BibleWorm

This week BibleWorm reads Acts 18:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, our introduction to the city of Corinth, a busy port city with all kinds of diversity and disparity ... almost like an ancient Las Vegas. And here in this city, Paul tasks the budding church with finding a way to profound unity. Speaking to a people that seem prone to latch on to the messenger instead of the message, as we humans lik...

Today BibleWorm reads from two different books in the New Testament. We hear about Paul’s visit to the community  in Thessalonica in Acts 17:1-9 and then read from his letter to that community in 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10. As we read about the struggle of those early days for that budding church community, we wonder, what does it take for someone to throw in their lot with a revolutionary movement an...

This week we’re continuing on in our post-Easter readings with the story of disciples’ first healing, as told in Acts 3:1-10. On their way to the temple one afternoon, Peter and John encounter a man who was born without the ability to walk. Not having any money, they heal him in the name of Jesus, then take him into the temple where he leaps and praises God. We talk about the disciples regarding t...

This week BibleWorm begins not only a new book but a new kind of book in the New Testament – we move from a gospel to the Book of Acts with Acts 1:1-14.  We love seeing what the author lays out for us as the sort of “season recap” at the beginning – what parts of the Jesus story are most pressing for us to hold close for this next chapter? And truly it is a new chapter – the disciples sit in the e...

This week BibleWorm reads the story of the first Easter as told in Mark 16:1-8. In this most challenging version of the Easter story, we never encounter the resurrected Jesus. Rather, a young man in white tells the women to go to Galilee where Jesus will meet them. It’s strange not to see Jesus on Easter, but isn’t this the way we mostly live our lives? We live the life of faith, based on the test...

On this special Good Friday episode, originally released on April 4, 2020, BibleWorm explores the story of Jesus's crucifixion in Mark 15:16-41. We talk about the humiliation and abandonment that so often accompanies and exacerbates our suffering, about vessels of God’s holiness breaking open into the world, and about what it means to have supporters out there that you may never know about.

This week BibleWorm has a special episode for you – we are reading Mark’s account of the Last Supper, in Mark chapter 14: 12-42. What a story. We can feel the urgency in this supper, just like the original Passover meal – that something new and big and awesome and fearsome is about to happen, and there‘s no way you can really anticipate its magnitude. But alongside that, the text forces us to star...

This week BibleWorm reads the traditional Palm Sunday text in Mark 11:1-11 as well as the story of a woman anointing Jesus as told in Mark 14:3-9. We focus on the cries of the crowd as Jesus rides into Jerusalem, as they shout “Hosanna! Save us!” Their cry is urgent and hopeful but also quite vague about what, exactly, they need to be saved from. Sometimes, we think, this is the best prayer we can...

Today BibleWorm reads from the Markan apocalypse, Mark 13:1-8 and 24-37 - a vision of the thorough undoing of the world as we have come to know it. The most grand of buildings will fall. The weather patterns that sustain our food and water will falter. Even heaven and earth will not endure.  Our persistent question reading these texts was – for better and for worse, is - what do people do when the...

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 12:28-44, a collection of texts that begins with the greatest commandment to love both God and neighbor. We think about what it means to love in this context, concluding that fidelity to one’s neighbors is the prerequisite for loving God. But what really interests us is that Jesus and one of the scribes, who have been antagonists throughout the book of Mark, find com...

Today BibleWorm reads Mark 12:1-17. Jesus is in Jerusalem, in the last week of his life, when he pulls upon Isaiah’s well-known image of Israel as a vineyard to offer another parable - one in which those sent on behalf of the landowner are rejected over and over again by the proverbial management. What does it mean in this context to say that the one that was rejected will be the cornerstone - or...

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 10:32-52, the last of Jesus’s three predictions of his suffering and death that began back in Mark 8. Once again, we see that the disciples have not quite understood, as James and John respond by asking Jesus to sit at his right and left hand when he comes in his glory. We talk about Jesus’s invitation to James and John to drink his cup and receive his baptism, indic...

This week, BibleWorm eads Mark 10:17-31, sometimes referred to in our biblical headings as “A Rich Man’s question”, but that word “Rich” can sometimes let us hide from the tug of this passage on each of us. What is it about our attachment to our possessions, however many or few – about the things that help us feel secure and self-sufficient in this world – that makes it so difficult to really dwel...

On this special Ash Wednesday episode BibleWorm reads Mark 9:30-37, the story of the disciples arguing about who is greatest. We talk about the specter of death that hangs over this text and the way that death anxiety may push the disciples—and us—toward cultural constructions of our their own value. Yet Jesus redirects them, first by insisting that the last will be first and the first last, and t...

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 8:27-9:8 - best known for the story of the transfiguration, but there is so much in this text before we even get to the mountain! Finally in this week’s text, the disciples have “the talk” with Jesus – the talk about who Jesus actually is, about what their relationship actually is. But just because they’ve talked about it doesn’t mean the disciples really understand....

This week BibleWorm reads a series of texts in Mark 6:1-30, beginning with the story of Jesus being unable to perform miracles in his hometown, which leads us to think about the ways we sometimes struggle to hear truth from those most familiar to us and the possibility that we must sometimes let go of comfortable places to grow into our true potential. We then read the story of Jesus sending out h...

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 5:21-43, two very different stories of miraculous healing that are intertwined in the way maybe all of our lives are. One, a girl at the threshold of womanhood, and at the threshold of death. The other, a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years - the entirety of the girl’s life.  The stories made us wonder about the flow of faith in the world, in us and between...

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jesus casting a legion of unclean spirits into a herd of pigs as told in Mark 5:1-20. We struggle with how to think of demon-possession in the modern world, ultimately concluding that demons represent those forces, both spiritual and societal, that intend harm to humans and especially to those living at the margins of society. We notice that when the demons s...

This week, BibleWorm wades into parables with Mark 4:1-34. How striking it is that the chapter starts out telling us that Jesus creates some physical distance between himself and his followers, by going out in a boat before trying to teach the crowds that have gathered on the land. Similarly, he teaches here in a way that slows us down, and creates a little distance between the words we read and t...

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 2:1-22, beginning with the story of a man whose friends dig a hole through the roof so they can lower him down to Jesus. We discuss the relative importance of forgiveness and healing, with this text suggesting that the most urgent matter is being set right with God whatever the abilities and limitations of our particular bodies might be. We notice, too, that Jesus he...

This week, BibleWorm begins the Gospel of Mark - we’ll read Mark 1:1-20. Mark sets the stage by telling his readers that this is good news – though we will see even in these first 20 verses, that we’re not talking about a puppies and cotton candy kind of “good” – we’re talking about a deeper good, a harder one that involves significant struggle for everyone who pursues it, all the way up to the pr...

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...

This week, BibleWorm begins a new testament – THE New Testament, in fact! We are reading today from Luke 1:5-25 and 57-80 – the story of the birth of John. We see and affirm Luke’s desire to offer us an “orderly account” of things, but y’all, there is something decidedly un-orderly about the heavenly kingdom breaking through. This reading made us wonder - What if we could live into a world where y...

This week we’re in the third Sunday of Advent in the Christian tradition, reading the story of the people’s return from exile as told in Ezra 1:1-4 and 3:1-13. We reflect on the varying roles of the exiles in this text, some of whom return to Judea to do the hard work of rebuilding the temple while others remain in Babylon to support the rebuilding financially. We think about the resonances of thi...

This week BibleWorm is live in Aurora, Nebraska, reading Isaiah 40:1-11 with a group of pastors from the Omaha Presbyterian Seminary Foundation’s Pastoral Leadership Revitalization program. We explore Isaiah 40 as a text speaking hope to traumatized communities, both in the time of the Babylonian exile and also today. We discuss the relationship of God’s punishment and God’s mercy, the call to spe...