BibleWorm

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 sort of religious striving that makes a person’s worth before God dependent on our own actions rather than on God’s gracious commitment to us. For Paul, and for Christians today, that graciousness takes the form of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, who lives in and through us, insisting that indeed we are enough, just as we are.

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 within a faith community. What do they make possible ... what might they hinder? And how do community leaders keep their finger on the pulse of what God is doing in the world right now, without fear of change, and also without dismissing the testimony and teachings of all the generations before us?

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 understand, Phillip interprets the gospel for him, leading the eunuch to ask for baptism. We discuss the role of Philip in this text as a human intermediary for the Holy Spirit, going where he is called and meeting people where they are. And we discuss the eunuch, who has been seeking community elsewhere but finally finds full welcome in the community of Christians. And we wrestle with our own offerings of the welcome, and the ways that we, too, can be conduits of the Spirit, knowing when to teach and when to get out of the way.

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 ferocity of argument that erupts when an established form of religion is confronted by a disestablished form of that religion? Communal faith life is tricky, isn’t it. 

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 breaking of the bread. We wonder in what ways we, too, are slow of heart, like those disciples unable to recognize what is truly happening right in front of us. We ponder the relationship of scripture, experience, and ritual in making Jesus known to those disciples and to us. And we reflect on the nature of truth, which is often revealed only in bits and pieces until we talk to others whose experiences can affirm and extend our own.

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 --  look to your past to remember what is happening now. We wonder - how can we open our hearts and our imaginations more widely this year, to hold what truths might be possible? What if we take seriously the idea that we already know what we need to know, and search differently? 

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 is really any more honorable than the first, or whether he’s just more savvy. More importantly, we wonder whether that matters to Jesus.

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 at this meal and how the disciples so quickly slip into accusation and arguments about greatness when they realize there is a traitor among them. And we think about the role of remembrance, not only looking backwards toward the Passover but also forward toward the heavenly banquet. When Christians receive the bread and cup on Maundy Thursday, our present moment becomes enfolded in the great sweep of God’s liberation—if only we will remember. 

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 city, we notice that it’s not actually so different from the impending fate of his own body.  How can that be? What does that mean? And why are there no palms in Luke’s story, anyway?

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 suffering, death, and resurrection, perhaps mercifully so, since seeing clearly what was about to transpire may have been more than they could handle. With some irony, we note that it is the blind man who sees correctly, recognizing Jesus as the Son of David and having the courage to imagine that a new reality is possible for him. And while Zacchaeus famously climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus, it is the crowd who misperceives Zacchaeus, accusing him of being a sinner when in fact he is living a righteous life. Who is it we misperceive, we sonder, and how might we be bold enough to imagine a new reality?