BibleWorm

This week we’re reading Luke 4:14-30, the story of Jesus giving his inaugural sermon at his home synagogue in Nazareth. In the Gospel of Luke this passage serves as a kind of mission statement for the ministry of Jesus, which he envisions as fundamentally “good news to the poor.” This is a good measure, we think, for our own communities. To what extent is our work in the world good news to the poor, and so to what degree does it conform to the Gospel of Jesus? Yet, while the people of Nazareth are initially receptive to Jesus’s message, he goes on to describe his ministry in light of the Israelite prophets Elijah and Elishah, who in Jesus’s telling focused on ministering to people outside of Israel altogether. Understandably, perhaps, this comparison makes the people of Nazareth angry, as he seems to say his ministry has nothing for them. Why does Jesus do this, we wonder, and what does it have to say to us today? If Jesus is always pressing toward the margins, then what is the good news for those in the center? And if Jesus is constantly expanding the boundaries of inclusion, how can we remain rooted in the communities that have shaped us? 

This week, we read Luke 3:1-22, a text that orients us first in all of competing political powers at play at that moment in history – and there are many! But then we simultaneously zoom IN to the personal and zoom OUT to the godly with the accounts of baptism. We wonder - Does something change in that ritualized moment, or does the ritual mark a shift that has already happened, or is the ritual lay a foundation for change in the future? Can they all be true? We wonder about the paths we are on and the paths available to us, laid by our ancestors or by God or by the needs or cravings of our bodies or our communities. Can we hold onto both our own belovedness, and the belovedness of others? Can they both be true?

This week we’re reading Luke 2:41-52, the story of twelve-year-old Jesus left behind in the temple as his parents return home from the Passover celebration. We talk about the ways repeated rituals like that ancient Passover pilgrimage can open up space for new and profound encounters with God, opportunities to integrate one’s own life into the story of the Torah and into the light of God’s revelation. We also ponder the tension in this text between Jesus’s earthly family and his heavenly Father. While it seems at first as though Jesus’ relationship with God necessarily takes precedence, we find that ultimately Jesus goes home to live obediently with his earthly family. We think about the tensions in our own lives between God’s calling and the calling to be with our own families, and what it means to discern our own priorities in any given moment.

This week, we read Luke 2:21-38. The baby Jesus has been born just a week prior, and our reading today is scaffolded by the Jewish rituals that surround his birth. We wonder about the role of ritual in our lives, and about the very different ways that Simeon and Anna, two individuals who seem very close to God indeed, navigate the passing days of their own lives – one in constant ritual devotion, one out in the world awaiting the Divine pull to the Temple.  And as readers in a world where Jews and Christians are sometimes defined in opposition to each other, it seemed important to take in the centrality of Jewish practice in Luke’s rendition of things. The infighting later is real. But for now, this child is called both a revelation to the Gentiles and a glory for the people Israel. 

This week we’re reading Luke 1:26-46, the annunciation of Mary and the Magnificat. In this biblical version of the Bechtel test, we find two women, Mary and her older relative Elizabeth, as the only two people on earth who know that God is in the process of upending the world. We marvel at the strength of young Mary, who doesn’t flinch when the angel Gabriel tells her she will give birth to the messiah. And we ponder the wisdom of Elizabeth who, filled with the Holy Spirit, is able to see beyond the social taboos of a pregnant teenager to recognize that the woman standing before her is the mother of God. We read Mary’s words, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” and we wonder…what do our souls magnify? And how can we recognize the subtle work of God happening right before our eyes?

This week, we read the beautiful and inspiring language of Isaiah 61 – a chapter that made us think about the work and the power of restoring human dignity. We saw in this chapter a call to care for both emotional and physical needs – to attend to people in their wholeness. We were reminded that once people remember their own beauty and dignity, they just might not need someone else to rebuild their community for them; they may be ready and able to do it for themselves. And in this moment where many of us may be feeling powerless in the face of systems gone awry, we couldn’t miss the message about the power of the word, the prophet, the preacher, in setting things right. 

This week we’re reading Joel 2:12-29, a text most familiar from the Christian celebration of Pentecost as remembered in Acts 2. Read in context, though, Joel is about God promising to restore the land after it has been devastated by a plague of locusts, not only bringing an abundance of grain but also pouring out the Spirit on young and old alike. But now, before the restoration, in the midst of the devastation, God says, “Even now, return to me, with fasting, with weeping, and with sorrow.” Before the spirit can be poured out, our hearts must be torn open. Before the blessing comes the weeping. Even now, says the Lord. Even now. 

This week we read Daniel 6:1-27. It's the very well-known story of Daniel in the lion’s den, but it seems much more complicated now than it did in that picture book from childhood. How exactly do we hold the power of a king – that's real power! -- alongside the power of God – which is also real? Daniel’s special touch seems to lie in his willingness to engage with both, and precisely not to force them into opposition with each other. When push comes to shove, which it does, his feet are firm in his orientation toward God ... NOT his orientation against the king. We see so many connections to Solomon’s speech at the inauguration of the Temple, and to the theme of writing – that new technology of its time that we’ve been turning over for weeks. Oh, and we manage to make not one, not two, but three references to TV shows from our childhood.

This week we’re reading a set of texts from the book of Jeremiah, beginning in 36:1-16 and 21-28 and then continuing in 31:31-34. Together these texts tell of Jeremiah’s written prophecy, read by his scribe Baruch in the Temple, calling the people to repentance. But when King Jehoiachim hears of the prophecy, he cuts it to shreds and tosses it into the fire. In Jeremiah 31, God responds by promising to inscribe the Torah on the hearts of the people, where it will not be forgotten…and where it can’t be destroyed by the king. We reflect on the nature of the written Torah, which is vulnerable to the whimsy of the king, whether by being burned in fire or being so twisted by interpretation that it becomes a text of violence rather than a text of justice. In this day and age, we think, it is imperative to keep the Torah written on our hearts, to remember the true Torah that calls us to care for the most vulnerable, no matter what the king may try to tell us.