Crazy Faith Talk

In this final episode of a series looking at pop culture and faith, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take another look at an example from the "dark side"--where we can learn from negative examples to keep ourselves honest.  And in this episode, Steve unpacks the premise of the novel-turned-TV-series, American Gods, in which ancient mythologies like Thor and Odin fight for survival along modern "god...

As they continue using pop culture as a mirror to check our own blind spots, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve look at the character of Claude Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in particular, the Disney cartoon adaptation of the Victor Hugo original).  The way Frollo deals with his own struggles by lashing out at the Romani people (or as they are called by Frollo in the movie, "gypsies") and...

Pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve are back indulging their pop-culture sensibilities with a new question: Where do movies, books, or TV shows show us negative examples of faith that we can learn from?  Sometimes our own blind spots keep us from seeing ways that we as church folk can be hypocritical, misguided, or un-Christ-like, and we need someone with a different perspective to help us see what we...

Most of the time, we don't have the chance for live conversation with listeners during an episode, but in today's "Crazy Faith Talk," pastors Erica, Steve, and Sarah took their show on the road to the annual Synod Assembly for the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, at Thiel College in Greenville, Pennsylvania.  Recorded with additional friends in the roo...

In a movie famous for great lines like, "This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," and "Here's looking at you, kid," there's actually a powerful image of singing a hopeful song in exile.  It's the classic movie Casablanca, and in our latest episode of "Crazy Faith Talk," pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve again explore how pieces of pop culture become windows for our faith life.  After pastor...

As they continue looking at how pop culture speaks to faith, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve continue taking turns sharing pieces of books, movies, and other pop culture that have connected with their faith.  In today's episode, Erica shares her reflections on the 2003 novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and looks at the lasting ripple effects of guilt and shame, and how our actions have cons...

In a new series, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve are taking a look at intersection points between our lived faith and pop culture.  As we take a look at favorite books, movies, and more, we'll explore what we have learned about our life of faith from authors, moviemakers, and other creators who might not have intended their word as spiritual commentaries, but still have much to teach us.  In this...

T.S. Eliot wrote, "The end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time."  The Story of the Scriptures is like that. As they conclude their series on "New Creation," pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve have worked their way back to the first book of the Bible, to scenes of new creation after the flood to the different angles of creation we get in Gene...

As they work backwards through the Bible--taking the end of the story first--pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve look at the image of new creation as it keeps coming back in different biblical books and gets used in different ways by different authors.  In this latest episode, they look at the way the book of Isaiah imagines this new creation with many different powerful images--a new heaven and earth...

The old Fleetwood Mac puts it honestly, "I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I built my life around you." We tend to hear talk about change and get scared--we are used to the familiar, and it is always tempting to picture "the good old days" in some hazy distant past as the times when things used to be "great." But the writers of the New Testament turn our attention, not backward to some imagined...

In a brand new series for this Easter season, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve look at a theme that recurs throughout the Scriptures: the idea of God making a new creation.  Starting at the end first, our conversation takes us to the end of the last book of the Bible to find, not a scary image of monsters or disasters, but a hopeful vision of a new creation where God is at home with a diverse gathe...

Sometimes, our talk about the cross can sound like the resurrection of Jesus is an afterthought, or almost unnecessary.  When folks talk about the cross like it is Jesus paying a debt for our sins, it can sound like it doesn't make a difference whether Jesus rises from the dead or not. And when people talk about the cross as a moral example of what love looks like, you still don't need Easter for...

Somewhere along the way in human history, our ancestors got the idea that whatever being or beings were beyond them (a single God, gods, or goddesses) must require sacrifices to be appeased--to feed hungry deities, to guarantee rains and good harvests, to promote fertility, or to avert their anger.  Ancient Israel had a system of prescribed sacrifices in its ritual and worship life, as well as a c...

As they continue asking the Big Question, "Wait--what actually happened at the cross?" pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve look at a passage from the New Testament that many believe is a fragment of an even earlier Christian hymn or song, the so-called "Christ hymn" of Philippians 2.  And instead of fitting neatly into later-developed boxes and categories that theologians call "atonement theories," th...

Jesus teaches his followers how to love in his own actions, words, and even his death--so that we, too, will be people known by our love.  Fair enough--that seems like pretty solid, basic Christianity.  But it also opens up a can of worms, too, when it comes to the cross of Jesus.  Do we have to DIE to be really, fully following Jesus' example?  And is all I need just a moral example to follow, li...

"Jesus died for us," says the New Testament.  And once we ask, "What exactly did that DO?" we are doing the work of atonement theology.  And the Scriptures are full of various ways of talking about it.  In their ongoing series for this Lent, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve have been looking at some of those descriptions.  Having already looked at the Bible's talk of Jesus' death and resurrection a...

As they continue exploring the question, "What happened at the cross?" pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve look at an ancient way of understanding the atonment--as a cosmic victory over the powers of evil, sin, and death.  This model, often called "Christus Victor" ("Christ, the Victor," for non-Latin speakers), draws on biblical passages that depict the cross as God's great triumph in which Jesus def...

In a new series for the season of Lent, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at the question, "What happened at the cross?"  From the earliest days of the New Testament community, Christians have made the claim that Jesus' death was somehow not just significant, but unique.  Somehow something happened at the cross of Jesus of Nazareth that is different from all the countless others executed...

In the last episode of their series on Hard Sayings of the New Testament, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at a verse from late in the New Testament, in one of the letters to Timothy.  In addition to looking a little bit at the open question of authorship, and whether we have Paul the Apostle writing, or a later teacher writing in Paul's name, the trio looks at what might, or might not,...

As they continue digging into some of the "hard sayings" of Paul's writings in the New Testament, pastors and colleagues in ministry Erica, Sarah, and Steve look at a passage that is challenging because it can seem very hard to relate to in the 21st century.  Early Christians across the Roman Empire often only had access to meat that came from markets connected with pagan shrines and sacrifices to...

It turns out that just having someone shout rules at you doesn't make you better at following rules.  At best, it just highlights all the ways we mess up at rule-following.  Interestingly enough, the early Christian writer and apostle Paul said something similar about God's commandments: just having more commandments posted in more places won't make us better behaved people, but the Law shows us o...

As they continue looking at some of the most challenging sayings and passages in the New Testament, pastors and friends in ministry Sarah, Erica, and Steve turn to some of the "hard sayings" of Paul from the New Testament.  Paul's letters are tricky as a whole because they are basically "other people's mail" that we are reading two thousand years later in communities and in a world that are very d...

In their ongoing series looking at difficult and perplexing sayings of Jesus, pastors and friends Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore what Jesus (and the rest of the New Testament voice) mean when they talk about forgiving others and being forgiven by God, and also about a strange scene before Jesus' arrest where he tells his disciples to get swords (while then telling them not to use them).  So, does...

In their new series looking at "hard sayings" of Jesus--teachings that provoke or challenge, frustrate or confuse us--pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at the teaching of Jesus against divorce, in order to understand what was likely going on in a first century Jewish context (in which it was largely men who held the power to throw their wives away with easy divorce), and what this teachi...

In this first episode of a new series of conversations, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at a couple of Jesus' "hard sayings"--things that are either difficult to understand, or easy to understand but hard to live out.  As people of faith who wrestle with texts like these, we'll discover that it's worth taking the time to dig into sayings of Jesus that can be challenging, and that the r...