the different kinds of literature in the Bible,...

Wherever you find yourself on any given day, and whatever is going on in your heart, the biblical book of Psalms offers the spoken and sung prayers of those who have gone before us that we can borrow and make our own.  The Psalms are indeed, part of the same Bible that Christians talk about as "God's Word for us," and yet at the same time, they are our words to God, too.  And in times of great joy...

The thing is... life is messy.  Sometimes it fits nicely into predictable patterns, like "Work hard in summer, and you'll have enough to live on come winter," or "Don't get too big for your britches and puffed up with pride, or somewhere along the way it could blow up in your face."  In times like those, we can use the collected conventional wisdom to learn the lessons of those who have gone befor...

Conventional wisdom says that the "great" leaders are the ones who expan the size of their nations' territory, increase their wealth, or help the markets climb to record heights.  But the voices in the histories of the Hebrew Scriptures (like the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ruth, and Esther) see things differently.  They offer a minority report: that true "greatness" has less to do with mi...

It's convenient to have all the sixty-plus books of the Old and New Testaments in one set of faux-leather covers, but we can sometimes forget that the Bible is really a collection of books in different styles, genres, and settings, written by men and women from different cultures, languages, social situations, and nationalities.  And just like we would know the difference between how to read a mur...

In this final episode of our series exploring the lives of interesting people from church history, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve take a look at the life and ideas of Henri Nouwen, the priest and spiritual writer who brought the perspectives of pastoral ministry, psychology, spirituality, and social justice together in his writing and teaching, and whose work with intellectually and developmental...

As they continue to explore stories from the "church family tree," pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore three women of the 19th and 20th centuries who were involved in translating and interpreting the Scriptures.  For one, when her preacher's end-times prediction didn't come true, she decided to learn the original Biblical langauges so she could study the truth for herself.  For another, it was...

As the keep rummaging through the old church family photo album, so to speak, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at an early church teacher who is a complicated figure.  Tertullian is celebrated for being a brilliant mind who was the first major Christian figure to write in Latin, rather than Greek, wrote several works presenting the Christian faith to a hostile empire, and was responsibl...

As they continue looking at "family stories" from the last twenty centuries of Christian history, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore the life stories, writings, and spiritual experiences of three women of the medieval era who had mystical visions or other experiences of God.  As we tell the stories of Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, and Catherine of Siena, we'll be invited to consider the...

The famous quip notes that while Astaire and Rogers were both known as great dancers, Ginger Rogers not only did everything that Fred Astaire did, but had to do it backwards and in high heels, too.  It was true in church history, too.  As the 16th century church underwent what is now known as the Protestant Reformation, there were not only the well-known figures like Martin Luther, John Calvin, an...

As they continue looking at different branches of the Christian family tree and the lives of older sisters and brothers in the faith, pastors Erica and Steve take a look at the example of Francis of Assisi.  And even though they both come from Protestant traditions as a Methodist and a Lutheran, they discover we have a lot to learn from Francis, even though he is usually most strongly associated w...