BibleWorm

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana in John 2:1-11. We talk about the improvisational nature of Jesus’s first miraculous sign, which he does at the urging of his mother even though it is not yet his time. And we wonder whether we, too, might be improvisational when it comes to fulfilling our own callings. We also ponder the subtlety of Jesus’s...

This week BibleWorm reads the story of John the Baptist as told in John 1:19-34. We ponder John’s declaration of who he is not as well as who he is and we think about what it would mean to confess our own identity in the world. We talk about John’s acknowledgment that he himself would not have would not have recognized Jesus if it hadn’t been for the dove descending on him, and we wonder if recogn...

This week BibleWorm reads the story of John the Baptist as told in John 1:19-34. We ponder John’s declaration of who he is not as well as who he is and we think about what it would mean to confess our own identity in the world. We talk about John’s acknowledgment that he himself would not have would not have recognized Jesus if it hadn’t been for the dove descending on him, and we wonder if recogn...

In this special Christmas eve episode from 2020, 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...

This week BibleWorm begins the Gospel of John - chapter 1: 1-18. We slide between John’s images of Word and Light and Life, and Grace and Truth, and try to hold all of them in our hearts, if not in our minds, at once. We try to place ourselves historically as we read, recognizing in this poetic, mystical, and awfully complex bit of text the peak of the period of differentiation between the Jewish...

This week BibleWorm reads Isaiah 55:1-13, a gorgeous poem of hope, persuasion, urgency and witness. Set either right near the end of the exile or right afterwards, it paints the picture of a limited window of time when God is ready to be sought and found, preserving a sense of God’s freedom, saying it is time, right now, to make a move toward God. But while this divine unpredictability might sound...

This week we read Ezekiel 37:1-14, another text set in the time of the exile. In a book known for  bizarre visions and sign-acts, this chapter shows us the valley of dry bones. We dive into the great chasm between hopeless and hopeful, and find Ezekiel somewhere in the middle, willing to prophesy to scattered bones in a field as he's been told, but honestly unsure what will happen when he does. We...

For this first week of advent, BibleWorm reads Jeremiah 29:1-14, a text of in-between times, historically set between the first exile from Jerusalem and the full devastation of the second exile. We imagine the grief and confusion of the people in exile, and try to take to heart Jeremiah’s call to them -- live your life. Even here, even now, right where you are. How do we accept the wildly imperfec...

On this special edition of the podcast we talk with Dr. Cameron Howard, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, about her latest book, The Old Testament for a Complex World: How the Bible’s Dynamic Testimony Points to New Life for the Church. We talk about biblical interpretation as being less like digging for buried treasure and more like an atomic reaction that gener...

This week BibleWorm reads Isaiah 9:1-7, which celebrates the arrival of a righteous king to restore the people. We talk about the anxiety of walking in darkness and the joy that comes when dawn finally breaks. We discuss the experience of oppression, bearing the yoke of hard labor and the rod of the stern ruler and contrast that with the arrival of a new king who breaks the rod and who bears autho...

This week we move into the world of prophecy and poetry with Amos 1:1-2 and 5:14-15 and 18-24. We situate Amos’s call to hate evil and love good within his broader message of economic justice. We make ourselves the audience of this prophecy, and sit with the idea that if we keep taking more than we need as we go about our daily lives,  any real communion with God through worship or through ritual...

This week Bobby and Amy read 1 Kings 19:1-18, the story of Elijah’s encounter with God on Mount Horeb. We talk about Elijah’s journey into the wilderness and God’s miraculous offering of bread for the difficult journey ahead. We think about God’s appearance to Elijah as a “still small voice” and wonder why God sometimes appears as a pillar of fire but here as a nearly inaudible whisper. And we wre...

This week Amy and Bobby read 1 Kings 5:1-6 13-18 and 8:1-13, the story of the Temple’s construction. We think a lot about the messy intermingling of self-interest and service to God or to the good, in Solomon’s time and today, and we appreciate that while the text doesn’t comment on it, it doesn’t try to hide it, either. We see the need to be suspicious about the way that religion can be manipulat...

This week we read 1 Samuel 16:1-13 and Psalm 51:10-14, the story of David’s anointing and David’s prayer of contrition. We talk about the odd mixture of the religious and the political that permeates both this text and our own lives. We ponder the claim that God looks on the human heart rather than the outer appearance and wonder exactly what kind of heart God might be looking for. And we wrestle...

This week BibleWorm reads 1 Sam 3:1-21, where Samuel in his youth is first called by God. We are enamored of this text where the prophet doesn’t realize it is God talking, and we reflect on the role of our community and our mentors in recognizing the divine voice … or to gut check us when it might just be indigestion. We are moved by the loving and complex relationship between young Samuel and his...

This week Bobby and Amy talk about Exodus 16:1-18, the story of manna in the wilderness. We’re only 6 weeks out of slavery in Egypt, and already the people are anxious about where their next meal is going to come from. We talk about the pernicious power of economies of accumulation, which convince us that there is not enough, turning our neighbors into competitors. We talk about the nature of mira...

This week we read Exod 2:23-25  3:1-15  4:10-17 -- stories of the earliest days in God and Moses’s relationship. We are struck that it is a full throated and raw cry that draws God’s attention back to God’s own covenented people.  We are humbled to witness the sharing of God’s actual name, and how it both has particularity and intimacy that the title “God” does not, and how it is itself as broad i...

On this special episode of BibleWorm we talk with Dr. Brent Strawn, professor of Old Testament at Duke University Divinity School and the author of Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at the Old Testament from Westminster John Knox Press. We discuss common misunderstandings Christians may have about the Hebrew Scriptures and how a better of understanding of the Scripture can enrich both the l...

This week we find ourselves in Genesis 27 and 28, the stories of Jacob deceiving Isaac to receive his blessing and Jacob’s late night encounter with God at Bethel. We wonder at the ways of God, who works outside of human systems of privilege, blessing the younger son over the older and prophesying through the mother rather than the father. We struggle with the deception of Rebekah and Jacob and wh...

This week we read Genesis 21:1-3 and 22:1-14, the harrowing account of God’s command that Abraham sacrifice his long awaited and much-beloved son and heir, Isaac. In a text that is so fraught by the very nature of its plot, there is so much left unsaid. We sense deep connection and togetherness between Abraham and Isaac, even as Abraham moves toward fulfilling this terrible thing. We wonder as mod...

This week we begin Season 3 of BibleWorm by going allllll the way back to the beginning of creation as told in Genesis 1:1–2:4a. We talk about the amazing generosity of God, who not only creates but beckons forth the creativity of others—humans, animals, and the earth. We discuss the creation of humankind in God’s image and ask what it means to have dominion over a creation that God has called goo...

On this episode from August 2, 2020, 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 sup...

On this Episode from July 26, 2020, 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 supp...

On this episode from July 19, 2020, 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...

On this episode from July 12, 2020, BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible, with a look at the book of Ruth 2:1-20 and 4:9-17. We look at the way the book of Ruth challenges anti-immigrant sentiment in the time of Ezra-Nehemiah and in our own day. We discuss how the book lifts up the foundational contributions of Ruth the Moabite, whose persistence saves the fami...