BibleWorm

This week we continue with our summer series “Disputing with God,” picking up where we left off last time with the story of the repair of the relationship between God and Israel after the incident of the Golden Calf, as told in Exodus 33:1–23 and 34:1–9. God is at first so angry about the Golden Calf that God seems to be finished with Israel, sending the messenger with them to the Promised Land but the divine presence remaining on Sinai lest God’s anger consume them. By the end, though, through the mediation Moses, God and Israel seem to accept one another as they are. The people confess they are stiff-necked, but God commits to being with them in spite of their shortcomings. Likewise, God reveals a divine Self that is anger as well as compassion, but nonetheless the people would rather stay in the wilderness with God than to enter the Promised Land alone. This relationship is messier than we might like, but God and the people remain together in the messiness, committed to a future together.

This week we’re reading the texts for Pentecost with Acts 2:1-21 and Philippians 4:4-7. We ponder the connections between Christian Pentecost and Jewish Shavuot, both commemorating the establishment of a new relationship with God following an act of dramatic liberation. We notice the democratization of the Holy Spirit in this text, which pours out on all people, so that everyone—young and old, male and female, rich and poor, of all languages and cultures—become prophets and visionaries of the kingdom of God. And we linger over the idea that the Spirit brings not only cataclysmic change to the world but also a deep peace that passes understanding, inviting us to engage the world with gentleness even as God’s kingdom is breaking into the world.

This week we are reading Philippians 2:1-13, which contain within them the beautiful Christ Hymn, and this passage made us think a lot about the role of community in any given person’s ability to live the kind of life Jesus is asking people to live. What does it really mean to be of one mind, in the way that Paul might mean it here? How can we really, actually, realistically fill our minds with concern for another, instead of attending to our own fear and pain and ego? Is it even possible to live the life Paul is talking about without a community of others trying to do the same?  Possible, maybe, but a lot harder.

This week we’re reading Philippians 1:1–18, in which the apostle Paul gives thanks to the church in Philippi for their friendship and ongoing support of his ministry. Paul writes this letter from prison where, predictably, Paul is not wallowing in self-pity but continues his mission, even converting the Praetorian Guard. We wrestle with Paul’s insistence that any proclamation of the Gospel is valuable, even if done for the wrong reasons. Has he really thought through the long-term implications of people preaching for selfish gain? Yet we find beauty in Paul’s instruction to live a life in which love and compassion lead to greater knowledge and understanding, producing righteousness on behalf of others. What a world that would be! Jesus won’t take the wheel. But maybe he could be our backseat driver?

This week we are reading Acts 17:16-34, a story of Paul biding his time in Athens and engaging with the beliefs and culture of the local people there. Though he’s upset by their use of idols, this distress doesn't lead our notoriously hotheaded Paul to smash any idols or overturn any tables – he goes instead to conversation with a wide range of people.  Is he being earnest or savvy in his way of speaking to the Athenians? What can this text teach us about interfaith dialogue – and when does it cross over from mutual curiosity and exchange to a careful kind of evangelism? Wherever you might draw that line, this is a master class in finding common ground and leaning into every shared foundation before naming the points of real difference and attempting to effect change in the other.   

This week we’re reading Acts 16:16-40, where we encounter both the best and worst of the apostle Paul. On the one hand we find the feisty and faithful Paul, who, when arrested by the authorities, does not succumb to fear or anger but instead, there in the darkest part of the prison, turns to prayer and song, which radiates out to the other prisoners, strengthening their souls to resist the oppression of the Empire. When God intervenes to release his shackles, Paul does not flee for his life but instead stays and ministers to his jailer, liberating him from the system of violence and intimidation that binds him. But, on the other hand, we encounter the impatient Paul, who in his annoyance casts a spirit out of a young enslaved girl, thoughtlessly depriving her of the spiritual gift that protects her from an even more unthinkable fate. Which Paul do we resemble, we wonder. The one so caught up in ourselves that we harm others without thinking? Or the one whose spiritual depth prepares the way for liberation? Thanks for joining us.

This week we move on from the Gospel of John to the book of Acts, which will take us through these next weeks from Easter to Pentecost, or, on the Jewish calendar, from Pesach to Shavuot. Today we read Acts 9:1-19a. We meet Saul, a young, zealous, pretty aggressive guy, who seems an unlikely fellow to be tasked with leadership in the characteristically peaceful movement of Jesus. But tasked he shall be, after a theophany that leaves him unable to see, unwilling to eat or drink, and without anything at all to say – at least for a while. Why does his call, his transformation, look the way it does – like paralysis, or even death?  Why is Ananais willing to welcome him as a brother, even knowing that Saul’s first purpose in this trip was to fight the Jesus movement with all the strength he could muster? How do we know when we can really trust that someone has changed, and is no longer a threat?

This week we’re finishing our study of the Gospel of John with the story of Thomas as told in John 20:19-31. While Thomas is remembered in the tradition for his disbelief, he is in fact the first person in the Gospel of John to confess that Jesus is God, making him a model of belief rather than doubt. But for Thomas to reach that conclusion, both he and the other disciples had to remain committed to one another, despite the tension between their belief and Thomas’s doubt, until Thomas, too, could see Jesus. But this text also calls modern Christians to an even higher bar—belief without seeing, relying only on the testimony of others. It is those believers, each of us here and now, whom Jesus sends into the world as God first sent him: Sent to love the world and not to condemn. Sent as light in the midst of darkness. Sent to lay down our lives for those who have lost their way. If only we can believe.

This week, as we approach Easter Sunday, we are reading John 20:1-18, the story of the unfolding discovery by the disciples that Jesus has been resurrected. We wonder – why did Mary feel such urgency to be near Jesus’s body – or maybe the question is, why didn’t the other disciples feel it? What is the connection between this resurrection and that of Lazarus? Could it be that Lazarus himself, who knows the tomb, is the beloved disciple? Then there are the angels, the messengers who don’t really relay a message, or not in words anyway. It’s a beautiful rendition of grief and connection, of showing up exactly as ourselves in the face of great mystery and trusting that's all that's needed.