BibleWorm

This week we’re reading the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, as told in John 4:1-42. Here we find a story about a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman, from communities that have hated each other for centuries, finding common ground at the well of their mutual ancestor, Jacob. We notice that their interaction starts out tensely, shifting only when Jesus takes the time to see her dee...

Our reading today is John 3:1-21 ... and it contains within it what is probably the most famous of all biblical verses, John 3:16–for God so loved the world. We find the verse in a story about a man who is drawn to Jesus and seeks him out, but struggles mightily-almost comically-to understand what he’s saying. How do the story and the verse each help us to read the other more fully? What do love,...

This week we’re reading the story of Jesus disrupting Temple commerce during the festival of Passover as told in John 2:13-25. Unlike the other Gospels, which place this story at the end of Jesus’s ministry, John places it at the very beginning, just after Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine in Cana. If that story had led us to think that Jesus was going to be all “yes,” this story puts us s...

This week we’re reading John 2:1-11, the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding -his first miraculous sign in the Gospel of John, and an unusual place to start. Jesus himself objects to his mother’s subtle suggestion that he ought to take action when she sees the wine has run out. I mean, come on - the stakes here are not that high. So the party-goers will be disappointed, so the host...

This week we’re reading John’s version of the call of the disciples as told in John 1:35-51. Unlike the Synoptic story of Jesus beckoning Peter, James, and John from their fishing boats, this version of the call of the disciples is more subtle and variable. Two disciples follow Jesus because they’re curious, one because his brother invites him. One gets a direct call from Jesus and another is skep...

This week we move past the introductory material and into the story itself with John 1:19-34. It begins with John – John the Baptist, that is, who is indeed out there baptizing people, but he himself could hardly be more clear that what he’s doing is really not the point. What we should attune to is this lamb of God who is apparently right here among us. What does it mean to call Jesus the Lamb of...

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...

For this fourth week of Advent we’re making the move to the New Testament with John 1:1-18, which describes the Word becoming flesh to dwell among us. We think about what it means for God to become flesh, and how lonely it must be to exist in a world where there is none like you, both a human and a divine being. We discuss the darkness of the ways of Empire, oriented toward death, which cannot com...

For this 3rd week of advent and our last week in the Hebrew scriptures, we are reading the gorgeous words of Isaiah 55. This text starts us out in these bodies we’ve been given, these bodies that need water and food, and joy, and God. Why do we consume so many things that don’t fill us up? How have things gone so haywire? What if we could just trust that there is a much bigger system we are being...

For this second week of Advent we’re reading Ezekiel 37:1–14, Ezekiel’s famous vision of a valley of dry bones. We wonder why God asks Ezekiel whether he thinks the bones can live and why on earth he instructs Ezekiel to prophesy directly to the bones, kind of a ridiculous prophetic task. But as the bones come together with new sinews and new flesh, we recognize the importance of a prophet who can...

This week we are reading Daniel chapter 3 - a story that seems for a while to be moving in the direction of an over-the-top, cartoon worthy adventure, until you get to the utterly arresting, mic-drop statement of faith planted somewhere in the middle. We wonder: In an environment where loyalty to the king has been conflated with loyalty to the king’s god, what does it mean to live a life faithful...

This week we’re reading Jeremiah 29:1-14, a text so hopeful about the future that it is often found on t-shirts and graduation gifts. But while the passage is indeed hopeful—“I know the plans I have for you”—in the context of Jeremiah it is a certain kind of difficult hope: a hope that must first reckon with a tumultuous present reality that will not yield in your generation, or your children’s ge...

On this special episode, Amy talks with Bobby about his new book, Reading the Bible with Brueggemann: Scripture's Power to Remake the World. We discuss the nature of truth, the power of imagination, whether and how Jews and Christians can read the Bible together, and whether or not God exists, among many other things. We also encourage you to buy Bobby's book, which you can find here: https://stor...

This week we are reading Isaiah 9:1-7–a gorgeous and well-known piece of poetry that imagines a shift from darkness to light; a shift from a time where the powers that be weigh down on your shoulders like a yoke, to a time when a new leader will emerge and take that weight upon his own shoulders. These verses invited us to go back to the Hebrew original over and over, and we found quite a treasure...

This week we’re reading Amos 1:1-2 and 5:7-15, 21-24, where we hear the eighth-century prophet Amos critiquing the wealthy elite of ancient Israel for their mistreatment of the poor. We hear the voice of God roaring from Zion, rejecting the worship of the elites and declaring that justice is the precondition for an authentic relationship with God. We struggle with the idea that the wise should kee...

This week we are reading about Elijah’s encounter with God in 1 Kings 19:1-18. We have so many questions. Does Elijah know where he’s going when he heads out into the wilderness, or does some other force draw him toward Horeb, aka mt Sinai? When God asks, “Why are you here, Elijah” -- was God’s tone compassionate, curious, or irritated, or something else? And – when the battles of the world are ex...

This week we’re reading the story of Solomon building the Jerusalem temple as told in 1 Kings 5:1-18 and 8:1-13. We discuss the political alliance between Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre that makes building the temple possible, and wonder whether state-sponsored religion always exploits the poor laborers to satisfy the aims of the wealthy and powerful. We ponder whether and to what degree God resid...

This week we read about the anointing of young David in I Samuel 16:1-13, and a few verses from Psalm 51, set much later in his career, at a time when he clearly was not living up to God’s expectations , and he knew it and grieved it.  We wondered what kind of heart God was looking for when he chose young David to be king? A pure one? A steady one? And what does it mean for us to read the story of...

This week we’re reading the story of the call of Samuel in 1 Samuel 3:1-21 in which the young boy Samuel at first confuses the call of God with the voice of his mentor, Eli the priest. We discuss the process through which faith becomes our own as we, like Samuel, learn to distinguish the voice of God from the voice of our predecessors in the faith. But such differentiation can at times lead to con...

Try our Patreon for one month for FREE! Click here:  https://www.patreon.com/BibleWormPodcast/redeem/46A41 This week we are reading the story of the manna in Exod 16:1-18. “Manna from heaven” is synonymous now with some kind of unexpected way that our needs are miraculously met. We all want manna from heaven. But in the story, this miracle looks so strange that the people see it on the ground and...

Try our Patreon for one month for FREE! Click here:  https://www.patreon.com/BibleWormPodcast/redeem/46A41 This week we’re reading the story of Moses’ encounter with God on Sinai as told in Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; and 4:10-17. We notice that in this text, God responds to the cry of the Israelites by first saying, “I’ve come down to rescue the people from Egypt” but then saying, “So you get going....

Try our Patreon for one month for FREE! Click here:  https://www.patreon.com/BibleWormPodcast/redeem/46A41 This week we read stories about Jacob’s young adulthood in Gen 27:1-4 and 15-23, and Gen 28:10-17. We think a lot about the push and pull of driving toward our desired outcomes vs just letting things unfold. How is Rebecca SO sure of what she’s doing? Why does Isaac bless even when he knows h...

Try our Patreon for one month for FREE! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/BibleWormPodcast/redeem/46A41 This week we’re reading one of the most difficult passages in all of scripture, the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 21:1-3 and 22:1-14. After years of waiting, Sarah and Abraham have finally received Isaac, the child promised to them by God. But almost as soon the promise is fu...

Try our Patreon for one month for FREE! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/BibleWormPodcast/redeem/46A41 We are back to the beginning this week, reading Genesis 1:1-2:4-the very first Bible story, the story of creation in 7 days. But come on. Isn’t it really 6 days? In 6 days, God shows us a way of creating in “yes AND” mode–constantly making space for what is breathtakingly new without destroyin...

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm concludes our summer series on creation care with Ezekiel’s vision of a river of life flowing from the temple as told in Ezekiel 47:1 –12. The prophet Ezekiel, writing from the devastation of the Babylonian exile, envisions a radical re-creation of the world that takes place when God’s glory returns to the Jerusalem temple. What begins as a tiny trickle o...