BibleWorm

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm continues our series on Creation Care, with Leviticus 26:3-22, 34-35, and 40-45.  It's a text that presses the question – what happens when we lose track of the fact that we are part of magnificently interconnected system, and begin to imagine that we can – or even that we must -- function on our own? How does the anxious productivity of humans impact the...

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm continues our summer series on creation care with Psalm 104, a profound text celebrating the magnificence of creation, which brings joy not only to the human heart but also to all creatures, from the birds in the trees to Leviathan in the deeps of the sea. We even see the celebratory nature of God, who whisks about on the clouds, wearing a fabulous cloak...

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm continues our summer series on Creation Care with Psalm 65 and special attention to the water. This psalm brings together scenes of prayer and silence, of humans and of nature, and of a God who is the orientation point for all of it. It made us wonder: What if we could see ourselves, for a moment, as almost like a sibling to the water? Both of us oriented...

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm continues on in our summer series on creation care with Job 38:1-38 in which God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, reminding Job of the beauty, grandeur, and complexity of nature that is beyond human understanding. Where humans were said to have “dominion” over the world in Genesis 1, in Job 38 humans seem almost irrelevant—God guides the constellations;...

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm begins our summer series on Creation Care with “the” Creation text, Genesis 1. For such a familiar text, it sure did open up a lot of questions for us. How should we think about our place so late in the proverbial line-up – what does it mean to us that God has already issued a commandment directly to the animals before we are here; that we are created on...

This week we conclude our series on Revelation and Resistance with John’s vision of New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:1-7, 22-27, and 22:1-5. The text presents a moving depiction of God come to earth, dwelling among the people and wiping every tear from their eyes. In a renewed world with no death or suffering, humanity thrives beside the river of living water, eating from the tree of life, relieved...

This week we are reading Revelation chapter 7, a vision that unfolds in the midst of the unsealing of seals and undoing of worlds as we have known them. It’s a vision that seems anchored in the past and the future simultaneously, a vision that evoked for us Ezekiel and Isaiah and Genesis and Kohelet and Exodus and also a also future time when whatever suffering the faithful have endured, they can...

This week we’re continuing our series on Revelation and Resistance with the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2:1-7 and 3:1-22. We note that most of the churches receive both praise and admonition from Jesus, celebrating what they have done well but warning them against their shortcomings. But we also notice that in these letters appearances can be deceiving. Those churches that appear p...

This week we are reading Revelation 5 – the whole thing, which is only 14 powerful verses long. We encounter the image of a scroll covered with words that might change the world as we know it -  but it has been sealed tight, with nobody to open it. We encounter the Lamb, in a series of images that just make no sense – this lamb who is the lion, this lamb who stands as if slaughtered. This slaughte...

This week we’re continuing our series on Revelation and Resistance series with Revelation 13:1-18 and 17:1-6. We examine the grotesque images of the Beasts rising from land and sea as images of the Roman Empire, a misshapen, deceptive, and violent creature trapping people unknowingly in the worship of Satan. Then we turn our attention to Woman Babylon, the beautiful seductress whose goblet is fill...

Welcome to our summer series, Revelation and Resistance. This week we begin at the beginning, with Revelation 1:1-20, which sets the stage so beautifully for us and especially for me, who has never read Revelation before. We contemplate the “is-ness” of God – one that is beyond time as we know it – and hold all of the evocative images and sound metaphors like complex treasures. We relate to the pa...

This week we’re reading the Pentecost text in Acts 2:1-4 and then Galatians 4:1-7 and 5:13-26. We talk about the experience of the Holy Spirit, who transitions us from disciples to apostles, sent into the world to show the way to others. We wrestle again with the relationship of faith and Torah and to what extent the faithful need guidelines to show us the right way to live. And we ponder the frui...

This week we are reading from Galatians 3:1-9 and 23-29, which may be the most challenging and vulnerable interfaith conversation we’ve had over the years. What exactly is Paul saying about Torah Judaism and those who follow it? Is there a way to talk about this fundamental shift in history that he perceives without erasing or degrading everything that was before – everything that set the stage fo...

This week we’re beginning our foray into Paul’s letter to the Galatians with Galatians 1:13-17 and 2:11-21. This is a difficult text, particularly for an interfaith podcast, as Paul pushes back against the Judaism of his past as he wrestles with the significance of Christ for the Gentiles. As we read, though, we begin to realize that what Paul rejects is not Judaism, per se, but rather against the...

This week we are reading Acts 15:1-18. The community of Jesus followers is quickly expanding, and as they welcome gentiles, they are faced with a pretty existential question: must new followers of Jesus come into the faith of Israel first, taking upon themselves the commandments of the Jewish people - or not? The text made us ask ourselves – what is the role of boundaries, standards, and rules wit...

This week we’re reading the story of Philip, and the Ethiopian eunuch as told in Acts 8:26-39. In that story, an angel tells Philip to approach the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch who is heading home from his visit to the Temple in Jerusalem. When he approaches the chariot, Philip hears the eunuch reading Isaiah 53, one of the songs of the suffering servant. When the eunuch asks Phillip to help him...

This week we reading Acts 6:1-7:2a and 44-60. This is a reading that really reflects the complexity of communal faith life in ways that are both inspiring and sobering. What is possible when religious leaders recognize how the spirit moves within members of our community, and freely empowers new leaders to serve in new ways? And speaking of new ways ... Can any community hold the particular feroci...

This week we’re reading the continuation of Luke’s Easter story as told in Luke 24:13-35, a text commonly known as The Road to Emmaus. In that story, an incognito Jesus walks along with two unknown disciples, who cannot recognize him even as he interprets the scriptures about himself for them. It is only when they invite him into the house to share a meal that he is made known to them in the break...

This week we have our Easter text: Luke 24:1-12, where we are struck above all with the stillness, the slowness of time and discovery in this text. The followers of Jesus can barely respond to his death before it’s Shabbat, the great pause. And when the 3 women arise before dawn the next day to hurry back to do the only thing they know to do, they are met with an empty, quiet tomb, and told --  lo...

In this replayed Good Friday special episode from March 24, 2021, we discuss 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...

In this special Maundy Thursday episode we’re reading the story of Jesus’s last supper with his disciples as told in Luke 22:1-27. We notice the many connections between this text and the Passover story in the book of Exodus, as the disciples share a meal on the night before a foreboding moment, aware that the world is about to change but not sure how. We think about the presence of the betrayer a...

This week, we read Luke 19:29-44 – a Palm Sunday text that, in Luke’s version, is entirely without palms. Luke paints a picture of the cosmic world, the animal world, the human world, even the stones - shifting into alignment to point to one thing. To hold this wildly powerful moment of this paradigmatically holy man coming into the paradigmatically holy city. As Jesus holds up the fate of the cit...

This week we’re reading Luke 18:31-19:10, the stories the disciples being unable to comprehend Jesus’s impending death and resurrection, a blind man asking Jesus to regain his sight, and Jesus inviting himself to the home of Zacchaeus. Each of these stories, we realize, is about perception—who is able to see correctly and whose vision is blocked. The disciples cannot grasp Jesus’s words about his...

This week we read Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man and Lazarus. What a rich and evocative story about wealth, and suffering, and isolation – about excess and need and compassion.  What blocks the flow of compassion in the different scenarios of this story, and in our own world – when is it a chasm, and when is it just a gate? What is the difference between having been told something, and k...

This week we’re reading the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son as told in Luke 15:1-32. While these stories are sometime read separately, we find that reading them together puts them in a different light, one that draws our attention to the value of each individual, the importance of the whole community, and especially the tendency of the kingdom of heaven to break out int...