Ponder Anew Podcast

What piece of the manger scene do you imagine is there...but probably isn't in most (store bought) nativity scenes. Who is the missing piece that is a part of your imagined nativity?  An invitation to some holy pondering, including a reflection on the incarnation and inevitability of inculturation of the Gospel.

For this week's podcast, we take up THE holiday question:  Mary, did you know?!

We continue with our Pieces for Peace theme this Advent, focusing on the angels.  They appears lots in the first fear chapters of Luke.  And they keep telling people "Do not be afraid."  Why is this?  What peace of Christ do they offer us?

This Advent we will focus on "Pieces for Peace" how the different pieces of the manger scene can invite us to come into the peace of Jesus.  We start off with the animals in the manger.   Of course we get to Jesus and the restoration of all things.  Plus a coda on the question - are there dogs in heaven?

"Render unto Caesar the things of Caesar and to God the things of God."  These are words of Jesus that have shaped the course of human history! In the first half of the podcast, we consider the story behind the quote, which focuses on money and idolatry.   In this part of the podcast, we focus on the disconnect between Sunday and Monday around finances.  In the second half of the podcast, we consi...

Episode 5:  Talk about a Sunday-Monday gap.  Last Saturday I watched as Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas.  Last Sunday I heard about the peace that passes all understanding!  A world at war is a world that Christ has not fully overcome.  It is also a world that leaves us with many haunting questions What do we make of the human tendency toward violence? What do we do with Bible passages, like...

Jesus throws down the gauntlet with the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 21:33-46).   In so doing, he challenges us to consider our own lives and what we build our lives on - what is our cornerstone?  Behind this lies the question, how do our Sunday commitments line up with our Monday actions?  And over this question is a deep umbrella of grace, which I also being to explore but invite you to...

For our third episode of this season, we focus on Jesus interaction in the Temple (Matthew 21:23-32), which culminates in Jesus telling a parable rich with both judgment and mercy. The focus of this episode is Jesus as teacher; the first half is more focused on what that looks like in our lives; the second half is a theological unpacking of how understanding Jesus as teacher does not weaken the ro...

We continue looking at parables from Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 20:1-16), playing with the disconnect between the world and ethics of the Bible (peace, forgiveness, love, grace) and the world and ethics of the World (conflict, jealousy, anger).  We are calling this the Sunday-Monday gap.  In this story, the lord of the vineyard (God!) gives everybody the same amount regardless of how many hours the...

It is a new season on the podcast, looking at bridging the Sunday to Monday gap.  To get at this gap, we will reflect together on the parables of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel. For our first parable, we look at Matthew 18:21-35 and the story of the forgiven yet unforgiven servant.  This parable suggests, hauntingly enough, that the forgiveness of Sunday doesn't translate into gracious living on Monday

Is forgiveness the same as erasing of a debt? We wrap up our season on the first chapters of Paul's letter to the Romans, focusing on Romans 4:16-25.  Turns out that the God we've come to know in the cross of Jesus Christ is interested in something far more grand than simply canceling debts...

Why were the police called to our church cemetery?  Good question!  Listen to the podcast and find out. This week's episode though is about neither cemeteries or police officers.  Rather, in this week's episode we examine the major social boundary in the early church - the boundary between Jews and Gentile converts.  How Paul and the early church address this says a great deal about boundaries, fa...

If you've ever been given a tract on the streets about Jesus, it like uses verses from Romans 3 to tell you a story that goes like this You are a bad person God is mad at you and wants to punish you God loves you though and so he sent his son Jesus to take your deserved beating You must believe this to actualize the substitution of your penalty onto Jesus A look at why this is not what Paul's argu...

Is God both merciful and just?  As Paul continues to build his argument about who God is and what God has done for us, he leans heavily into the justice of God (Romans 2:3-16).  Can we have a just and merciful God?  How do we see justice and grace playing themselves out in this passage?  While this passage alone doesn't answer this question, it points us in a direction worth exploring.

Summer means a few things:  Fireflies, fireworks and fantastic photos of nature.  Lovely, right!!  In this podcast, we continue in Romans 1, considering the things of summer:  creation and independence day.  And oh yes, of course, God's revealed glory and wrath too.

We start a new season of the podcast here, looking at Paul's Letter to the Romans.  Pastor Rob explains why he was reluctant to look at this book of the Bible...but why reading "A Man Called Ove" on a long plane ride convinced him he had no choice!

What’s the Buzz? Episode 4. For the month of May, the Ponder Anew Podcast features the children of St. Paul Lutheran in Lititz.  If even if you are not a part of this congregation, you will find the perspective of the children fascinating and inspiring! For each episode, Deacon Emily Myallis leads the children in a conversation about how they experience different elements of worship.  For this fou...

What’s the Buzz? Episode 3. For the month of May, the Ponder Anew Podcast features the children of St. Paul Lutheran in Lititz.  If even if you are not a part of this congregation, you will find the perspective of the children fascinating and inspiring! For each episode, Deacon Emily Myallis leads the children in a conversation about how they experience different elements of worship.  For this thi...

What’s the Buzz? Episode 2. For the month of May, the Ponder Anew Podcast features the children of St. Paul Lutheran in Lititz.  If even if you are not a part of this congregation, you will find the perspective of the children fascinating and inspiring! For each episode, Deacon Emily Myallis leads the children in a conversation about how they experience different elements of worship.  For this sec...

What's the Buzz? Episode 1.  For the month of May, the Ponder Anew Podcast features the children of St. Paul Lutheran in Lititz.  If even if you are not a part of this congregation, you will find the perspective of the children fascinating and inspiring! Deacon Emily Myallis leads them in a conversation about how they experience different elements of worship.   The "What's the Buzz" season title c...

Final episode of the season.  We learn who the true anti-hero is.

"Good Grief"  It is easy for Charlie Brown to say; but it is harder in life to grieve.  Pastor Rob looks at the encounter of Jesus with two of his disciples, Mary and Martha, as they grieve the death of their brother.  It provides a window into how Jesus accompanies us in our grief as well as an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which our culture currently makes grieving difficult.

Three years ago our nation went into lockdown for the pandemic.  Wow! We continue with encounters between Jesus and people, this week hearing from John chapter 9 about Jesus healing a man.  Everyone except for Jesus wants to focus on sin and blame; Jesus wants to open everyone's eyes to God's works and glory.  This remains a challenge for us as we continue to emerge from the pandemic -- focusing o...

Note:  This podcast is a bit longer than normal.  See below. For our 3rd podcast of this season, we reflect on the encounter of Jesus with an unnamed Samaritan woman.  Jesus and this woman come from different "tribes"; as such, we see here what it is like for Jesus to interact with and find common ground with someone of a different background.  In a world fraught with divisions and desperately in...

How do you talk to a Pharisee? In this episode, we look at John 3, in which Jesus encounters Nicodemus, a Pharisee. Through this encounter, we deconstruct what Jesus means when he says that to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must be born again, and we discover that to talk to a Pharisee, you have to walk with one, too.