BibleWorm

Episode 741 Becoming Like Christ (Philippians 2:1-13)

Sun, 10 May 2026 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 740 Proclaiming Christ (Philippians 1:1-18)

Sun, 03 May 2026 19:00:00 -0500

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?

Episode 739 Paul in Athens (Acts 17:16-34)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 738 The Best and Worst of Paul (Acts 16:16-40)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 737 Why Are You Persecuting Me? (Acts 9:1-19a)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:00:00 -0500

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?

Episode 736 Believing Thomas (John 20:19-31)

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 735 Raised to Life Anew (John 20:1-18)

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 734 At the Foot of the Cross (John 19:23-42)

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:00:00 -0500

For this special episode we’re reading the Narrative Lectionary texts for both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday in John 19:23-42. The text opens with two starkly different scenes set at the foot of the cross where Jesus is dying. On the one side, Roman soldiers gamble to see who gets to keep Jesus’s nice garment, indifferent to the agony of the one they are executing. At the same time, on the other side of the cross, unfolds a tender scene in which Jesus stitches together a new relationship between his mother and the beloved disciple, creating a new family, formed at the foot of the cross. Which group will we join, we wonder. Those who fight over scraps while ignoring our own cruelty, or those who are knit together in unexpected ways by the God of love?

Episode 733 Of Palms and Passions (John 12:12-17 & 19:16b-22)

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 19:00:00 -0500

This week, for Palm Sunday, we are juxtaposing two texts, set less than a week apart, but with a veritable eternity between them: Jesus’s celebrated entry into Jerusalem in John 12:12-27, and his crucifixion later that same week, in John 19:16b-22. Both texts are powerful, but the juxtaposition of them holds them each in new light. We feel the jubilant joy and hope in John 12, but we notice now that this joyful text also pulls in the specific encouragement that we mustn’t be afraid. We notice how the idea of kingship floats atop both texts, once in the mouths of Jesus’s followers, once written by the hand of Pilate – but what do they mean? And we see how doing the hard thing – the right, hard thing – in any given moment, pays dividends of good into the world, into the future ... But it’s not always the easeful, Disney movie kind of good. Don't be afraid indeed.

Episode 732 No King but the Emperor (John 19:1-16a)

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading a painfully difficult text, the continuation of Jesus’s trial before Pilate as told in John 19:1-16a. Here we find the religious leaders coercing Pilate into executing Jesus by accusing him of disloyalty to the Empire. “We have no king but the emperor,” they say, betraying the very essence of their religious faith. This text serves as a caution for us about the ways proximity to power can corrupt religious faith, tempting Christians to hand over Jesus ourselves in pursuit of our own interests, whether motivated by ambition or fear. Amy also reminds of the particular dangers of this text for the Jewish community, cautioning us to tread lightly with its anti-Semitic tropes, which have caused such harm through the centuries. It is a difficult but urgent task we have before us today.

Episode 731 What Is Truth? (John 18:28-40)

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 19:00:00 -0500

Today we are reading John 18:28-40 - Jesus has been brought to the Roman authority by the religious authorities, and *all* the authorities mostly seem eager to make this situation go away. The story made us wonder - Why is it so very hard to speak what is true? How can it be that the intersection of religion and political power in this story seems to make it even harder? We might think that in a criminal case, one would focus on establishing the facts. And that in a religious system, getting to the truth of things would be first and foremost on everyone’s mind. But in this story, this is not what's true, and we can only wish this bore no resemblance to the world we know.

Episode 730 Peter's Denial (John 18:12-27)

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading Peter’s denial of Jesus as told in John 18:12-27. In what may be one of the most challenging discussions we’ve ever had, we discuss the moral injury that accrues, for Peter and for ourselves, when we encounter the gap between who we thought we were and who we turn out to be in life’s most challenging moments. We think about the incremental decisions that lead Peter to denying both Jesus and his own true self, the well-meaning denials that seem to start out innocently enough but build until Peter has rejected Jesus altogether. We notice that when the rooster crows in John’s version of this story, Peter doesn’t even notice, so little has he even realized what he has done. When the rooster crows for us, we wonder, what will we notice?

Episode 729 Unless I Wash You (John 13:1-17)

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 19:00:00 -0600

Today we are reading John 13:1-17, the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples as they head into the day before Passover. The story is just steeped in relationship – Jesus's relationship to God as he prepares to return to God, and Jesus’s deep connection to the people who are here with him on earth. How do these things fit together? Why does Jesus’s awareness of the power he derives from his relationship to God cause him to disrobe and don a towel and wash the feet of his students? Is this about cleansing, or hospitality? How can it prepare them for what is to come?

Episode 728 The Threat of Life (John 11:1-53)

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading the story of the raising of Lazarus as told in John 11:1-53. We think about the disciples, so keenly aware of the threat to Jesus’s life but willing to follow him anyway, living in the light for as long as there is light to live in. And we ponder Mary’s words that bring Jesus to tears, as she invites him to experience the realities of human death and sorrow, saying to him what he has said to so many—“Come and see.” And we notice the threat that life brings to the Empire, as immediately after Lazarus walks out of the tomb the elites begin plotting to kill Jesus for the sake of the nation. A rich text in troubled times.

Episode 727 ASH WEDNESDAY SPECIAL EPISODE The Good Shepherd (John 10:1-18)

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 19:00:00 -0600

For our Ash Wednesday episode, we are reading John 10:1-18 and, I’m not going to lie, wishing we had a lot more experience with sheep herding and sheep folds. We wonder – who are these robbers and thieves climbing over the fence, and what kind of fence is this if robbers and thieves can just skip the gate entirely? What difference does it make that the shepherd walks out ahead of the flock, where he can lead and guide, but can’t really keep an eye on the sheep or attune to the surrounding dangers in the same way? What does Jesus mean when he refers to his *own* sheep – might there be sheep in the fold who are not his own? And after talking up all this trust and care and deep connection between the shepherd and his own sheep – whaddya mean the shepherd has other flocks too? It seems like this intimacy is not the gatekeeping kind.

Episode 726 Blind from Birth (John 9:1-41)

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading the rich and challenging story of Jesus healing a man blind from birth, as told in John 9:1-41. The story begins by rejecting the common theology that suffering is a result of sin, insisting instead that this man coming to see is to be a revelation of the glory of God. Yet by the end of the story, we discover not only that this blind man has recovered his sight but also that the establishment religious leaders, who have thought themselves sighted, have in fact been blind all along. We reflect on the importance of telling one’s own truth clearly and of not reducing it to what is acceptable, whether theologically or politically. And we wrestle with the tendency of establishment people, in this text and in our own world, to expel people from our communities rather than listen to what their experiences could teach us. Those who refuse to see will indeed remain blind, but if we open our eyes, it is yet still possible to live in the light.

Episode 725 Miraculous Healthcare (John 4:46-54 and 5:1-18)

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 19:00:00 -0600

Our reading today is John 4:46-54 and 5:1-18 – the first healing stories we’ll read this season. And in this time when access to healthcare seems like its own miracle, stories that really struck us both. We remember the signs and wonders of Exodus, and their importance in building a lasting faith for the people, as we see Jesus offer signs and wonders of a different kind. We imagine what it would be to be so close to that pool of water that held within it a promise of dignity, or maybe even healing – and slowly realize over weeks and years that it will never be your turn to immerse. When Jesus heals these men, can we imagine he is offering something more than a broken fever, more than legs with the strength to walk? And can we imagine a way of healing, in this story and in our time, that’s not dependent on the established systems?

Episode 724 The Woman at the Well (John 4:1-42)

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, as told in John 4:1-42. Here we find a story about a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman, from communities that have hated each other for centuries, finding common ground at the well of their mutual ancestor, Jacob. We notice that their interaction starts out tensely, shifting only when Jesus takes the time to see her deeply and acknowledge the pain she carries with her. We marvel at her insight, to recognize Jesus as the messiah when others have struggled to understand. And we reflect on her courage to share her experience with her entire village, inviting them to come and see Jesus even though she hasn’t fully figured things out for herself yet. What if we take this woman as a model for faith, we wonder, who calls us to engage across difference, inviting others to share our experience of Jesus?

Episode 723 God So Loved the World (John 3:1-21)

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 19:00:00 -0600

Our reading today is John 3:1-21 ... and it contains within it what is probably the most famous of all biblical verses, John 3:16–for God so loved the world. We find the verse in a story about a man who is drawn to Jesus and seeks him out, but struggles mightily-almost comically-to understand what he’s saying.How do the story and the verse each help us to read the other more fully? What do love, and truth telling, and eternal life have to do with one another? And what does any of this have to do with that story about Moses and the snakes?

Episode 722 Disrupting the Business of Worship (John 2:13-25)

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading the story of Jesus disrupting Temple commerce during the festival of Passover as told in John 2:13-25. Unlike the other Gospels, which place this story at the end of Jesus’s ministry, John places it at the very beginning, just after Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine in Cana. If that story had led us to think that Jesus was going to be all “yes,” this story puts us squarely into the “no.” In this case, Jesus’s “no’ is to the intersection of worship and business, as Jesus declares, “Do not make my Father’s house a house of commerce.” But what does it mean that the temple—and by extension our own churches and synagogues—shouldn’t conduct business related to worship? Sure, we see how having a church gift shop might be a bit over the top, but travelers need to exchange money, pilgrims need to buy animals for sacrifice, and pastors need to feed their families. Perhaps, we think, Jesus is holding out an idealized view of a future in which money is no longer needed for worship. But here and now, in a world in which money is in fact necessary, perhaps we can at least try to minimize business of worship, making sure our finances support true worship rather than designing our worship to bring in more business.

Episode 721 Water into Wine (John 2:1-11)

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading John 2:1-11, the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding -his first miraculous sign in the Gospel of John, and an unusual place to start. Jesus himself objects to his mother’s subtle suggestion that he ought to take action when she sees the wine has run out. I mean, come on - the stakes here are not that high. So the party-goers will be disappointed, so the host will be embarrassed. So? Doesn’t Jesus have bigger fish to fry? But in choosing to act, he brings a hospitality beyond our wildest imagination into the story. Now, if Jesus can overcome his hesitation to act, if he’s willing to adjust the actual cosmic clock of the kingdom of heaven in the interest of hospitality... what exactly is it that holds us back from generosity? and what we might be able to overcome?

Episode 720 Come and See (John 1:35-51)

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading John’s version of the call of the disciples as told in John 1:35-51. Unlike the Synoptic story of Jesus beckoning Peter, James, and John from their fishing boats, this version of the call of the disciples is more subtle and variable. Two disciples follow Jesus because they’re curious, one because his brother invites him. One gets a direct call from Jesus and another is skeptical but goes along anyway. It doesn’t matter how you receive the call of Jesus, we think, but just that you take the next step, however big or however small. “Come and see!” becomes a refrain in this text—but what do these new disciples see? They see Jesus, the kingdom of heaven come to earth, walking around and being human, not just teaching them but also showing them how to live a life, how to be human with deep authenticity that invites further relationship. How can we, too, embody that kind of life? Come and see, Jesus says. Come and see.

Episode 719 The Lamb of God (John 1:19-34)

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we move past the introductory material and into the story itself with John 1:19-34. It begins with John – John the Baptist, that is, who is indeed out there baptizing people, but he himself could hardly be more clear that what he’s doing is really not the point. What we should attune to is this lamb of God who is apparently right here among us. What does it mean to call Jesus the Lamb of God – what is that language drawing upon? What does it mean to say he takes away the sin of the world – takes away, in the present tense, even before his crucifixion? And why does he say the SIN of the world, and not the sins? We’re pretty sure there is more than one.

Episode 718 Christmas Eve SPECIAL EPISODE (REPLAY)

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 19:00:00 -0600

On this special Christmas Eve episode we’re discussing the birth of Jesus as told in Luke 2:1-20. We talk about the imperial setting of this story, which takes place during the reigns of Augustus, Herod, and Quirinius but announces the good news of a different lord and savior who brings peace to all rather than to the few. We ponder the way that the message makes its way into the world—through an unwed mother, a band of shepherds, and an assortment of people who happen to be awake in the middle of the night—leaving the official power structures unaware of the fact that the world has been fundamentally changed. And we talk about how this story challenges us to pay attention to who we listen to, where we look for good news, and what divine announcements we might sleep through because we’ve gotten too comfortable. Merry Christmas, y’all.

Episode 717 The Light Shines in the Darkness (John 1:1-18)

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 19:00:00 -0600

For this fourth week of Advent we’re making the move to the New Testament with John 1:1-18, which describes the Word becoming flesh to dwell among us. We think about what it means for God to become flesh, and how lonely it must be to exist in a world where there is none like you, both a human and a divine being. We discuss the darkness of the ways of Empire, oriented toward death, which cannot comprehend the true Light, which orients toward the fullness of life for all humankind. And we take courage in the invitation to live in that light, knowing that the powers of darkness cannot overcome it. Take courage, friends. The light of life is coming into the world.

Episode 716 My Ways Are Not Your Ways (Isaiah 55:1-13)

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 19:00:00 -0600

For this 3rd week of advent and our last week in the Hebrew scriptures, we are reading the gorgeous words of Isaiah 55. This text starts us out in these bodies we’ve been given, these bodies that need water and food, and joy, and God. Why do we consume so many things that don’t fill us up? How have things gone so haywire? What if we could just trust that there is a much bigger system we are being invited into, where our lives have meaning both alone and intertwined? And what if there’s a pathway to that way of being, coming up just ahead on the right? Would you take it? Can we trust it?

Episode 715 The Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 19:00:00 -0600

For this second week of Advent we’re reading Ezekiel 37:1–14, Ezekiel’s famous vision of a valley of dry bones. We wonder why God asks Ezekiel whether he thinks the bones can live and why on earth he instructs Ezekiel to prophesy directly to the bones, kind of a ridiculous prophetic task. But as the bones come together with new sinews and new flesh, we recognize the importance of a prophet who can speak hope to the hopeless and restoration to a community in despair. We also notice that the breath that animates these restored bones comes not directly from God but from the four winds reminding us that we need to be open to the enspiriting breath of the world around us, from which our own renewal may come.

Episode 714 Into the Furnace (Daniel 3:1-30)

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we are reading Daniel chapter 3 - a story that seems for a while to be moving in the direction of an over-the-top, cartoon worthy adventure, until you get to the utterly arresting, mic-drop statement of faith planted somewhere in the middle. We wonder: In an environment where loyalty to the king has been conflated with loyalty to the king’s god, what does it mean to live a life faithful to your god and still within the boundaries of the society where you find yourself? Could Shadrach, Meshach and Eved-nego have de-escalated this conflict? Should they have? And how sure were these guys that they were going to come out of that furnace okay?

Episode 713 Seek the Peace of the City (Jeremiah 29:1-14)

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading Jeremiah 29:1-14, a text so hopeful about the future that it is often found on t-shirts and graduation gifts. But while the passage is indeed hopeful—“I know the plans I have for you”—in the context of Jeremiah it is a certain kind of difficult hope: a hope that must first reckon with a tumultuous present reality that will not yield in your generation, or your children’s generation, but only seventy years from now, when Babylon’s time is up. So what then must we do in the meantime, until that hopeful day finally arrives? Build houses, plant gardens, have children. Seek the welfare of the community—the whole community, the Babylonian community—for only when it thrives can you survive until the day God’s promises are finally realized.

Episode 712 Reading the Bible with Brueggemann (SPECIAL EPISODE)

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 15:11:00 -0600

On this special episode, Amy talks with Bobby about his new book, Reading the Bible with Brueggemann: Scripture's Power to Remake the World. We discuss the nature of truth, the power of imagination, whether and how Jews and Christians can read the Bible together, and whether or not God exists, among many other things. We also encourage you to buy Bobby's book, which you can find here: https://store.acupressbooks.com/products/reading-the-bible-with-brueggemann

Episode 711 The People Walking in Darkness (Isaiah 9:1-7)

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we are reading Isaiah 9:1-7–a gorgeous and well-known piece of poetry that imagines a shift from darkness to light; a shift from a time where the powers that be weigh down on your shoulders like a yoke, to a time when a new leader will emerge and take that weight upon his own shoulders. These verses invited us to go back to the Hebrew original over and over, and we found quite a treasure there. At the top of the list, strangely, maybe, is a point of grammar–what does it mean to speak of something that hasn’t yet happened in the world around us, as though it is so certain it is essentially completed? Something as huge as an end to fear and violence ... as good as done?

Episode 710 Let Justice Roll Down (Amos 1:1-2 & 5:7-15, 21-24)

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading Amos 1:1-2 and 5:7-15, 21-24, where we hear the eighth-century prophet Amos critiquing the wealthy elite of ancient Israel for their mistreatment of the poor. We hear the voice of God roaring from Zion, rejecting the worship of the elites and declaring that justice is the precondition for an authentic relationship with God. We struggle with the idea that the wise should keep silent in evil times but ultimately conclude that God is directing us away from public speeches and toward local acts of mercy, seeking the good and establishing justice in the places where we have influence. With the blessing of God, these small acts of righteousness become a mighty stream rolling down like waters all around.

Episode 709 Elijah's Encounter with God (1 Kings 19:1-18)

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we are reading about Elijah’s encounter with God in 1 Kings 19:1-18. We have so many questions. Does Elijah know where he’s going when he heads out into the wilderness, or does some other force draw him toward Horeb, aka mt Sinai? When God asks, “Why are you here, Elijah” -- was God’s tone compassionate, curious, or irritated, or something else? And – when the battles of the world are exhausting us, just how long can we go sit under a bush before it gets weird?

Episode 708 Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 5:1-18 & 8:1-13)

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading the story of Solomon building the Jerusalem temple as told in 1 Kings 5:1-18 and 8:1-13. We discuss the political alliance between Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre that makes building the temple possible, and wonder whether state-sponsored religion always exploits the poor laborers to satisfy the aims of the wealthy and powerful. We ponder whether and to what degree God resides inside of human religious structures, whether the temple of Solomon or the religious denominations of our own day. And we notice that even inside the stable structure of the temple, Solomon places the tent of the tabernacle and the ark of the covenant with its poles still attached, making us ponder what essential elements of our own traditions may need to be carried out of the reified structures of static religion and given new life beyond the status quo.

Episode 707 The Anointing of David (1 Samuel 16:1-13 & Psalm 51:10-14)

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read about the anointing of young David in I Samuel 16:1-13, and a few verses from Psalm 51, set much later in his career, at a time when he clearly was not living up to God’s expectations , and he knew it and grieved it. We wondered what kind of heart God was looking for when he chose young David to be king? A pure one? A steady one? And what does it mean for us to read the story of David’s anointment as an innocent boy, when he is all potential - alongside a psalm about his lowest of lows? How does the one inform the other?

Episode 706 The Call of Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1-21)

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading the story of the call of Samuel in 1 Samuel 3:1-21 in which the young boy Samuel at first confuses the call of God with the voice of his mentor, Eli the priest. We discuss the process through which faith becomes our own as we, like Samuel, learn to distinguish the voice of God from the voice of our predecessors in the faith. But such differentiation can at times lead to conflict, as it does for Samuel when he realizes that God is preparing to punish Eli for his failure to correct and discipline his own sons, who have been harming the community of faith. And while we admire Samuel’s comfortability sleeping in the presence of the ark of the covenant, we wonder whether it may be possible to feel too comfortable in God’s presence, forgetting the gravity of the calling to which we have been called. Sometimes it may not be enough simply to be present. It is only when we say “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening,” that everything begins to change.

Episode 705 Manna in the Wilderness (Exodus 16:1-18)

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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This week we are reading the story of the manna in Exod 16:1-18. “Manna from heaven” is synonymous now with some kind of unexpected way that our needs are miraculously met. We all want manna from heaven. But in the story, this miracle looks so strange that the people see it on the ground and – what's that? This story made us wonder – what's the difference between moving away from something and moving toward something else? Could it be that a first step in drawing near to God is turning toward the wilderness, where there is no predictable path, and nothing will be quite like you were used to? And when exactly will God start providing program overviews with timestamps and blurbs?

Episode 704 Moses and the Burning Bush (Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; & 4:10-17)

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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This week we’re reading the story of Moses’ encounter with God on Sinai as told in Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; and 4:10-17. We notice that in this text, God responds to the cry of the Israelites by first saying, “I’ve come down to rescue the people from Egypt” but then saying, “So you get going. I’m sending you to Pharaoh.” The way God works in the world, it seems, is through people like Moses, who pay attention to the things that are on fire in the world and don’t ignore them or run away from them. But even Moses, one of the heroes of Scripture, is at first afraid to do what God asks of him, begging God to send someone else. Yet it turns out that this God of ours is an equipping God, who gives Moses what is needed for the task ahead of him, a staff, a partner, and even the divine name. “I am who I am,” says God. “I will be who I will be.” So who is God calling us toward today, we wonder, and how is God equipping us f the task ahead?

Episode 703 The Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 27:1-4, 15-23 & 28:10-17)

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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This week we read stories about Jacob’s young adulthood in Gen 27:1-4 and 15-23, and Gen 28:10-17. We think a lot about the push and pull of driving toward our desired outcomes vs just letting things unfold. How is Rebecca SO sure of what she’s doing? Why does Isaac bless even when he knows he’s getting mixed signals? Why does Jacob first encounter God in a dream-state – and if he'd fallen asleep somewhere else, would God have met him there, too?

Episode 702 Covenant and Sacrifice (Genesis 21:1-3 and 22:1-14)

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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This week we’re reading one of the most difficult passages in all of scripture, the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 21:1-3 and 22:1-14. After years of waiting, Sarah and Abraham have finally received Isaac, the child promised to them by God. But almost as soon the promise is fulfilled, God commands Abraham to take the boy up on a mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. We feel for Abraham, whose devotion to God sets him at odds with his devotion to his family, wondering how we might navigate the tensions between faith and family. And we wonder about this God, who demands sacrifice but relents in the end. Is this a moment where God chooses relationship over obedience, a new way of being God in the presence of the other? And seeing Abraham’s apparent willingness to offer Isaac on the mountain, we wonder: what exactly are we willing to sacrifice our children for?

Episode 701 Partners in Creation (Genesis 1:1-2:4a)

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 07:00:00 -0500

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We are back to the beginning this week, reading Genesis 1:1-2:4-the very first Bible story, the story of creation in 7 days. But come on. Isn’t it really 6 days? In 6 days, God shows us a way of creating in “yes AND” mode–constantly making space for what is breathtakingly new without destroying or diluting what was there. A mode of creation that is exponential-where creatures themselves are meant to create, and life begets life, and every single life supports another. What does it mean for us to be made in the image of THIS kind of God? And seriously, with all the work there is to do in the world, how can rest be so important to creation that we count the 7th day in with the others?

Episode 657 CREATION CARE Re-Creating the World (Ezekiel 47:1-12) REPLAY

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 19:00:00 -0500

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm concludes our summer series on creation care with Ezekiel’s vision of a river of life flowing from the temple as told in Ezekiel 47:1 –12. The prophet Ezekiel, writing from the devastation of the Babylonian exile, envisions a radical re-creation of the world that takes place when God’s glory returns to the Jerusalem temple. What begins as a tiny trickle of water emerging from under the altar becomes a mighty river that turns even the Dead Sea into a thriving ecosystem teeming with fish. Along the river’s banks grow fruit-bearing trees with healing leaves, transforming the desolate land of exilic Israel into a new Eden where both humans and the environment can thrive. What would happen, we wonder, if our communities of faith also became sources of God’s life-giving water for the world? How might our desolate lands be transformed if we boldly proclaimed the glory of God in relationship with creation? It doesn’t seem like much, we think. But even Ezekiel’s raging river of life began as a tiny trickle. What if our efforts could do the same?

Episode 656 CREATION CARE Covenant and Creation (Leviticus 26:3-32, 34-35, 40-45) REPLAY

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 19:00:00 -0500

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm continues our series on Creation Care, with Leviticus 26:3-22, 34-35, and 40-45. It's a text that presses the question – what happens when we lose track of the fact that we are part of magnificently interconnected system, and begin to imagine that we can – or even that we must -- function on our own? How does the anxious productivity of humans impact the rest of creation? And once we realize the harm we have caused, how do we move toward healing? We wish this text didn’t feel as close to home as it does, but we are glad it’s here.

Episode 655 CREATION CARE Bless the Lord, O My Soul (Psalm 104) REPLAY

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 19:00:00 -0500

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm continues our summer series on creation care with Psalm 104, a profound text celebrating the magnificence of creation, which brings joy not only to the human heart but also to all creatures, from the birds in the trees to Leviathan in the deeps of the sea. We even see the celebratory nature of God, who whisks about on the clouds, wearing a fabulous cloak made of light and rejoicing in all that God has created. The psalm also reminds us of the harmonious relationship God intends for humans and animals, with humans working during the day and animals prowling at night so we can each live our lives fully, without being a danger to one another. All of this, the psalmist reminds us, should make us sing throughout our lives at the incomparable glory of creation. Bless the LORD, O my soul!

Episode 654 CREATION CARE God's Stream Full of Water (Psalm 65) REPLAY

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 19:00:00 -0500

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm continues our summer series on Creation Care with Psalm 65 and special attention to the water. This psalm brings together scenes of prayer and silence, of humans and of nature, and of a God who is the orientation point for all of it. It made us wonder: What if we could see ourselves, for a moment, as almost like a sibling to the water? Both of us oriented toward God, both of us in relationship to God, both calmed by God when we inevitably become a source of chaos? And it made us wonder: if we could quiet ourselves enough to offer silence as praise – if we could quiet our minds, and the voices of scarcity and acquisitiveness around us – what else in creation could be heard? What would it say – to us, and to our Maker?

Episode 653 CREATION CARE From the Whirlwind (Job 38:1-38) REPLAY

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 19:00:00 -0500

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm continues on in our summer series on creation care with Job 38:1-38 in which God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, reminding Job of the beauty, grandeur, and complexity of nature that is beyond human understanding. Where humans were said to have “dominion” over the world in Genesis 1, in Job 38 humans seem almost irrelevant—God guides the constellations; God nurtures the sea; God sends the lightning bolts on their courses, and they respond, “Here I am.” This text invites us to lean into our not-knowing, to relinquish our supposed mastery of the universe to revel in its complex beauty. More than that, it reminds us that, in a world often marked by suffering, we are not alone. There is a whole world before us and around us, alive with responsiveness to God. Truly a balm for the soul.

Episode 652 CREATION CARE In the Beginning (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) REPLAY

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 19:00:00 -0500

In this replay from Summer 2024, BibleWorm begins our summer series on Creation Care with “the” Creation text, Genesis 1. For such a familiar text, it sure did open up a lot of questions for us. How should we think about our place so late in the proverbial line-up – what does it mean to us that God has already issued a commandment directly to the animals before we are here; that we are created on Friday afternoon as everyone is closing up shop for the Sabbath, instead of a busy Monday morning? And as we try to inhabit what it is to be created “in the image” of God, how might God’s disposition toward the created in the 5 ½ days before we arrived help us find our way?

Episode 651 Revelation and Resistance: Awaiting New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:1-7, 22-27, & 22:1-5)

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we conclude our series on Revelation and Resistance with John’s vision of New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:1-7, 22-27, and 22:1-5. The text presents a moving depiction of God come to earth, dwelling among the people and wiping every tear from their eyes. In a renewed world with no death or suffering, humanity thrives beside the river of living water, eating from the tree of life, relieved from pain and suffering and death. While John envisions this New Jerusalem fulfilled in the future, he speaks its vision to Christians enduring the trials of life in the Roman Empire, providing not only a source of hope but also a vision of what a life with God might look like. Similarly, we think this vision might be a source of sustenance for us, as well, helping us appreciate the beauty that is already in our midst and giving us the strength to resist the power of the Empire for yet another day.

Episode 650 Revelation and Resistance: Praising God in the Midst of Empire (Revelation 7:1-17)

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we are reading Revelation chapter 7, a vision that unfolds in the midst of the unsealing of seals and undoing of worlds as we have known them. It’s a vision that seems anchored in the past and the future simultaneously, a vision that evoked for us Ezekiel and Isaiah and Genesis and Kohelet and Exodus and also a also future time when whatever suffering the faithful have endured, they can stand together in their multitudes and praise the one true Source. It’s an image that, at the very least, can make the work of our time less lonely.

Episode 649 Revelation and Resistance: The Letters to the Churches (Revelation 2:1-7 & 3:1-22)

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re continuing our series on Revelation and Resistance with the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2:1-7 and 3:1-22. We note that most of the churches receive both praise and admonition from Jesus, celebrating what they have done well but warning them against their shortcomings. But we also notice that in these letters appearances can be deceiving. Those churches that appear poor and powerless are said to be wealthy and powerful in the kingdom of God, while those that appear to be wealthy and successful make Jesus want to puke. While Jesus is addressing the churches of Asia minor, the repeated phrase, “let those who can hear listen to what the Spirit is saying” suggests that these letters are meant for our communities, too. What would Jesus want to celebrate about our communities, we wonder, and what how might he critique us? How do we appear from the Empire’s perspective, and what might look like in God’s eyes?

Episode 648 Revelation and Resistance: Worthy is the Lamb (Revelation 5:1-14)

Sun, 22 Jun 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we are reading Revelation 5 – the whole thing, which is only 14 powerful verses long. We encounter the image of a scroll covered with words that might change the world as we know it - but it has been sealed tight, with nobody to open it. We encounter the Lamb, in a series of images that just make no sense – this lamb who is the lion, this lamb who stands as if slaughtered. This slaughtered lamb who can open the scroll, who redeemed the people not for their own sake, but for God. Is the imagery frightening, or hopeful, or weird? Can it be all 3?

Episode 647 Revelation and Resistance: Unmasking the Empire (Revelation 13:1-18 & 17:1-6)

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re continuing our series on Revelation and Resistance series with Revelation 13:1-18 and 17:1-6. We examine the grotesque images of the Beasts rising from land and sea as images of the Roman Empire, a misshapen, deceptive, and violent creature trapping people unknowingly in the worship of Satan. Then we turn our attention to Woman Babylon, the beautiful seductress whose goblet is filled with the blood of the saints. Having these images before us gives substance to our unknown fears, we think, making visible that which lurks at the edges of our consciousness. More than that, perhaps, these images invite us to unmask the beastliness and seduction of the Empire in our own day. How are we unwittingly seduced and coerced into the worship of violence?

Episode 646 Revelation and Resistance: Lifting the Veil (Revelation 1:1-20)

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 19:00:00 -0500

Welcome to our summer series, Revelation and Resistance. This week we begin at the beginning, with Revelation 1:1-20, which sets the stage so beautifully for us and especially for me, who has never read Revelation before. We contemplate the “is-ness” of God – one that is beyond time as we know it – and hold all of the evocative images and sound metaphors like complex treasures. We relate to the pain of holding in your awareness both the world that is and the world as it should be. And we wonder at the awe and fear that will follow when the veil is finally pulled back.

Episode 645 The Fruits of the Spirit (Acts 2:1-4 and Galatians 4:1-7 & 5:13-26) PENTECOST

Sun, 01 Jun 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading the Pentecost text in Acts 2:1-4 and then Galatians 4:1-7 and 5:13-26. We talk about the experience of the Holy Spirit, who transitions us from disciples to apostles, sent into the world to show the way to others. We wrestle again with the relationship of faith and Torah and to what extent the faithful need guidelines to show us the right way to live. And we ponder the fruits of the Spirit, wondering how we measure up and whether we can see the Spirit at work today in unexpected places.

Episode 644 Clothed in Christ (Galatians 3:1-9 & 23-29)

Sun, 25 May 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we are reading from Galatians 3:1-9 and 23-29, which may be the most challenging and vulnerable interfaith conversation we’ve had over the years. What exactly is Paul saying about Torah Judaism and those who follow it? Is there a way to talk about this fundamental shift in history that he perceives without erasing or degrading everything that was before – everything that set the stage for his cherished moment? How can Christians today take the real power and beauty at the core of Paul’s message, and also recognize and mitigate the hurt that his words can cause?

Episode 643 The Faithfulness of Christ (Galatians 1:13-17 & 2:11-21)

Sun, 18 May 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 642 Controversy in Community (Acts 15:1-21)

Sun, 11 May 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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?

Episode 641 Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-39)

Sun, 04 May 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 640 The Stoning of Stephen (Acts 6:1-7:2a &44-50)

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 639 In the Breaking of the Bread (Luke 24:13-35)

Sun, 20 Apr 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 638 Remember What He Told You (Luke 24:1-12)

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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?

Episode 637 Father Forgive Them (Luke 23:32-47) GOOD FRIDAY (REPLAY)

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 636 In Remembrance of Me (Luke 22:1-27) MAUNDY THURSDAY

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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.

Episode 635 What Makes for Peace (Luke 19:29-44) PALM SUNDAY

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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?

Episode 634 I Want to See (Luke 18:31-19:10)

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 19:00:00 -0500

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?

Episode 633 The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man and Lazarus. What a rich and evocative story about wealth, and suffering, and isolation – about excess and need and compassion. What blocks the flow of compassion in the different scenarios of this story, and in our own world – when is it a chasm, and when is it just a gate? What is the difference between having been told something, and knowing it – and how do we cross THAT chasm? What happens when we build a life that insulates us from all suffering – our own, and that of others?

Episode 632 Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son (Luke 15:1-32)

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son as told in Luke 15:1-32. While these stories are sometime read separately, we find that reading them together puts them in a different light, one that draws our attention to the value of each individual, the importance of the whole community, and especially the tendency of the kingdom of heaven to break out into a party. Whoever we are—whether the one who has wandered off, the one who made poor decisions, or the one who feels overlooked and unappreciated—we are invited into the party, too. Come one, what are we waiting for?

Episode 631 A Lament over Jerusalem (Luke 13:1-9, 31-35)

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read Luke 13:1-9, 31-35, a text that raised the biggest of questions for us. What exactly is the connection between sin and death that Jesus is getting at when he talks about the the Galileans who died at the hand of Pilate, or that freak accident with the tower? How does it hit readers for Jesus to explicitly name his imminent death as central to his purpose in going to Jerusalem, rather than letting us think of it as an unfortunate side effect of his work? We really felt the pull of his lament for Jerusalem – his deep knowledge of what is possible and what is meant for this holy city, and also his awareness of how the world has pressed it in another direction. His outcry rises up from the gaping chasm between them. And our world, too, is broken in so many ways. So in this broken world, what does the fact of our death mean about how we should live?

Episode 630 Two Sisters and a Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-42)

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading two stories that are often read separately, the Good Samaritan parable and Jesus’s visit with Mary and Martha as told in Luke 10:25-42. The Good Samaritan has us thinking about the question of our obligations to our neighbors in need. When a lawyer asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?,” Jesus responds with a story that seems to dispense with the category of neighbor altogether, instead insisting that one must show compassion to whomever is in need. The Mary and Martha story leads us to think about the legitimate tasks of ministry and how they can sometimes be a distraction from listening to Jesus, which is the one thing a divine voice has commanded in this Gospel.

Episode 629 Set Your Face and Go (Luke 9:51-62) ASH WEDNESDAY SPECIAL EPISODE

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 19:00:00 -0600

Our reading for Ash Wednesday is Luke 9:51-62–a real pivot point in Luke’s story. Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem, and the story gains a sense of focus, momentum, and urgency. Should we be surprised, then, that he wastes no energy on anger or retaliation when the Samaritans won’t host him? Should we be surprised that he asks people he encounters to follow him right there onthe spot, without a care for the people and responsibilities they leave behind? That’s a hard ask to understand if we’re just talking about your average Tuesday. But Jesus isn’t in ordinary time anymore.

Episode 628 A Transfiguration and a Failed Healing (Luke 9:28-45)

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading the stories of Jesus’ transformation on the mountain top and the disciples’ failed attempt to heal a possessed boy as told in Luke 9:28–45. We discuss the significance of Jesus’s transfiguration and the importance of the command from the heavenly voice, “Listen to him!” We talk about the appearance of Moses and Elijah and the coming Exodus that Jesus will undergo in Jerusalem through his crucifixion and resurrection. And we wrestle with the urgency Jesus must feel, knowing that the end of his life is near, and his frustration at the disciples’ inability to exercise the power he has given them. We wonder what power has been given to us, and whether we, too, might be able to cast out the demons that surround us, if only we could learn to believe.

Episode 627 A Sinful Woman and an Unmoved Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50)

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week, we are reading Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus, a Pharisee named Simon, and a woman who is a sinner come together at a dinner party. The emotional intensity of this story is hard to overstate. As the woman cries over Jesus’s feet, we wonder – what is the tenor of emotion that has cracked her open? Is it guilt & pleading? Gratitude or vulnerability? Is it longing? Jesus says that her faith has saved her, but what can we say about her faith from this short story where she never speaks? And how is it that she is laid bare in Jesus’s presence, when the dinner host seems so ... calm?

Episode 626 Are You Really the One? (Luke 7:18-35)

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading Luke 7:18-35. John the Baptist has been in prison since Jesus’s baptism, so he hasn’t been able to witness any of Jesus’ ministry for himself. Now he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he is really the Messiah or if John should look for another. Imagine John, the great disciple preparing the way for the Lord, suddenly doubting his faith in Jesus. Rather than make a declaration to John, Jesus tells John that the blind see, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news proclaimed to them. That should be enough, Jesus seems to say. Among all our squabbles about who Jesus is or isn’t, who he should be or shouldn’t be, all that matters is that the hurting are being healed and that poor are receiving good news.

Episode 625 A Centurion's Slave and a Widow's Son (Luke 7:1-17)

Sun, 02 Feb 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week, we are reading Luke 7:1-17 – stories of two miraculous healings, both of which seem to focus more on the person who is well, who is concerned or bereaved, than on the person whose body is failing. What might that tell us about the nature of healing, or faith, or community? And of all the suffering one might alleviate, why does Jesus respond to these two cases? One, an Israelite woman who mourns her son, one a Roman man concerned for his slave. A powerful person and a vulnerable one. Is there a system at play? Is that even the right question?

Episode 624 Sabbath Controversies (Luke 6:1-16)

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading three stories of Jesus told in Luke 6:1-16. In the first two, Jesus is in a dispute with some Pharisees about observing the Sabbath. In one story, Jesus seems to claim authority over the Sabbath, given his identity as the Son of Man. In a second story, Jesus presses the boundaries of mercy, healing a man on the sabbath even though he is not in life-threatening danger, creating anger among the Pharisees. Then, in a third story, Jesus calls the twelve apostles who will carry on his ministry after his death and resurrection. Together, these stories make us think about the relative importance of sabbath and mercy, the extent of our obligation to engage with our community on its own terms, and the danger that accompanies apostleship, both for the twelve and for Jesus himself.

Episode 623 The Call of Simon (Luke 5:1-11)

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 19:00:00 -0600

This week, we're reading Luke 5:1-11, a story of a miraculously large fishing haul. In the midst of stories of miraculous healing, why is it this one, about fishing, that launches Simon Peter into his discipleship? Is it because the miracle is so stark against the backdrop of his knowledge and experience? Is it because he has tools to help Jesus in this case, to partner with him? What did it take for Simon to walk away from the kind of catch he’d probably dreamed of all his professional life – to just leave it there in the boat?

Episode 622 Jesus' Sermon at Nazareth (Luke 4:14-30)

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 19:00:00 -0600

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 Elisha, 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?

Episode 621 John the Baptist and the Baptism of Jesus (Luke 3:1-22)

Sun, 05 Jan 2025 19:00:00 -0600

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?

Episode 620 The Boy Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52)

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 19:00:00 -0600

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.

Episode 619 Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:21-38)

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 09:50:47 -0600

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.

Episode 618 Christmas Eve SPECIAL EPISODE (Luke 2:1-20)

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 19:00:00 -0600

Episode 617 The Annunciation of Mary (Luke 1:26-56)

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 19:00:00 -0600

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?

Episode 616 God's Spirit Is Upon Me (Isaiah 61:1-11)

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 19:00:00 -0600

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.

Episode 615 Rend Your Hearts (Joel 2:12-29)

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 19:00:00 -0600

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.

Episode 614 Daniel in the Lions' Den

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 19:00:00 -0600

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.

Episode 613 Written on Your Hearts (Jeremiah 36:1-16, 21-28 & 31:31-34)

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 19:00:00 -0600

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.

Episode 612 Here I Am Send Me! (Isaiah 6:1-13)

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week, we read Isaiah 6:1-13 – definitely an MVP candidate in both the Jewish and Christian communities. We wonder – what can we learn from the way that the seraphim offer praise, and what would it feel like to be a human in the middle of this scene? It’s tempting to stop reading after Isaiah tells God “Send me” – we just want to dwell in the beauty of that moment. but what happens next is important. Are we willing to hear that not every True Word is a word of hope, at least in the short term? If so, how can we help each other persevere through dark times when they are inevitable?

Episode 611 Jonah and the Compassion of God (Jonah 1:1-17; 3:1-10; and 4:1-11)

Sun, 03 Nov 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading the story Jonah as told in the book of Jonah chapters 1, 3, & 4. The story opens with God sending Jonah to prophesy against Israel’s greatest enemy, the Assyrians, in their capital city of Nineveh. Jonah at first runs away from God, preferring to take his chances in the sea, where he is famously saved by spending three days in the belly of a fish. But when Jonah finally does make it to Nineveh, speaking only the minimum words of prophecy, the city undergoes a massive repentance, from the king to the cows, evoking the mercy of God, who decides not to destroy them. What might this story tell us about God’s compassion toward our own enemies, we wonder. Are there people that we, like Jonah, wish God would not be merciful to? And what small word might God be asking us to say to our enemies so that they, too, might experience God’s compassion?

Episode 610 Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:1-24)

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week, we read 1Kings 17:1-24, and meet the larger-than-life figure of Elijah. How should we understand his boldness – is he a man of God who has taken things into his own hands, kind of gone rogue ... or is he so tied into God’s ideals that he is willing to inhabit them even when they are an awkward fit for the world of humans? And what does it mean this Bold Figure to leave from the presence of the King only to immediately become more vulnerable than the most vulnerable person in society. What does it mean for this widow who is nearly starved to death to be in a position to care for him?

Episode 609 Dedicating the Temple (1 Kings 5:1-6; 8:22-30, 41-43, 52-60a)

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading the story of Solomon dedicating the Temple as told in 1 Kings 5:1-6; 8:22-30, 41-43, and 52-60a. We talk about the task of temple building and the tension that comes with trying to create containers for the uncontainable God, whether that be the sanctuaries we build or the services we design to control our interactions with God. But ultimately we realize, along with Solomon, that it’s not the container that matters but the prayer itself, the mutual listening between God and humankind that makes all things possible. Solomon appeals to the witness of the ancestors but also asks that his own prayers remain near to God so that God will deal rightly with the people in the future. What if our prayers linger before God, too, we wonder. Whose ancestors are we, and how will shape their relationship with God in the days and years to come?

Episode 608 I'll Build You a House (2 Samuel 7:1-17)

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week, we read 2 Samuel 7:1-17 – King David's got an idea, y’all. Having just built himself a house – a palace – he wants to build God a house – a Temple. Is he motivated by a love for the Lord, or by political savvy? Or a little of both? And why does God say no, but then offer David yet another kind of house – a dynasty? With all this house language flying around, we’ve got to ask – where does God dwell among us, anyway?

Episode 607 LIVE EPISODE Hannah's Prayer (1 Samuel 1:1-20 & 2:1-10)

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 19:00:00 -0500

A special live episode on 1 Samuel 1:1-20 and 2:10, recorded at Heartland Retreat Center in Parkville, MO, with pastors from the Omaha Presbyterian Seminary Foundation's Pastoral Leadership Revitalization Program.

Episode 606 Hannah's Prayer (1 Samuel 1:1-20 & 2:1-10)

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading the story of Hannah as told in 1 Samuel 1:1-20 and 2:1-10. Really we’re supposed to be talking about Hannah’s song in chapter 2, but we find the story of Hannah herself so compelling that we linger over it to see what it can teach us. We ponder the way Hannah prays out of her wretchedness, speaking her truth before God in ways that may at first seem overly bold. But God’s response to her prayer teaches us that God can handle our truths, just as God received hers. We also linger over the responses of Hannah’s husband Elkanah and the priest Eli, who don’t really understand what Hannah is going through but who, each in his own way, tries to support her. And we wrestle with Hannah’s song, which depicts the inversion of society and reminds us that God is the one who is in charge, no matter how much we might try to imagine otherwise.

Episode 605 The Golden Calf (Exodus 32:1-14)

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read Exodus chapter 32: 1-14 – the infamous story of the golden calf. Okay, we all know that this was not the best move the Israelites have ever made. But let’s slow down our reading and see what else we can find in here. What are the Israelites feeling, and what do they mean to do by making this calf? Is Aaron sensitive and subtle in navigating this situation, reducing harm – or is he going along with whatever in order to keep the peace? And who is responsible for these Israelites at this point in the story anyway?

Episode 604 Ritual and Memory (Exodus 12:1-13 and 13:1-8)

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading the story of the first Passover as told in Exodus 12:1-13 and 13:1-8. We talk about God setting the people free from Egypt, and wrestle with the violence that seems necessary for God to enact judgments against Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. We marvel at the resetting of the calendar and the ritual of the Passover that are both instantiated before the Exodus even takes place. And we think about the role of ritual both in preserving the memory of the past and in creating space for new generations to claim the story as their own.

Episode 603 Evil Made Good (Genesis 37:3-8, 17b-22, 26-34 & 50:15-21)

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week we are reading the story of Joseph in Genesis 37: 3-8, 17b-22, 26-34 and 50:15-21. This is an emotionally complex story- a novella maybe like none other in the Hebrew Bible. It's a story where love unequally distributed causes hatred among brothers; a story where obligation and affection get mixed up in complicated ways, and people get so turned around that they actually think deception will make everything less complicated. And it raises the question – why do things turn out the way they do? That question and the rocky emotional landscape of this story surely ring true in our messy human lives.

Episode 602 Trusting the Promise (Genesis 15:1-21)

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading the story of God’s promise to Abraham as told in Genesis 15:1-21. When Abraham expresses anxiety about the future, God shows him the stars as a sign of the good things to come. So, too, we think, the signs of God’s promises are all around us, if only we can step outside of our small worlds to see them. Yet this text also speaks of promises delayed, of generations passing before God’s promises will be fulfilled. In times when things feel hopeless, this text invites us to trust in God rather than being overwhelmed by our present circumstances God receives Abraham’s trust and reckons it as righteousness. Perhaps God will do the same for us.

Episode 601 The Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17, & 3:1-13)

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week we are back to the beginning, reading parts of the second story of creation and the story of the Garden of Eden as they are found in Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17, 3:1-13. For stories that we’ve heard a thousand times, we had a lot of questions. Is there a relationship between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, in the story or in our own lives? What does our knowledge of good and evil – of complexity, of our mortality, of our own shortcomings – do to us and for us? Is it possible to hold that knowledge alongside a full and trusting relationship with the Divine – without hiding, without deception?

Episode 557 FORGOTTEN BOOKS Resisting Ethnic Nationalism (Esther 3:1-11 and 7:1-10) REPLAY

Sun, 25 Aug 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm meets Queen Esther, winner of some biblical version of The Bachelor. We learn about the blood feud between the people of Haman and the people of Mordecai, and see the all too familiar trope that Jews - or anyone deemed an “outsider,” really - is a danger to the kingdom. We see loyalty without uniformity in action. And we see all kinds of different models for standing up to the artificial and dangerous power structures in the world.

Episode 556 FORGOTTEN BOOKS Resisting the Patriarchy (Esther 1:1-22) REPLAY

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible with a look at Esther 1:1-22, the story of the Persian Queen Vashti and her refusal to appear before the king. We discuss the fragile egos of the king and his courtiers who fear the capacity of women to say no. We talk about the power of the patriarchy and the lengths it will go to to suppress voices of dissent. We admire Vashti’s courage to protect her own sense of dignity and the dignity of all women even though it costs her the crown. And we wonder about the ripple effects of such acts of courage, which make ruling ideologies tremble, if only for a moment.

Episode 555 FORGOTTEN BOOKS Reading Ruth Against the Grain (Ruth 1:14-18 and 3:1-15) REPLAY

Sun, 11 Aug 2024 15:14:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm explores Ruth chapters 1 and 3, trying to imagine Ruth’s own perspective and calling out some of the ways that the book portrays painful parts of the immigrant experience. We see how the scene at the threshing floor plays on the worst stereotypes of Moabite women, and how Ruth’s beautiful statement of loyalty to Naomi also carries with it an erasure of her own heritage. We try to recognize our own blind spots, and lean into the scholarship of others who can help shed new light.

Episode 554 FORGOTTEN BOOKS Making Ancient Israel Great Again (Ruth 2:1-20 and 4:9-17) REPLAY

Sun, 04 Aug 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible, with a look at the book of Ruth 2:1-20 and 4:9-17. We look at the way the book of Ruth challenges anti-immigrant sentiment in the time of Ezra-Nehemiah and in our own day. We discuss how the book lifts up the foundational contributions of Ruth the Moabite, whose persistence saves the family line of King David, without whom ancient Israel would never have been great in the first place. We think about how the book tries to counter anti-immigrant sentiment by depicting Ruth as hardworking, culturally astute, and dedicated to her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi. We also wonder what damage such rhetoric might do to Ruth—but that’s a conversation for next week.

Episode 553 FORGOTTEN BOOKS Solidarity and Allegory (Song of Songs 5:2-9 and 8:5-10) REPLAY

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our study of the Song of Songs, learning more about the awesome and fearsome passion of our young lovers, and seeing the jarring ways in which the world around them - well, to be more specific, the men around them - seeks to control that passion. And in case you weren’t sufficiently challenged to read this as both erotic poetry and an allegory about our relationship with God, how bout we flip the roles in that allegory and see what happens then? You know you want to try.

Episode 552 FORGOTTEN BOOKS The Joy of Sex (Song of Songs 1:1-12-2:6 and 7:1-13) REPLAY

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible, turning our attention to Song of Songs 1:12-2:6 and 7:1-13. We wonder at the presence of erotic love poetry in the biblical canon and wrestle what it means for our understanding of bodies, sexuality, and God. We explore themes of sexual empowerment, invitation and consent, and the joy of sex. We think about how the Song invites us to admire and respect human bodies, challenging a culture that alternately shames and sexualizes bodies for profit. Mostly, we consider how this ancient text, set free in our churches and synagogues, might empower us to speak more authentically about human sexuality.

Episode 551 FORGOTTEN BOOKS Trauma Has Many Voices (Lamentations 3 and 5) REPLAY

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 15:01:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our study of Lamentations, meeting an individual survivor in chapter 3 and hearing the voice of the community in chapter 5. We raise up the differences between this individual man’s relationship to his suffering compared to what we heard from Daughter Zion last episode, and look expectantly to the communal voice to tell us which perspective is the better on to adopt. Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t. Instead, in magnificent and strikingly ambiguous poetic language, it creates space in scripture to hold multiple perspectives on suffering.

Episode 550 FORGOTTEN BOOKS Trauma and Protests (Lamentations 1:8-22 and 2:10-22) REPLAY

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible with Lamentations 1:8-22 and 2:10-22. Written in the wake of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, Lamentations presents the community’s response to trauma given in multiple voices. This week we look at the voice of the funeral singer, a bystander who has witnessed the trauma but not experienced it, and Daughter Zion, the personified city of Jerusalem, who has experienced trauma and humiliation in her body. We talk about the role of protest in faith, the urgency of speaking truth before power, and the theological imperative to challenge God. We also think about the role of allies, who can recognize the pain of the traumatized, share in their sorrow, and encourage them to use their voices. This, friends, is a text for our time.

Episode 549 FORGOTTEN BOOKS For Everything There Is a Time (Ecclesiastes 1:4-11 and 3:1-11) REPLAY

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week, BibleWorm continues our look at Ecclesiastes, aka Qohelet, focusing on 1:4-11 and 3:1-11. We ask ourselves—is it really true there is nothing new under the sun. We look at that most famous poem “To everything there is a season,” and see exactly why you’d best not look at only the net total of life’s experiences. And we wonder what Qohelet might say about issues of justice in our time.

Episode 548 FORGOTTEN BOOKS Everything is Mere Breath (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 and 8:16-9:10) REPLAY

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week, BibleWorm begins our summer series on the Hebrew Festival scrolls with a look at Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 and 8:16-9:10. We discuss Qohelet’s idea that everything is mere breath and ask what it means to live in a world where nothing adds up to much of anything. We talk about the inscrutability of God and why good people often suffer while the wicked get all the rewards. We ask whether it is possible to accomplish anything meaningful in life and, if not, how we might be better off to reorient our goals to enjoy the moments of each day, whether playing with a toddler or listening to the birds sing. Also, Amy asks what kind of person would use Ecclesiastes as a wedding text. Hint: It was not Amy.

Episode 547 CREATION CARE Re-Creating the World (Ezekiel 47:1-12)

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm concludes our summer series on creation care with Ezekiel’s vision of a river of life flowing from the temple as told in Ezekiel 47:1 –12. The prophet Ezekiel, writing from the devastation of the Babylonian exile, envisions a radical re-creation of the world that takes place when God’s glory returns to the Jerusalem temple. What begins as a tiny trickle of water emerging from under the altar becomes a mighty river that turns even the Dead Sea into a thriving ecosystem teeming with fish. Along the river’s banks grow fruit-bearing trees with healing leaves, transforming the desolate land of exilic Israel into a new Eden where both humans and the environment can thrive. What would happen, we wonder, if our communities of faith also became sources of God’s life-giving water for the world? How might our desolate lands be transformed if we boldly proclaimed the glory of God in relationship with creation? It doesn’t seem like much, we think. But even Ezekiel’s raging river of life began as a tiny trickle. What if our efforts could do the same?

Episode 546 CREATION CARE Covenant and Creation (Leviticus 26:3-32, 34-35, 40-45)

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week, BibleWorm continues our series on Creation Care, with Leviticus 26:3-22, 34-35, and 40-45. It's a text that presses the question – what happens when we lose track of the fact that we are part of magnificently interconnected system, and begin to imagine that we can – or even that we must -- function on our own? How does the anxious productivity of humans impact the rest of creation? And once we realize the harm we have caused, how do we move toward healing? We wish this text didn’t feel as close to home as it does, but we are glad it’s here.

Episode 545 CREATION CARE Bless the Lord, O My Soul (Psalm 104)

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our summer series on creation care with Psalm 104, a profound text celebrating the magnificence of creation, which brings joy not only to the human heart but also to all creatures, from the birds in the trees to Leviathan in the deeps of the sea. We even see the celebratory nature of God, who whisks about on the clouds, wearing a fabulous cloak made of light and rejoicing in all that God has created. The psalm also reminds us of the harmonious relationship God intends for humans and animals, with humans working during the day and animals prowling at night so we can each live our lives fully, without being a danger to one another. All of this, the psalmist reminds us, should make us sing throughout our lives at the incomparable glory of creation. Bless the LORD, O my soul!

Episode 544 CREATION CARE God's Stream Full of Water (Psalm 65)

Sun, 02 Jun 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This BibleWorm continues our summer series on Creation Care with Psalm 65 and special attention to the water. This psalm brings together scenes of prayer and silence, of humans and of nature, and of a God who is the orientation point for all of it. It made us wonder: What if we could see ourselves, for a moment, as almost like a sibling to the water? Both of us oriented toward God, both of us in relationship to God, both calmed by God when we inevitably become a source of chaos? And it made us wonder: if we could quiet ourselves enough to offer silence as praise – if we could quiet our minds, and the voices of scarcity and acquisitiveness around us – what else in creation could be heard? What would it say – to us, and to our Maker?

Episode 543 CREATION CARE From the Whirlwind (Job 38:1-38)

Sun, 26 May 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues on in our summer series on creation care with Job 38:1-38 in which God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, reminding Job of the beauty, grandeur, and complexity of nature that is beyond human understanding. Where humans were said to have “dominion” over the world in Genesis 1, in Job 38 humans seem almost irrelevant—God guides the constellations; God nurtures the sea; God sends the lightning bolts on their courses, and they respond, “Here I am.” This text invites us to lean into our not-knowing, to relinquish our supposed mastery of the universe to revel in its complex beauty. More than that, it reminds us that, in a world often marked by suffering, we are not alone. There is a whole world before us and around us, alive with responsiveness to God. Truly a balm for the soul.

Episode 542 CREATION CARE In the Beginning (Genesis 1:1-2:4a)

Sun, 19 May 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm begins our summer series on Creation Care with “the” Creation text, Genesis 1. For such a familiar text, it sure did open up a lot of questions for us. How should we think about our place so late in the proverbial line-up – what does it mean to us that God has already issued a commandment directly to the animals before we are here; that we are created on Friday afternoon as everyone is closing up shop for the Sabbath, instead of a busy Monday morning? And as we try to inhabit what it is to be created “in the image” of God, how might God’s disposition toward the created in the 5 ½ days before we arrived help us find our way?

Episode 541 The Gifts of the Spirit (Acts 2:1-4 & 1 Corinthians 12:1-13)

Sun, 12 May 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm concludes the Narrative Lectionary cycle with the Pentecost readings, Acts 2:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 12:1-13. We talk about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, which empowers the original disciples to speak in languages they don’t know, calling them outward from the culturally homogenous group to enter into the cultures and languages of others. That same Spirit, Paul says, pours out on the Christians in Corinth—and on Christians today—empowering us with a diversity of gifts, from miraculous gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues, to floppier gifts like wisdom and knowledge. Whatever our gifts, Paul says, the community needs them all. If we withhold our gifts, or if we fail to recognizes the diverse gifts of others, we fail to live up to God’s vision for us as the body of Christ.

Episode 540 The Resurrection of the Body (1 Corinthians 15:1-26 & 41-47)

Sun, 05 May 2024 09:10:00 -0500

Today BibleWorm reads from I Corinthians 15:1-26 & 51-57, a section of Paul’s letter that is focused unwaveringly on bodily resurrection. It seems this was one of harder aspects of the faith for the people of Corinth, and it is a tough one for many modern readers too. But Paul insists that you have to believe the impossible thing, the thing that goes against what you have seen with your own eyes. There is no hedging: You not only have to wholeheartedly believe the testimony of others, that Jesus was resurrected in body, but that it will happen again. It will happen for all Christians, and, Paul seems to say here, even universally. What happens when we shift from a shift from a spiritual orientation toward the idea of eternal life to an embodied one? Why is this body piece so important to Paul? What are people, anyway?

Episode 539 The Greatest of These Is Love (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Paul’s famous discussion of love as given in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. It’s not every day that Bobby and Amy talk about Paul’s letters and find ourselves in full agreement that Paul is in fact right. But both our Jewish and Christian traditions can fully affirm what Paul says here—that love is the one undeconstructible reality, the most fundamental principle of the cosmos and, one might say, the very essence of God. The sort of love Paul calls us to in this passage is anti-imperial, the sort of soft love that seems foolish to those who live in a world where domination, control, and pride are the logic of the day. By contrast, Paul calls us to a softer way of inhabiting the world, characterized by patience, kindness, and yielding to others, trusting and hoping in the power of love toward which the world is ultimately moving.

Episode 538 Unity in the Cross (Acts 18:1-14 & 1 Corinthians 1:10-18)

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Acts 18:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, our introduction to the city of Corinth, a busy port city with all kinds of diversity and disparity ... almost like an ancient Las Vegas. And here in this city, Paul tasks the budding church with finding a way to profound unity. Speaking to a people that seem prone to latch on to the messenger instead of the message, as we humans like to do, Paul does whatever he can to sever that connection, even when that’s painful, in order to insist that his listeners find a common anchor point in something much bigger, something that unites them all: the cross itself, and only that. Is it possible for us humans to connect to something that big without holding onto the medium that gets us there? And how do we not lose the forest for the trees?

Episode 537 The Church in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9 and 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10)

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 19:00:00 -0500

Today BibleWorm reads from two different books in the New Testament. We hear about Paul’s visit to the community in Thessalonica in Acts 17:1-9 and then read from his letter to that community in 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10. As we read about the struggle of those early days for that budding church community, we wonder, what does it take for someone to throw in their lot with a revolutionary movement and really stick with it through all the real risk and seemingly constant uncertainty? And how can we support one another in living that sort of courageous life today?

Episode 536 The Disciples' First Miracle (Acts 3:1-10)

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re continuing on in our post-Easter readings with the story of disciples’ first healing, as told in Acts 3:1-10. On their way to the temple one afternoon, Peter and John encounter a man who was born without the ability to walk. Not having any money, they heal him in the name of Jesus, then take him into the temple where he leaps and praises God. We talk about the disciples regarding the man as an equal, looking him and the eye and grasping him by the hand as they offer him healing. We discuss the risk Peter takes, pressing beyond the most obvious gifts and offering the man what he most truly needs. And we notice the most profound gift of all—the restoration of the man to his community, where he enters fully among them for what is likely the first time in his life. If only our communities could be sources of healing in the world in the same way.

Episode 535 Waiting for the Spirit (Acts 1:1-14)

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm begins not only a new book but a new kind of book in the New Testament – we move from a gospel to the Book of Acts with Acts 1:1-14. We love seeing what the author lays out for us as the sort of “season recap” at the beginning – what parts of the Jesus story are most pressing for us to hold close for this next chapter? And truly it is a new chapter – the disciples sit in the echo of what has happened, but really don’t know yet what it all means for the future. And guess what they are to do, these leaders of the budding church, these people whose lives were turned upside down in every imaginable way? They are to stay put, stay in community, stay in prayer, and wait. How much pressure must they feel to DO something with what they’ve received already – to figure out what should happen next? But something is still missing – you can’t get ahead of the spirit.

Episode 534 Easter without Jesus (Mark 16:1-8)

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of the first Easter as told in Mark 16:1-8. In this most challenging version of the Easter story, we never encounter the resurrected Jesus. Rather, a young man in white tells the women to go to Galilee where Jesus will meet them. It’s strange not to see Jesus on Easter, but isn’t this the way we mostly live our lives? We live the life of faith, based on the testimony of others and mostly without tangible evidence, trusting that Jesus really is resurrected just as the young man said. But Mark tells us that the women, startled and overwhelmed, left the tomb in silence, saying nothing to anyone because they were afraid. So it falls to us, as the readers, to make a choice. Will we go to meet Jesus just as the young man instructed? Do we have enough faith to meet Jesus in Galilee?

Episode 533 SPECIAL EPISODE Good Friday (Mark 15:16-41) REPLAY

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 19:00:00 -0500

On this special Good Friday episode, originally released on April 4, 2020, BibleWorm explores the story of Jesus's crucifixion in Mark 15:16-41. We talk about the humiliation and abandonment that so often accompanies and exacerbates our suffering, about vessels of God’s holiness breaking open into the world, and about what it means to have supporters out there that you may never know about.

Episode 532 SPECIAL EPISODE The Last Supper (Mark 14:12-42)

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm has a special episode for you – we are reading Mark’s account of the Last Supper, in Mark chapter 14: 12-42. What a story. We can feel the urgency in this supper, just like the original Passover meal – that something new and big and awesome and fearsome is about to happen, and there‘s no way you can really anticipate its magnitude. But alongside that, the text forces us to stare deeply into the frightening idea that no matter our convictions or our intentions, at the end of the day, we can’t really trust ourselves. What do we do with that – how can we live with it? And maybe more importantly, what does Jesus do with it?

Episode 531 The Triumphal Entry and the Anointing at Bethany (Mark 11:1-11 and 14:3-9)

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the traditional Palm Sunday text in Mark 11:1-11 as well as the story of a woman anointing Jesus as told in Mark 14:3-9. We focus on the cries of the crowd as Jesus rides into Jerusalem, as they shout “Hosanna! Save us!” Their cry is urgent and hopeful but also quite vague about what, exactly, they need to be saved from. Sometimes, we think, this is the best prayer we can offer, not knowing how we can be saved but trusting that Jesus knows and can do as he promised. When we turn our attention to the anointing at Bethany, we find an unnamed woman doing the best she can to honor Jesus with extravagant love, using a year’s worth of wages to buy oil for his anointing. While others try to shame her for her wastefulness, Jesus lifts her up, making her gift even more profound than even she could ever have known. But that’s just the way Jesus is. He takes what we have—both our cries and our love—and transforms them in profound ways that we could never anticipate.

Episode 530 The Markan Apocalypse (Mark 13:1-8, 24-38)

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 19:00:00 -0500

Today BibleWorm reads from the Markan apocalypse, Mark 13:1-8 and 24-37 - a vision of the thorough undoing of the world as we have come to know it. The most grand of buildings will fall. The weather patterns that sustain our food and water will falter. Even heaven and earth will not endure. Our persistent question reading these texts was – for better and for worse, is - what do people do when they think the world is going to end? How can this knowledge root us in the teachings of the Torah, or the word of Jesus, without prompting us to shrink back from a world that still needs us?

Episode 529 Loving God and Neighbor (Mark 12:28-44)

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 12:28-44, a collection of texts that begins with the greatest commandment to love both God and neighbor. We think about what it means to love in this context, concluding that fidelity to one’s neighbors is the prerequisite for loving God. But what really interests us is that Jesus and one of the scribes, who have been antagonists throughout the book of Mark, find common ground in this commandment. We wonder whether we, too, could find common ground with our opponents by taking a step back to focus on love of God and love of neighbor. Finally, we discuss the story of a widow putting her last two coins in the temple treasury. Here is the measure of faithfulness that Jesus has been seeking—someone willing to relinquish control and trust her life to God and the community of faith. Now, we wonder, will the community return her faithfulness by sustaining her in her time of need?

Episode 528 The Parable of the Tenants (Mark 12:1-17)

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 19:00:00 -0600

Today BibleWorm reads Mark 12:1-17. Jesus is in Jerusalem, in the last week of his life, when he pulls upon Isaiah’s well-known image of Israel as a vineyard to offer another parable - one in which those sent on behalf of the landowner are rejected over and over again by the proverbial management. What does it mean in this context to say that the one that was rejected will be the cornerstone - or does he mean foundation stone? And how does all of this tie into Jesus’s famously clever instruction to pay to the emperor the things that are his, and to God the things that are God’s? Oh – and we also announce our summer series!

Episode 527 The Healing of Bartimaeus (Mark 10:32-52)

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 10:32-52, the last of Jesus’s three predictions of his suffering and death that began back in Mark 8. Once again, we see that the disciples have not quite understood, as James and John respond by asking Jesus to sit at his right and left hand when he comes in his glory. We talk about Jesus’s invitation to James and John to drink his cup and receive his baptism, indicating that they—and all followers of Jesus—must be willing to share in his suffering, becoming slave and servant of all. We also discuss the story of blind Bartimaeus, who asks for mercy and receives his sight. Unlike the disciples, who have been jostling for first place, Bartimaeus becomes a model for Christians, falling in place behind Jesus on the way. What else could he do—and what else should Christians do— but live his life in gratitude for the mercy Jesus showed him?

Episode 526 The Eye of the Needle (Mark 10:17-31)

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm eads Mark 10:17-31, sometimes referred to in our biblical headings as “A Rich Man’s question”, but that word “Rich” can sometimes let us hide from the tug of this passage on each of us. What is it about our attachment to our possessions, however many or few – about the things that help us feel secure and self-sufficient in this world – that makes it so difficult to really dwell in the kingdom of God? We wonder if this text is more of a call into a life of vulnerability and interdependence, and the ways in which possessions are a barrier to that, than a statement about wealth on its own. But either way, it is a mind-bendingly hard ask for us humans – as hard as getting a camel through the eye of a needle.

Episode 525 The Last Will Be First (Mark 9:30-37) ASH WEDNESDAY SPECIAL EPISODE

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 19:00:00 -0600

On this special Ash Wednesday episode BibleWorm reads Mark 9:30-37, the story of the disciples arguing about who is greatest. We talk about the specter of death that hangs over this text and the way that death anxiety may push the disciples—and us—toward cultural constructions of our their own value. Yet Jesus redirects them, first by insisting that the last will be first and the first last, and then by instructing them to embrace those with no status in the social hierarchy at all. We also wrestle with Jesus’s insistence on explaining his suffering and death to the disciples when they just can’t seem to get it. Sometimes we just need to hear the words even if we don’t have the life experience to understand them yet. Someday we’ll need those words, and what a gift it is to have received them.

Episode 524 Who Do You Say That I Am? (Mark 8:27-9:8)

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 8:27-9:8 - best known for the story of the transfiguration, but there is so much in this text before we even get to the mountain! Finally in this week’s text, the disciples have “the talk” with Jesus – the talk about who Jesus actually is, about what their relationship actually is. But just because they’ve talked about it doesn’t mean the disciples really understand. How can they - or we - wrap our heads around both the humanness and the cosmic-ness of Jesus? What do we imagine it is like for Jesus to be surrounded by people who, faithful as they are and try as they might, just can't quite get there? We sure do love Peter’s courage as he tries, though.

Episode 523 Sending the Disciples (Mark 6:1-30)

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads a series of texts in Mark 6:1-30, beginning with the story of Jesus being unable to perform miracles in his hometown, which leads us to think about the ways we sometimes struggle to hear truth from those most familiar to us and the possibility that we must sometimes let go of comfortable places to grow into our true potential. We then read the story of Jesus sending out his disciples, empowering them to carry on his work when he can’t do it. We pay special attention to Jesus’s instructions to his disciples, who are to travel without food or money, relying on the hospitality of strangers and ministering from a position of vulnerability and trust in the community. Finally, we read the strange story of John the Baptist being beheaded by King Herod, which we take as a warning about the fickleness of Empire, which recognizes the truth of John’s ministry and yet ultimately executes him anyway.

Episode 522 Healing Interrupted (Mark 5:21-43)

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 5:21-43, two very different stories of miraculous healing that are intertwined in the way maybe all of our lives are. One, a girl at the threshold of womanhood, and at the threshold of death. The other, a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years - the entirety of the girl’s life. The stories made us wonder about the flow of faith in the world, in us and between us. They made us question our sense of what is truly urgent, and reflect on the factors in our minds as we make that determination over and over again in our own lives. And at the end of the day, they reminded us that the miracle of these stories is a restoration to everyday life in our bodies and in our communities. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that these things alone are a miracle.

Episode 521 Making the Demons Tremble (Mark 5:1-20)

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jesus casting a legion of unclean spirits into a herd of pigs as told in Mark 5:1-20. We struggle with how to think of demon-possession in the modern world, ultimately concluding that demons represent those forces, both spiritual and societal, that intend harm to humans and especially to those living at the margins of society. We notice that when the demons see Jesus they immediately know they are going to be cast out, and we wonder whether the demons of this world likewise tremble when they see us. And we notice that rather than celebrating the restoration of their neighbor, the townspeople demand that Jesus leave their region, raising the question of whether we, too, are more concerned about the healing of our neighbors or worried about the costs of their restoration.

Episode 520 The Parables of Jesus (Mark 4:1-34)

Sun, 07 Jan 2024 21:38:07 -0600

This week, BibleWorm wades into parables with Mark 4:1-34. How striking it is that the chapter starts out telling us that Jesus creates some physical distance between himself and his followers, by going out in a boat before trying to teach the crowds that have gathered on the land. Similarly, he teaches here in a way that slows us down, and creates a little distance between the words we read and the meaning to be conveyed. The parables he tells in this chapter made us wonder: Which truths from our everyday economy will serve us well if we reorient toward God, and which ones do we need to relearn? When you are entrusted with something precious, when is it right to be careful with it, and when is it better to be generous with it? And how big or small is our role in God’s system, anyway?

Episode 519 Their Faith Has Made You Well (Mark 2:1-22)

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Mark 2:1-22, beginning with the story of a man whose friends dig a hole through the roof so they can lower him down to Jesus. We discuss the relative importance of forgiveness and healing, with this text suggesting that the most urgent matter is being set right with God whatever the abilities and limitations of our particular bodies might be. We notice, too, that Jesus heals him based on their faith, and we ponder whether our faith, too, can have effects for others, whether our faith in God or our faith in people themselves. And we discuss a series of stories in which Jesus contrasts a new community of radical welcome with an older structure of righteousness, concluding that God values both the old way and the new way, desiring only that each makes space for the other to thrive.

Episode 518 Following the Call (Mark 1:1-20)

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm begins the Gospel of Mark - we’ll read Mark 1:1-20. Mark sets the stage by telling his readers that this is good news – though we will see even in these first 20 verses, that we’re not talking about a puppies and cotton candy kind of “good” – we’re talking about a deeper good, a harder one that involves significant struggle for everyone who pursues it, all the way up to the proverbial C-suite. But, oh, it’s such an empowering good. When we read how the heaven’s respond to Jesus’s baptism, we have to wonder - what if we took seriously the possibility that the events here on earth can reverberate in the heavens, maybe even change the course of things? What if we took seriously the invitations that we ourselves encounter to re-orient our actions toward a horizon other than whatever the empire has laid before us? What would be possible?

Episode 517 The Christmas Story (Luke 2:1-20) SPECIAL EPISODE

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 19:00:00 -0600

Episode 516 The Birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5-25 & 57-80)

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm begins a new testament – THE New Testament, in fact! We are reading today from Luke 1:5-25 and 57-80 – the story of the birth of John. We see and affirm Luke’s desire to offer us an “orderly account” of things, but y’all, there is something decidedly un-orderly about the heavenly kingdom breaking through. This reading made us wonder - What if we could live into a world where ye olde power structures are put aside, and parents orient toward children, and children orient toward wisdom itself? How can we raise up all the ways that we may come to know what God wants us to know - both the shiny angelophanies and the quieter moments of deep knowing, deep in our bones? And what is it that we need – that YOU need – to feel saved, to feel safe, to live the life you are called to?

Episode 515 Rebuilding from the Ruins (Ezra 1:1-4 and 3:1-13)

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re in the third Sunday of Advent in the Christian tradition, reading the story of the people’s return from exile as told in Ezra 1:1-4 and 3:1-13. We reflect on the varying roles of the exiles in this text, some of whom return to Judea to do the hard work of rebuilding the temple while others remain in Babylon to support the rebuilding financially. We think about the resonances of this rebuilding with the story of Solomon’s original construction of the first temple, recalling the former temple in all its glory but also remembering a time when Israel worshiped God in the wilderness without a permanent building at all. And we ponder the generational experience in this text, some in the older generations weeping at the sight of the new temple foundation being laid while others in the younger generation shout in jubilant praise. And through it all we hear the refrain, “God is good; God’s graciousness for Israel lasts forever.”

Episode 514 Comfort, O Comfort My People (Isaiah 40:1-11)

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm is live in Aurora, Nebraska, reading Isaiah 40:1-11 with a group of pastors from the Omaha Presbyterian Seminary Foundation’s Pastoral Leadership Revitalization program. We explore Isaiah 40 as a text speaking hope to traumatized communities, both in the time of the Babylonian exile and also today. We discuss the relationship of God’s punishment and God’s mercy, the call to speak words of hope and encouragement to one another, and Isaiah’s image of the triumphant God as a tender shepherd, carrying the people home.

Episode 513 Hope Against Hope (Jeremiah 33:1-18)

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm enters the Christian season of Advent with a reading from Jeremiah 33. The text given to us by the Narrative Lectionary is Jeremiah 33:14–18, a lovely text about a righteous king from the house of David who will restore Jerusalem. But the hope offered by that short text seems naïve in the context of the rest of Jeremiah 33, which takes place against the backdrop of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, with Jeremiah in prison, anticipating the destruction of the city yet to come. In that context, the passage speaks a word of hope, but one muted by the pain and suffering that must yet be endured for an unjust world to be dismantled and for a righteous one to take its place. We struggle with this text, to be honest, and for the first time ever one of us has added a postscript to the podcast after mulling over it for a day or two. Welcome to advent y’all. This text is painful, but it is also beautiful.

Episode 512 Finding the Torah (2 Kings 22:1-20 and 23:1-3)

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm reads 2 Kings 22:1-20 and 23:1-3– the story of King Josiah finding the scroll of the Teaching that seems to have been lost for a good while now. After a string of really disastrous kingships, we finally get a good egg in Josiah, and he is heartbroken to see all the ways that even he has not been living up to this teaching that was buried in a Temple storage room somewhere. Of course he will change their ways now, but in a system where punishment can come generations after the offending sin, is it too late? What does it mean for Josiah to choose to re-commit himself and his kingdom to God’s teachings, regardless of whether it can impact the fate of his generation?

Episode 511 The Song of the Vineyard and the Stump of Jesse (Isaiah 5:1-7 and 11:1-9)

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads two texts from Isaiah that are not normally read together: the song of the vineyard in Isaiah 5:1-7 and the description of the ideal king in Isaiah 11:1-9. In the first text, we find God making an accusation against Israel and Judah, the vineyard that God planted to produce justice and righteousness but which has instead produced violence and oppression. As a result, God removes the hedge around the vineyard, leaving it vulnerable to destruction. Yet in Isaiah 11 we find a description of a sprout emerging from the stump of Jesse, signaling hope for the future. The sprout represents an ideal leader who is not swayed by what he sees and hears but by reverence for God, producing the justice and equity that God seeks. We relate Isaiah 11 to King Hezekiah of Judah, to the hoped-for messiah, and to we ourselves, who are called to live non-violently in a world of predation.

Episode 510 God as Parent (Hosea 11:1-9)

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm reads Hosea 11:1-9, and we dive deep into the metaphor the text gives us: the rich, complex, sometimes beautiful and sometimes painful world of parenting. We encounter here a God who is pouring out the biggest of feelings – a mix of love, jealousy, nostalgia, compassion, and suffering that can seem impossible to hold together. Feelings that are not unfamiliar to the experience of many parents, actually. And though God plainly states at the end of our reading that there is a difference between Godself and humans, we found here a beautiful and honest depiction of some of the most beloved and fraught relationships in the human realm, and maybe even a model for moving through them.

Episode 509 Elijah and the Prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:17-39)

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal as told in 1 Kings 18:17-39. We find Elijah demanding that the people make a choice between God and Baal, insisting that they cannot serve both. Elijah then engages in an elaborate contest with the prophets of Baal, calling down fire from heaven to demonstrate that the God of Israel is truly God. Only after seeing the fire do the people finally confess, “The Lord is God! The Lord is God!” We think of the ways that we, too, are called to make a choice between the God of the Bible and the gods of the dominant ideologies of militarism and consumer capitalism. But we must make the choice without the benefit of fire coming down from heaven. We are asked to make the choice on slimmer evidence, given in symbol and ritual and prayer. That must suffice for us to confess “The Lord is God! The Lord is God!”

Episode 508 The Division of the Kingdom (1 Kings 12:1-17, 25-29)

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads I Kings 12:1-17 and 25-29. We are just a couple of generations after King David, and boy howdy, kingship in Israel is not going great. As David’s grandson Reheboam steps to the throne, we see parallels with the stories of Pharaoh in Egypt: a king who uses forced labor to control people, and who seeks power and dominance above all else, even when that is politically impractical. And then we meet Jeroboam, who seems to smartly identify a real vulnerability for his community, but then tries to patch it with a sort of quick fix borrowed from another religious culture - definitely a no-no. Both kings consult advisors, but neither consult God. This is pretty much exactly what the deuteronomistic history warned about.

Episode 507 Praising the Lord (2 Samuel 5:1-5, 6:1-15, and Psalm 150)

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads a selection of texts about David’s praise of God in 2 Samuel 5:1-5 and 6:1-15 as well as Psalm 150. We talk about what it means for everything that has breath to praise the Lord and ponder the unification of all creatures that is possible when we recognize the breath within us that wishes to return to God in praise. We also pay attention to the ways David approaches praise, sometimes as a genuine reverence for God but sometimes as an apparent manipulation that seeks to coopt God into his own political and military agenda. And we discuss the story of poor Uzza, who is struck dead for trying to steady the ark of the covenant, concluding that God does not need to be protected and will not tolerate being treated carelessly. When we come into God’s presence with praise, we do something that is dangerous and powerful, and that can bring us extraordinary blessing.

Episode 506 Where You Go I Will Go (Ruth 1:1-17 and 4:13-16)

Sun, 08 Oct 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Ruth 1:1-17 and 4:13-17 – just the opening and closing of a book that turns all kinds of social norms on their head. That famous line “your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God” – the one that so many people use today in weddings, is not from a wedding at all – but from the mouth of Ruth, who is refusing Naomi’s plea to go find herself a husband, and committing herself instead to her deceased husband’s mother. This text asks us – what, really, is family? And what is peoplehood? Following a theme we are seeing a lot this season, Ruth decides to just care for the life in front of her, whatever that may mean for her future. And this act, as it trickles through the generations, means very good things.

Episode 505 Listen, O Israel! (Deuteronomy 5:1-21& 6:4-9)

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads two of the foundational texts of the Hebrew Bible—the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5:1-21 and the text known as the Shema in the Jewish tradition in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. We discuss the way that the Shema cuts across the cacophony of voices vying for our attention with a resounding “Listen, O Israel!,” calling us away from the voice of Pharaoh and focusing us on the one God who set us free from bondage in Egypt. We discuss the urgency of the Ten Commandments as the framework for an alternative way of life as God’s people, who love God with heart, mind, and soul and protect the integrity of the community. And we notice the repeated emphasis in this text on sharing the story across multiple generations, paying attention both to those who came before and those who will come after as we remind ourselves of what it means to truly be the people of God in the world.

Episode 504 Responding to the Call (Exodus 1:8-2:10 and 3:1-15)

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Exodus 1:8-2:10 and 3:1-15, a text that seemed to ask us again and again – what is capturing your attention? We see just how little it takes for the situation to turn bad for the Israelites in Egypt. And in this newly roaring sea of people and power that are bent against them, we read stories of individual people who manage to incline their attention somewhere else – who manage to look at the one human being right in front of them and respond in that moment with care. Is it enough, to save that one life when it seems the world is on fire? We can’t be the judge of that. But we sure do get the sense that what they did was urgently important.

Episode 503 Jacob Wrestles with God (Genesis 32:9-13 & 22-30)

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jacob’s midnight wrestle as told in Genesis 32:9-13 and 22-30. We talk about the way Jacob pauses to pray for God’s protection as he prepares to face his brother Esau, first reminding God of God’s past promises, and then asking for God to save him. We discuss the mysterious figure who appears to wrestle Jacob in the night, whom Jacob ultimately understands to have been God. We ponder what it means that Jacob wrestles this figure to a draw and wonder whether God, like the man, is challenged and even changed by wrestling with Jacob and with us. And we notice that Jacob emerges from his dark night of the soul not only with a new name and a new blessing, but also with a limp. We think about how often blessings seem to come with limps and the ways in which we, like Jacob, so often carry the marks of our struggles with us as we emerge into a new day.

Episode 502 Laughing at the Promise (Genesis 18:1-15 and 21:1-7)

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Genesis 18:1-15 and Genesis 21:1-7 – texts that tell us of baby Isaac’s imminent, and then actual, arrival. When the three men come to Abraham and tell him that this baby will indeed be born to these two nonagenarians, Sarah famously laughs.

We wonder what is going through Sarah’s mind and heart at this moment, and what’s in there when she denies it, and again, when that moment of laughter becomes memorialized in the name of her beloved son. Sometimes the gravitas of trying to have a relationship with the Divine makes things a little serious. But this story made us wonder - what is the role of laughter and joyful surprise in our lives of faith?

Episode 501 Created for Relationship (Genesis 2:4b-25)

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week we begin the new season of the Narrative Lectionary with a look at the story of creation as told in Genesis 2:4b–25. We marvel at the description of an artisan God forming creation from the clay of the earth in an act of artistic improvisation. We reflect on the fundamentally relational nature of the created world in which humans are meant to be in deep relationship not only with God and each other but also with plants, animals, and the earth. And we wrestle with the concept of human partnership as a helper corresponding to us, one who stands in front of us as an equal and challenges us in healthy and productive ways.

Episode 457 ECONOMIC JUSTICE The Poor Will Always Be with You (John 12:1-8) REPLAY

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week we conclude our summer series on The Bible and Economic Justice with a text from John 12:1-8 – not such an obvious text for economic justice, but a really important and challenging one. How do we hold together Mary’s extravagance toward Jesus with our moral and practical obligation to use our resources to care for the poor? This text invites us to explore the human need to express a sense of awe and transcendence, and to ask – if we humans could stop amassing resources to ourselves, could we create this beautiful reality of abundance instead of scarcity, where we could give to God and give to each other?

Episode 456 ECONOMIC JUSTICE The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:7-15) REPLAY

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our series on the Bible and Economic Justice with Matthew 6:7-15, a text known in the Christian tradition as the Lord’s prayer. As we read the prayer through the lens of economic justice, we begin to realize that that Jesus is calling his followers toward a life of simple trust in God. We ask enough food for today, we promise to forgive the debts of our neighbors, we ask to kept away from the temptation of plenty. In this way, Jesus says, God’s name is made holy. In this way God’s kingdom will come to earth—here and now, among us. We don’t need to ask for more, Jesus says, because God already knows this is all we need.

Episode 455 ECONOMIC JUSTICE The Eye of the Needle (Luke 4:16-21 and 18:18-30) REPLAY

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our series on Economic Justice in the Bible with Luke 4:16-21 and 18:18-30. Why does Jesus tell this man that he needs to sell everything he owns? That’s an awfully high bar. And why is that even harder to do when you are wealthy? We consider the sense of safety and independence that money and material resources offer us, and the ways in which that can block us from ever really, truly needing to trust God or each other. We see the Kingdom of God envisioned here as a life of complete interdependence and mutual responsibility. But boy, do we live in the tension of what this text calls us to do and what we are ready and able to do today.

Episode 454 ECONOMIC JUSTICE What Does the Lord Require of You? (Micah 6:6-15 and 7:1-7) REPLAY

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our series on the Bible and Economic Justice with Micah 6:6-15 and 7:1-7. Here God brings a lawsuit against the people for treating each other unjustly. They cheat each other with false measures. They bribe judges and officials to render false judgments. They pervert justice to favor the wealthy and the powerful. So what can they do to set things right? Nothing but this: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. It sounded so simple when we sang it in youth group, but in fact Micah calls us to radical obedience to the Torah, creating a just world for the widow, the orphan and the stranger—for the most vulnerable among us. That is what the Lord require of us.

Episode 453 ECONOMIC JUSTICE Economics and Holiness (Leviticus 19:9-18 and 33-37) REPLAY

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week we continue our summer series on economic justice in the Bible with Leviticus 19:9-18 and 33:37– a text that asks us to reflect and embody and channel God’s holiness through the economy we create in the everyday world. What if our means of production – our land, our time – isn’t absolutely “ours” in the way we owners imagine? We all know the commandment thou shalt not steal, but what is fairly ours to begin with, and what constitutes stealing? And furthermore, what if this command is not just incumbent upon each individual – How do we create communities where theft doesn’t happen, thereby enacting God’s vision of a holy people? Spoiler alert - it’s not an alarm system.

Episode 452 ECONOMIC JUSTICE Biblical Faith and Debt Forgiveness (Deuteronomy 15:1-11 and 24:10-15) REPLAY

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm begins our summer series on biblical views of economic justice with Deuteronomy 15:1-11 and 24:10-15. We begin with the radical command of Deuteronomy 15:1 to forgive the debts of the entire community every seventh year, resetting the debt economy and ensuring that no one either falls into generational poverty or accrues generational wealth at the expense of others. We highlight the tension between a worldly economics of scarcity, which views others as competitors for limited resources, and Deuteronomy’s theology of God’s blessing, which insists that there is enough for everyone, if only we would learn to distribute it properly, looking out for the community’s well-being before our own. And we talk about just economic practices that respect the dignity of the poor and insist that poverty should never confine a person to a life of shame or suffering.

Episode 451 SUMMER SERIES Bathsheba (1Kings 1:1--40) REPLAY

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 19:00:00 -0500

BibleWorm concludes our summer series on women of the Hebrew Bible with the story of Bathsheba as told in 1 Kings 1:1-40. We met Bathsheba first in 2 Samuel 11, but she was more acted upon than an actor herself in that story. This week we meet her again in I Kings 1, when David has gone from a model of virility, power, and traditional (sometimes toxic) masculinity to a fairly pitiable state in his old age. At this awkward moment when David is still King but is losing control of both the kingdom and his own facilities, it is Bathsheba alone who knows how to take the wheel. Trust, intimacy, loyalty and power all look a little different in this story. Can you find them?

Episode 450 SUMMER SERIES Rahab (Joshua 2:1-24 and 6:2-4) REPLAY

Sun, 25 Jun 2023 19:00:00 -0500

BibleWorm continues our summer series on women in the Hebrew Bible with the story of Rahav in Joshua 2 -- she is a harlot living in the walls of the city of Jericho who is at the very core of Israel's success as they move into the promised land. How are we to understand this character who has so little power in any official sense, but who seems to know more than anyone else among the people of Jericho or the people of Israel? How do we understand the faith, the moral compass, and the courage of this lifelong sex worker? Does she change over the course of this story - is this a paradigmatic conversion story, as most ancient interpreters read it? It will surprise you not at all to know that we think it's far more complicated than that.

Episode 449 SUMMER SERIES The Daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 27:1-11 and 36:1-12)

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our special summer series on the Women of the Hebrew Bible with the story of the daughters of Zelophehad as told in Numbers 27:1-11 and 36:1-12. We marvel at these five young women who stand before Moses and the whole people of Israel to advocate for their right to inherit property after their father died without any sons. When Moses takes their claim to God, God responds simply by saying, “The daughters of Zelophehad are right” and then modifying the Torah for all time so that women can inherit property if they have no brothers. We talk about the courage of these women to work within the system to advocate for themselves and for all women within the patriarchal society of ancient Israel. We discuss God’s unquestioning acceptance of their perspective and full acknowledgment of their interpretation of the Torah, even as they point out that God had overlooked some issues in the original giving of the Law. We also recognize that this text does not go as far as we might wish, as the system of inheritance in ancient Israel remains fully patriarchal, with this one minor modification in favor of women. But then, change is slow and never happens as quickly as we might like. In that sense, the daughters of Zelophehad give us encouragement to continue in the struggle for women’s equality even still today.

Episode 448 SUMMER SERIES Miriam (Exodus 2:1-10 and Numbers 12:1-16)

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our special summer series on the Women of the Hebrew Bible with a look at the story of Moses’ sister Miriam as told in Exodus 2:1-10 and Numbers 12:1-16. First we talk about the story of Miriam as a young girl, saving her baby brother Moses by convincing the Pharaoh’s daughter to hire their own mother as her wet nurse. We talk about Miriam’s prophetic foresight and her ability to know what needs to happen to continue the story of God’s people, even at such a young age. We discuss the solidarity among women—Miriam, her mother, and the Pharaoh’s daughter—that works even across ethnic and political lines to protect life even when the men have commanded otherwise. Then we discuss a troubling story in Numbers 12:1-16 in which Miriam is punished for complaining against Moses while her brother Aaron gets off scot-free. We discuss the way Miriam’s forthrightness gets her into trouble here when she seems to step out of her proper place in a world controlled by men.

Episode 447 SUMMER SERIES Tamar (Genesis 38:1-26) REPLAY

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 19:00:00 -0500

BibleWorm continues our summer series on women in the Hebrew Bible with the story of Tamar in Genesis 38. We bristle immediately at the hypocrisy of the men in the story who only pretend to hold to the societal norms they impose on her, and in doing so leave Tamar stuck in a holding pattern after the death of her husband. We draw out the profoundly different experiences of the man and the woman who lose a spouse in this story, and think about the risk and lack of privacy that seems built into walking through the world with a body that can get pregnant. It is a story for our time indeed. But we would be remiss if we did not also raise up Tamar’s strategic thinking, profound loyalty, and courage.

Episode 446 SUMMER SERIES Sarah and Hagar (Genesis 16:1-16 and 21:8-21)

Sun, 28 May 2023 19:00:00 -0500

Happy summer, y’all, and welcome to our summer series! We’ll spend the next six weeks looking at stories of women in the Hebrew Bible.And we start with doozy – the stories of Sarah and Hagar, which we find in Genesis chapters 16 and 21. It’s so tempting to read these as stories of two individuals – or 3 if you add Abraham in there - but what are the social forces at work here? How much agency do these women really have? As the power dynamics become increasingly twisted and the possibility of a peaceable ending for this family becomes ever smaller, we wonder - why doesn’t God just subvert the whole social structure and tell a different story? Well, that’s not what happens. BUT - through the pain and plain awfulness of these stories, we see clearly that blessing can be intermingled with injustice – and that it is a powerful thing and empowering thing to have a witness to our sufferings.

Episode 445 Longing for Redemption (Acts 2:1-4 and Romans 8:14-39)

Sun, 21 May 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm concludes the regular Narrative Lectionary season with the Pentecost texts: Acts 2:1-4 and Romans 8:14-39. We talk about God’s desire for the redemption of all creation, which has suffered under human neglect since the time of Adam. Paul envisions the day we humans wake up and realize that we were created not to serve sin but to tend creation in order to restore the world around us. Until then creation, and we ourselves, groan with labor pains, Paul says, as we await redemption the redemption of our bodies. We can see the new life that is possible, but the pain and danger we are experiencing in the meantime is all too real. And so we live with hope for a world that we know is possible but one that we cannot yet see.

Episode 444 Baptized into Death (Romans 6:1-14)

Sun, 14 May 2023 19:00:00 -0500

Today BibleWorm reads Romans 6:1-14, a complicated text whose beauty took both of us for surprise in the end. What does it mean, really, to be dead to sin – to be dead to the world as you have always known it, and live into a different reality? How do we do the work of retraining the habits of our bodies and our spirits to move toward alignment - toward allegiance - to this newly discovered path? We have lots of ideas, surely none of them complete.

Episode 443 Justified by Faith (Romans 3:28-30 and 5:1-11)

Sun, 07 May 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our study of Paul with Romans 3:28-30 and 5:1-11 in which Paul develops the idea that God loves us and justifies us even when we haven’t done anything to merit God’s love. We explore the possibility that Paul is critiquing the Empire’s merit system, in which we are asked to give up our lives for the people above us. But Christ is not like that. While we were yet sinners, Paul says, Christ died for us. Simply put: You are enough.

Episode 442 From Faith for Faith (Romans 1:1-17)

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Romans 1:1-17 - Paul’s letter to a relatively small group of Jesus followers within the very large city of Rome. What does it take to carry out this work of spreading the gospel day after day? What do the people there need – and what does Paul need – and how can they support one another? Again and again, this text centered us in mutuality – and not only in the human community, but in our lives with God as well.

Episode 441 Paul and Barnabas in Lystra (Acts 13:1-3 and 14:8-18)

Sun, 23 Apr 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Paul and Barnabas in Lystra as told in Acts 13:1-3 and 14:8-18. We talk about Paul’s public healing of a man who cannot walk and think about the mutual faith that is required between the man and Paul, to trust each other enough for a healing to take place. We discuss the confusion of the townspeople, who want to worship Paul and Barnabas as gods, and recognize the tendency of all humans, including ourselves, to confuse the power of holiness with the physical forms in which we experience it. And we notice Paul’s observation that God is constantly working miracles in subtler ways. If we’re impressed by a healing, how much more so should we be impressed that God gives us rain, harvest, food, and happiness. The miraculous is all around us, if only we have the faith to see it.

Episode 440 Peter and Cornelius (Acts 10:1-17 and 34-48)

Sun, 16 Apr 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm moves on from the Gospel of Matthew to the Book of Acts, reading Acts 10:1-17 and 34-48. It’s the story of a God-fearing Roman solider and his welcome into the community of Jesus-followers. It raises up for us all kinds of questions about the complex interaction between our identities, ethnic and otherwise, and our faith, including this big one: What if God works outside of human categories altogether? What if God doesn’t use categories at all?

Episode 439 The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20)

Sun, 09 Apr 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm finishes our exploration of Matthew’s Gospel with the Great Commission Jesus gives to his disciples in Matthew 28:16-20. We discuss the role of doubt in the life of faith, noticing that Jesus addresses both those who worship him and those who hesitate, seeming to make no distinction between them. We talk about the disciple’s commission to baptize and teach the nations, inaugurating people into an alternative way of life to that on offer from the Empire as given by God in the Torah and by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. And we wrestle with the concept of Jesus’s authority over the earth, which sounds an awful lot like the claims the Empire makes to justify its power over the people. What might it look like to envision an alternative form of authority grounded not in power over others but in the liberating power of life for all?

Episode 438 The Resurrection (Matthew 28:1-10)

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 28:1-10, Matthew’s account of the resurrection - or, really, what happens right after the resurrection. It holds so many important questions for us. We ask: What is the role of evidence - of our senses - in our lives of faith? What is the role of fear in our human experience? What does it mean to act with both fear and great joy? And finally, how do we balance the need to go to the tomb - to honor what was and grieve its loss – and the call to leave it behind, and move forward to the next thing? The women manage to do both, and it’s an awfully good thing they did.

Episode 437 Jesus’ Entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1-17)

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week is Palm Sunday in the Christian tradition, and BibleWorm is reading the story of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem as told in Matthew 21:1-17. While the text is a familiar one for many, Matthew’s version has some intriguing surprises along the way. Jesus seems to ride on two animals at the same time in this text—both a donkey and a colt, and Jesus seems to take these animals from the owner without permission. What is Matthew up to in telling the story in this dramatic way?

What’s more, Matthew combines the story of Jesus’ entry with the story of Jesus overturning the money changers in the temple and then of Jesus healing the blind and lame in the temple while the children proclaim “Hosanna to the Son of David!” In our reading, this text invites us to examine the ways our own communities are going about business as usual while excluding the most vulnerable members of society. It invites us to acts of disruption that shake us out of comfortable modes of operation to make our communities houses of prayer for all people.

Episode 436 The Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31-46)

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 25:31-46, which feels like a culminating text for our weeks studying parables. The text seems to locate us in the future, at the time of the final judgment – but it’s not just a different place on the timeline. The nature of the cosmos has shifted, and maybe something in the nature of Jesus, too, after the resurrection. All of the overlapping groups that have been present in the parables – the wheat and the weeds, if you will - will be sorted into two distinct fates. On a quick read, the grounds for this sorting may not seem too high a bar - we must offer generous, loving care for the bodies and spirits and the dignity of our co-travellers on this earth. But how do we keep this care from becoming primarily an act of self-interest, given the presence of those hell fires - would that kind of motivation ruin it? And wait, did this text just say that we need to do this in every single instance, without exception? The words of this text may feel familiar to you, but boy are they a radical reorientation.

Episode 435 Celebrating 100,000 Downloads SPECIAL EPISODE (Genesis 2:4b-25)

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 19:00:00 -0500

BibleWorm recently passed something of a podcasting milestone with our 100,000 download. To celebrate, we are re-releasing our very first podcast episode, from September of 2019—back when we were still NL;DR. First Bobby and Amy reminisce about our experience of creating BibleWorm, and then we share that first episode. It’s not great, y’all—but at least we can celebrate how far we’ve come!

Episode 434The Parable of the Bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13)

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 25:1–13, the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids who go out to meet the bridegroom but fall asleep when he is delayed. The five wise bridesmaids have enough oil to make it to the wedding, but the five foolish ones neglect to bring extra oil and so are shut outside. Once again, this parable warns us that the kingdom of heaven will be delayed and then come all at once, so we must always be prepared. We wrestle with the individuality of this parable. Why can’t the five prepared bridesmaids just share their lamps with the unprepared ones? But ultimately we conclude that there are just some things we have to do for ourselves—and keeping oil in our metaphorical lamps is one of them. Like it or not, no one can live a righteous life for us. It’s up to us to be prepared.

Episode 433 The Parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22:1-14)

Sun, 05 Mar 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 22:1-14, a parable of a wedding banquet that a king plans for his son … but it doesn’t go quite as expected. We love thinking about the combination of obligation and joy and grandeur and intimacy baked into this story. We REALLY loved the idea of a last minute invitation to a mixed multitude of seemingly random people to come witness these nuptials when the first group of invitees didn’t quite work out. And I’ll be honest, we struggled with how to make sense of the fact that one person from the latter group is found unprepared. How could he have been prepared when there was no time between the invitation and the party! Moving from the register of the story into what we think it is trying to teach about the kingdom being described, maybe that’s exactly the question this text wants us to sit with– if there’s not going to be time later, how can humans best prepare, each of us, right now?

Episode 432 The Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew20:1-16)

Sun, 26 Feb 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 20:1–16, often called the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, in which the kingdom of heaven is said to be like a landowner who pays the laborers a full day’s wage no matter how long they’ve worked. We wrestle with the abject unfairness of this wage system and empathize with the workers who have labored a long day in the hot sun. Yet we also marvel at the generosity of the vineyard owner, who gives everyone what they need for the day no matter how much work they’ve done. Maybe, we think, in the kingdom of heaven people are not rewarded for the labor they provide but rather receive what they need to live a full and abundant life. If we read ourselves as the landowners, this becomes a lesson on how we should conduct our own economic practices, not only paying fair wages but giving generously until everyone has enough. And if we read God as the landowner, then this becomes a parable about God’s radical and endless generosity that welcomes more and more people into the kingdom and treats us all as people of dignity and worth.

Episode 431 Accountability and Forgiveness (Matthew 18:15-35)

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 18:15-35 – important and challenging texts about what happens on the ground, in the real and messy world of human community, when something has gone wrong. How can we hold each other accountable with a loving spirit - and when do we need to ask someone to step back from the community because of their behaviors? What is the relationship between compassion, fairness and punishment – between mercy and judgment – here and now, and in the future kingdom? These are hard questions that kinda we wish we didn’t have to think about – but we are messy creatures, us humans, so we do.

Episode 430 SPECIAL EPISODE Who is the Greatest? (Matthew 18:1-14)

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 19:00:00 -0600

On this special Ash Wednesday episode of BibleWorm we’re reading Matthew 18:1-14 in which the disciples ask Jesus who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus not only refuses to answer the question but insists that one must become like a little child in order to even enter the kingdom of heaven in the first place. It is only the empire that thinks in terms of status and greatness. The kingdom of heaven extends a welcome to all. In fact, Jesus tells us to cut off our hands or pluck out our eyes if they tempt us to think and act according to the imperial logic, which distinguishes the great people from the small people, even in acts of charity. Finally, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep, which teaches us not to pursue fairness or equity but rather to make sure that each person has whatever they may need to live a full and abundant life. As Christians enter into the season of Lent, this text calls us to welcome those without status and seek abundant life for all. That sounds like an amazing way to spend 40 days.

Episode 429 The Transfiguration (Matthew 16:24-17:8)

Sun, 12 Feb 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 16:24-17:8, the story of the transfiguration. We think about symbolic moments like this one, the ones that overflow with meaning, that fill your cup to overflowing, and how difficult it is for us humans to just co-exist with them without trying to grasp onto them somehow. We pull apart the different ways that the word life is used in this passage – preserving life as a focus on avoiding pain, vs preserving life as finding the strength to do what is real and godly even when it is hard … which it will be. And we wonder how we can live with a sense of urgency about the coming kingdom of God, even when the fulfillment seems to have been forestalled.

Episode 428 Parables of the Kingdom (Matthew 13:24-43)

Sun, 05 Feb 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 13:24-43, Jesus’s parables of the kingdom. We talk about how to read parables and why we think Jesus uses parables to declare what has been hidden since the beginning of the world. And we discuss three of Jesus parables, which compare the kingdom of heaven to a field of wheat overplanted with weeds, to yeast leavening bread, and to a mustard seed that grows into a nice shrub where the birds can make a nest. In what way is the kingdom of heaven like these things? We talk about the gleaners in the field who throw the weeds into the furnace and we wrestle with the role of fear in Jesus’s description of the kingdom. But mostly we notice that these parables are about bringing life—to the wheat, to the birds, to the bread—and even to the weeds themselves. Maybe the kingdom of heaven is found in nurturing life in everyone we meet.

Episode 427 Do Not Judge (Matthew 7:1-14, 24-29)

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 7:1-14 and 24-29, a section that includes the golden rule, but also comes at its central idea - what is hateful to you do not do to others - from so many different angles. How does it not only help our community, but our own selves when we steer clear of judgment, focusing instead on our own behaviors, where we actually have some power to change things? We love how Jesus’s teachings seem to alternate between admonitions against certain behaviors and a call to value what is holy within ourselves. And we contemplate the metaphor of God as a rock and foundation – not a shelter from the storm, and not something of spectacular beauty, but a rock. And boy, will you be glad if you built your house there when the storm comes.

Episode 426 Do Not Worry about Tomorrow (Matthew 6:25-34)

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 19:01:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus’s well-known instruction not to worry about tomorrow. We talk about anxiety and the difficulty of living in the present moment, entrusting the future into the hands of a loving God. But once we observe that the passage begins with the word “Therefore,” connecting it to the previous verse, things take a turn. “You cannot serve both God and money,” says Jesus, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow.” As it turns out, this passage is about economic anxiety and the fundamental importance of trusting that God will provide enough for tomorrow so that we can tend to the needs of our community today. We talk about spiritual practices that can quell our anxiety and help us trust in God’s capacity to provide. And we discuss the urgency of forming communities of radical trust, in which we place the needs of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger ahead of our own desires for economic security.

Episode 425 REPLAY The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:7-15)

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm returns to our series on the Bible and Economic Justice with a look at Matthew 6:7-15, a text known in the Christian tradition as the Lord’s prayer. As we read the prayer through the lens of economic justice, we begin to realize that that Jesus is calling his followers toward a life of simple trust in God. We ask enough food for today, we promise to forgive the debts of our neighbors, we ask to kept away from the temptation of plenty. In this way, Jesus says, God’s name is made holy. In this way God’s kingdom will come to earth—here and now, among us. We don’t need to ask for more, Jesus says, because God already knows this is all we need.

Episode 424 The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-20)

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew chapter 5:1-20, the Beatitudes. We dive into some nuances of translation that make a big difference to our understanding of this beautiful and well-known text: what world of meaning is being conjured up with the word “blessed,” or “mercy,” or “meek”? We try to sketch, more and more fully, what this text imagines the proverbial kingdom looks like, and what it would mean to live into it right now. In this text that seems both to sit in its present moment and to extend into the future, the question of what we can do right now – and what we can expect when we do it – is at the front of our minds.

Episode 423 Temptation in the Wilderness (Matthew 4:1-17)

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading Matthew 4:1-17, the story of the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness. We wrestle with the very concept of the devil, which often strikes modern people as an antiquated idea. But once we recognize the ways that the ways that Jesus is tempted, we begin to recognize the work of the devil all around us—in the economic, political, and prestige systems that that tempt us to turn our own lives away from the kingdom of heaven and toward the ways of the Empire. Jesus is first tempted by his own physical need for bread and water, then by his need to demonstrate to others that he is worthy of love, and finally by the possibility of conforming the whole world to his will—temptations that, in one way or another, come to us all. The devil may tempt you to skip this podcast—but don’t do it! This is urgent stuff!

Episode 422 The Baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:1-17)

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew chapter 3, the story of Jesus’s baptism. What does baptism even mean for someone like Jesus – what kind of transition does this mark for him? And what does it mean for someone else to baptize him – can you even imagine the imposter syndrome John must feel? We see in this story a call to action – to do the hard work of turning our hearts and minds. We also get to see the gorgeous and abounding delight that God takes in Jesus at this transitional moment.

Episode 421 The Magi and King Herod (Matthew 2:1-23)

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 19:00:00 -0600

On this special episode of BibleWorm we’re reading the story of Herod and the magi as told in Matthew 2:1-23. This text tells a side of Christmas that we may not want to talk about, as it narrates the story of a fearful King Herod who kills all the babies of Bethlehem in his quest to destroy the baby Jesus, whom he perceives as a threat to his political power. We talk about the arrival of the magi from the East, who discern from the stars that the world is changing, and the religious authorities of Judea, who derive from the text where the child is to be born. We marvel at the power of dreams as a means of God communicating urgent messages that bypass rational thought. And we wrestle with the ways that religious knowledge—and yes, even Christmas— can be coopted by fearful people of power in service to death, asking how people of faith might instead be faithful witnesses to the God of life, who is coming into the world.

Episode 420 The Genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:1-17)

Sun, 18 Dec 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 1:1-17, seventeen juicy verses of genealogy to get us started in this gospel. This origin story seems to be framed a little bit like a new Genesis, giving us all the raw materials, all the ancestors, that went into the creation of this new baby, Jesus. His lineage does offer “legitimacy” insofar as he is in the line of David. But it has both heroes and folks who are not remembered so favorably. And it goes out of its way to name at least a couple of women, all of whom had to abandon social expectations at some point in order to wield the singular power of their life in the way that only they knew was right. It makes us wonder - how do we tell our own stories, our community’s story? Who do we highlight, and who do we leave out? All of it makes us who we are.

Episode 419 Christmas Eve Special Episode (Luke 2:1-20) REPLAY

Thu, 15 Dec 2022 19:00:00 -0600

In this replay of our 2020 Christmas eve special episode, BibleWorm reads Luke 2:1-20. We imagine ourselves with the shepherds in the field, taking in the mindblowing magnitude of their theophany in the field, and wondering who are the proverbial shepherds in our society today. We see not only the theological but the political revolution bubbling up in the story. And we wonder -- though the text is silent on this point -- was there a donkey in the manger? We are willing to bank our reputations on it.

Episode 418 Joseph’s Christmas Dream (Matthew 1:18-25)

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm concludes our Advent series with the less famous version of the Christmas story as told in Matthew 1:18-25. This quieter version of the Christmas story focuses on Joseph, who marries his betrothed Mary despite her unplanned pregnancy, gives Jesus his name, and adopts Jesus into the family line of David, credentialing him as the Jewish messiah. Joseph’s role is mostly to keep his male ego out of the way, and he ultimately does so without hesitation. We also discuss the two names given to Jesus in this text and what they tell us about both Jesus and God. The name Jesus, or Joshua in Hebrew, indicates God’s power to save humankind from the powers of sin and death, while the name Emmanuel, or “God with us,” gestures to the intimate presence of that God here among us in quiet and unassuming ways. In this baby Jesus, God’s saving power is present among us. What a beautiful image.

Episode 417 SPECIAL EPISODE Biblical Women: Bathsheba (1 Kings 1)

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 19:00:00 -0600

On this special episode in our series about biblical women, BibleWorm discusses Bathsheba. We met her first in II Samuel 11, but she was more acted upon than an actor herself in that story. This week we meet her again in I Kings 1, when David has gone from a model of virility, power, and traditional (sometimes toxic) masculinity to a fairly pitiable state in his old age. At this awkward moment when David is still King but is losing control of both the kingdom and his own facilities, it is Bathsheba alone who knows how to take the wheel. Trust, intimacy, loyalty and power all look a little different in this story. Can you find them?

Episode 416 Gentle Justice (Isaiah 42:1-9)

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm continues on in the third week of our Advent series, reading Isaiah 42:1-9, one of the well-known Servant Songs of Isaiah. We talk about traditional interpretations of the servant, some which view the servant as the Messiah but others which view the servant as the people of Israel—or by extension, the people of faith. In typical BibleWorm fashion, we try to read it as both—a view of the Messiah we are waiting for and a model for how we should try to be in the meantime. In that light, we discuss Isaiah’s vision of the servant as one who brings justice to the nations, not through violent retribution but by showing gentleness and compassion to the most vulnerable. “I have called you for a good reason,” says God, “to open blind eyes and to lead the prisoners from prison.” That is what the servant is to do—and that is what you and I can do even here and now, as we wait for God to do a new thing.

Episode 415 For a Time Such as This (Esther 4:1-17)

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Esther chapter 4, the story of a woman who didn’t know the power that she had … until suddenly she did. Her story makes us think of what it is to have a fate that is tied to the most vulnerable people – arguably a fate we all have. It made us wonder about the breadth of details in a person’s life story that prepare them in some way for the biggest challenges they will face. And it made us ask - what is possible once we put aside the primary goal of protecting ourselves?

Episode 414 Wait for It Still (Habakkuk 1:1-7; 2:1-4; 3:3b-6, 17-19)

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm enters into the Christian season of Advent by reading from the prophet Habakkuk. We marvel at the way Habakkuk moves us from the articulation of profound suffering to the casting of a hopeful vision and then to expectant rejoicing in a restoration that has not yet come. We discuss the urgency of being honest about suffering and despair, not just in Habakkuk’s day but in ours as well. We think about the importance of articulating a vision that is so profound that it can inspire hope and yet so simple that it can be read by people on the run. And we ponder the beauty of a resilient hope that rejoices even in the midst of despair, believing that the world has already turned even though there is no evidence that anything has changed.

Episode 413 Swords into Plowshares (Isaiah 36:1-3, 13-20; 37:1-7; 2:1-4)

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Isaiah 36:1-3, 13-20; 37:1-7; and then 2:1-4 - a set of texts that calls us to sit with questions about the power of rhetoric to confuse, mislead, and exhaust us in times of fear and conflict. How can we preserve our energy for the proverbial moment of birth, when the stakes could not be higher? What would the world be like if political struggle and violence could be taken off the table – what could we turn our attention to instead?

Episode 412 Micah’s Ideal Ruler (Micah 1:1-5; 5:2-5a; 6:6-8)

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm moves into the prophetic literature with Micah 1:1-5; 5:2-5a; and 6:6-8, one of the most famous passages in all of the Hebrew Bible. We talk about the prophet Micah, who prophesied to the Jerusalem elites reminding them that the economic and military decisions of the centralized authority have profound effects on people living far away from the centers of power. Micah envisions a new ruler for the community, reaching all the way back to Bethlehem, to the time before David was king, to call for a humble shepherd who will gently guide the people toward peace and prosperity rather than exploiting his own economic and military power. And we talk about Micah’s famous instruction to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God, which calls us back to the Torah and to the concrete actions that make for beloved community, both then and now.

Episode 411 The Healing of Naaman (1 Kings 5:1-15)

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of the Elisha and Naaman in 2 Kings 5:1-15. The story focuses on the Aramean general Naaman, who is successful in battle but hindered by a case of leprosy that no one can cure. When an Israelite girl tells Naaman to visit the prophet Elisha in Israel, it sets in motion a drama animated by the peculiar expectations of people in power about how the world should work—proper chains of authority, proper expressions of hospitality…and proper rituals of healing. Naaman is offended when Elisha doesn’t come to the door to see him and even more upset that Elisha should tell him to bathe in the river Jordan. We talk about the ways our expectations of how things should be can hinder our ability to experience the miraculous, how people outside of positions of power are often the ones who can see most clearly, and the possibility that God’s healing power is already in the world, not requiring someone to mediated it with a wave of the hand but only someone who can recognize God’s work and point others in the right direction.

Episode 410 SPECIAL EPISODE Biblical Women: Rahab (Joshua 2)

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 19:00:00 -0500

It's time for another special episode! Today we read the story of Rahav in Joshua 2 -- she is a harlot living in the walls of the city of Jericho who is at the very core of Israel's success as they move into the promised land. How are we to understand this character who has so little power in any official sense, but who seems to know more than anyone else among the people of Jericho or the people of Israel? How do we understand the faith, the moral compass, and the courage of this lifelong sex worker? Does she change over the course of this story - is this a paradigmatic conversion story, as most ancient interpreters read it? It will surprise you not at all to know that we think it's far more complicated than that.

Episode 409 Solomon’s Wisdom (1 Kings 3:4-28)

Sun, 23 Oct 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads 1 Kings 3:4-28, the story of a young King Solomon asking for wisdom – and getting it! He displays his wisdom in a story so famous that Seinfeld based an episode on it – the story of the baby who is claimed by two mothers. But it’s not just a puzzle to solve - this story arises out of genuine tragedy, and the stakes could not be higher. What kind of wisdom, exactly, does Solomon display? Is it focused on discerning what happened in the past, or is it a future looking wisdom, trying to put things on the best available course? Which mother do you as a reader imagine is telling the truth, and what from your own life experience makes you think so? And finally, let’s raise up the woman who stepped in to save the child’s life, even if it meant being separated from her own infant. She is the real hero.

Episode 408 Confronting David (2 Samuel 11:1-5, 26-27; 12:1-9; and Psalm 51:1-9)

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of David and Bathsheba as told in 2 Samuel 11:1-5 and 26-27, 2 Samuel 12:1-9 and Psalm 51:1-9. We talk about the complacency of David, who stays at home at the time when kings go out to war, and the ways his loss of a sense of responsibility to the community leads him to violate Bathsheba, Uriah, and the will of God. We discuss the complexity of the biblical portrayal of David, who is a great biblical hero and yet a deeply flawed human being, and we wonder whether we have lost the capacity for recognizing such complexity today. And we give thanks for the compassion of God, who can forgive even so awful a thing as David has done…and yet we wish for more from David, who seemingly makes no attempt to repair the human damage he has done. Forgiveness without reparation and reconciliation feels a little cheap to us, to be honest, and we wish to have seen more from David…and from God.

Episode 407 Retelling the Story (Joshua 24:1-18)

Sun, 09 Oct 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Israel’s covenant renewal ceremony in Joshua 24:1-18. We wrestle with this difficult text, which comes at the conclusion of the conquest of the land, after the Israelites have annihilated the Canaanites from their midst. On the one hand, we talk about the problematics of having a conquest narrative at the core of the biblical tradition, and we wrestle with what such a text can justify—and has justified—throughout history. On the other hand, we acknowledge that the core of this text is about God’s providence—giving land and security to a people who had themselves been abused, enslaved, and murdered at the hands of the Egyptians for more than 400 years. In the end, we reflect on the importance of remembering our stories and of retelling them, acknowledging the painful realities of the past while claiming the promises of God for a better future

Episode 406 SPECIAL EPISODE Biblical Women: Tamar (Genesis 38:1-26)

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 19:00:00 -0500

BibleWorm begins our special series on women in the biblical text with the story of Tamar in Genesis 38. We bristle immediately at the hypocrisy of the men in the story who only pretend to hold to the societal norms they impose on her, and in doing so leave Tamar stuck in a holding pattern after the death of her husband. We draw out the profoundly different experiences of the man and the woman who lose a spouse in this story, and think about the risk and lack of privacy that seems built into walking through the world with a body that can get pregnant. It is a story for our time indeed. But we would be remiss if we did not also raise up Tamar’s strategic thinking, profound loyalty, and courage.

Episode 405 Living the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19:1-8 and 21:1-21)

Sun, 02 Oct 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of God giving the 10 commandments to Israel as told in Exodus 19:1-8 and 20:1-21. We draw out the idea that God has been calling these people out of Egypt and through the wilderness in order to make them a treasured possession among all the peoples of the earth. We think about God giving the 10 commandments to the people—and to us—to show the importance of integrity and fidelity in relationships with God, with each other, and with ourselves. And we marvel at the nature of God—1,000 parts compassion and 4 parts judgment. That’s the recipe for a covenanted life with us humans, who try and fail and try again.

Episode 404 Crossing the Red Sea (Exodus 14:5-14, 21-29)

Sun, 25 Sep 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm discusses one of the most well-known stories in the entire Bible: the miracle of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea as told in Exodus 14:5-14 and 21-29. We talk about Pharaoh’s relentless pursuit of economic profit through the use of military force, and how that singlemindedness leads to the downfall of empires, both in Pharaoh’s time and in our own. We admire the courage of the Israelites, who trust in the possibility of a better future, despite all the evidence, and find themselves birthed again through the waters of the sea. And we remember the Egyptian soldiers and their families, caught up in a struggle not of their own making and mourn the senseless loss of life, both then and now.

Episode 403 Joseph in Potiphar’s House (Genesis 39:1-23)

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm discusses the story of Joseph in the house of Potiphar in Genesis 39:1-23. We talk about the character of Joseph, an Israelite enslaved in the house of an Egyptian, and the profound vulnerability he experiences at the whims of others, no matter what decisions he makes. And we wrestle with the theology of God’s blessing in this text, since Joseph’s life seems to go from bad to worse even while the text tells us that God has blessed him. And at the same time we recognize the insistence of this text that it is God’s blessing that stays with Joseph in all circumstances. God is with Joseph—and with us—no matter what.

Episode 402 Go to Be a Blessing (Genesis 12:1-9)

Sun, 11 Sep 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm discusses God’s blessing of Abraham in Genesis 12:1-9. We talk about the way God appears to Abraham when he and his family seem to have gotten stuck in a city named for his dead brother Haran, encouraging Abraham to continue moving to his original goal, the land of Canaan. We think about God’s command to Abraham to “Go for yourself,” and we ponder the ways that following God’s calling can often be as much about finding ourselves as it is about reaching some external destination. And we talk about God’s declaration to Abraham that “All the peoples of the earth will be blessed in you,” and we wonder whether this might be a good benchmark of faithful living—is the world blessed by our presence or is it not?

Episode 401 From Destruction to Covenant (Genesis 6:5-22; 8:6-14; 9:8-17)

Sun, 04 Sep 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re kicking off Season 4 of BibleWorm with Genesis 6–9, a text that is part children’s story, part post-apocalyptic nightmare: the story of the Great Flood and Noah’s ark. We talk about God’s regret at having made humankind and the challenge of knowing when things have failed and it’s time to start over. We imagine what it must have been like for Noah and those with him to endure many months of uncertainty and then the difficulty of knowing when the danger was finally over. And we discuss God’s movement from violent destruction to covenantal commitment, and we wonder whether we, too, can learn to respond to disappointment with deeper relationship rather than with violence.

Episode 351The Poor Will Always Be with You (John 12:1-8)

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 350 The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:7-15)

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 349 The Eye of the Needle (Luke 4:16-21 and 18:18-30)

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 348 What Does the Lord Require of You? (Micah 6:6-15 and 7:1-7)

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 347 Economics and Holiness (Leviticus 19:9-18 and 33-37)

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 346 Biblical Faith and Debt Forgiveness (Deuteronomy 15:1-11 and 24:10-15)

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 345 Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21 and Philippians 4:4-7)

Sun, 29 May 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week's episode begins with the story of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-21. What a powerful first act of the spirit, to enable people to speak and understand across difference, offering a kind of repair to the Tower of Babel fiasco. We lift up the diversity of the community being called in here – not only in their languages, but also to different genders and ages, and to different modes of communicating with the divine. And then we circle back to conclude our reading of Philippians with the softest landing imaginable in 4:4-7. Coming on the heels of the fiery image of the last days in Acts, we nestle into the sense of comfort that comes with God’s nearness here, calling us into a state of radical gentleness and a peace that surpasses all understanding. After devoting our year to study and understanding together - which has been pretty fantastic itself - this is a profound blessing to take in.

Episode 344 Living the Christ Hymn (Philippians 2:1-13)

Sun, 22 May 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2:1-13. We talk about Paul’s invitation to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, who gave up equality with God to be born in human form and die on the cross. We ask what it might mean to give up our own privileges, to divest ourselves of those things that give us higher status in order to be present with the disinherited and the marginalized. We wrestle with what it means to look to the interests of others before our own and how that can be both a wonderful and dangerous idea. And we reflect on Christ’s ultimate exaltation and the promise of salvation. Is it really being humble if you only do it to gain a heavenly reward? Or is there more to it than that?

Episode 343 May Your Love Overflow (Philippians 1:1-18a)

Sun, 15 May 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Philippians 1:1-18a, where Paul begins the most loving and encouraging letter we can fathom to the people of Phillipi. We imagine the intersection of longing and compassion that Paul describes, and locate that feeling somewhere deep in your gut. We spend a long time turning over the idea of overflowing love that is rich with knowledge and insight, and wonder about the inverse – pursuing knowledge and insight with the express intention of becoming ever more capable of love through our learning. This is not the express goal of most learning ventures … but maybe it should be?

Episode 342 Paul in Athens (Acts 17:16-34)

Sun, 08 May 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading Acts 17:16-34, the story of Paul’s visit to the Greek cultural center of Athens. We marvel at the way Paul engages with the people of Athens, appreciating their history and culture while also standing firm in his own beliefs. He admires Greek religiosity, quotes Greek poetry, and engages Greek philosophy, yet he does not hesitate when it comes time to express his own contrary beliefs in judgment and resurrection. We wonder why it often seems so difficult for us to do the same—whether by failing to recognize the value of other belief systems or by faltering when it comes time to state the essential claims of our own. Paul makes it look so simple! We wonder if we can do the same.

Episode 341 Of Jailers and Slave Girls (Acts 16:16-40)

Sun, 01 May 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Acts 16:16-40, a story of Paul and Silas being thrown into prison in Phillipi. It’s a rich and complex story about power and faith and imprisonment and freedom, and it raises the ever-present question - how do we overturn harmful systems of power, while also protecting the vulnerable people who are bound up in those systems? We are amazed at the transformation that happens while Paul and Silas are in prison, where they sing and the others listen; where nobody bothers to run away once the shackles that bind their bodies are opened. And we are only more amazed at the care that Paul and Silas have taken to protect the prison guard. But there is someone else in this story whose fate they seem to overlook, whose story seems primarily to set up the main story. So we wonder, what ever happened to the slave girl?

Episode 340 The Conversions of Paul and Ananias (Acts 9:1-19a)

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Saul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus as told in Acts 9:1-19a. We reflect on Saul, the Greek-speaking Jew from Tarsus who is also known as Paul, a Roman citizen from Asia minor. We talk about how his hybrid identities—both Jew and Roman—may motivate both his persecution of others and ultimately his embrace of difference within the Christian faith. We wrestle with this story as a conversion story, concluding that Paul is ultimately converted not from Judaism to Christianity but from the way of violence to the way of openness and embrace. And we reflect on the disciple Ananias, who overcomes his fear and suspicion of Saul in order to welcome him as a brother in Christ.

Episode 339 Jesus Appears to Thomas (John 20:19-31)

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads John 20:19-31, the last text we will read together in the book of John. We sit for a long while with the question - what does it mean for the disciples to be sent into the world by Jesus in the way that Jesus was sent into the world by the Father? We give doubting Thomas some love, lifting up his bravery … and really seeing the bravery it takes to hang in there through moments of doubt and to speak what you need out loud. And we step back to look at the role this gospel might imagine itself to have in someone else’s life of faith – it is not the beginning and the end, but more like a starter pack, or a reserve to tap when you need it. Because we will all have our own story.

Episode 338 Come to the Tomb (John 20:1-18)

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Easter resurrection as told in John 20:1-18. We compare Mary’s mournful lingering at the tomb to Peter’s footrace with the Beloved Disciple, and we notice how the story unfolds a little more for each of them: Peter sees the clothes, the Beloved Disciple believes, Mary encounters the risen Lord. And we think, however you come to the tomb it is enough, whether lingering in your grief or racing in your urgency. It takes all of us together to recognize new life taking shape in the midst of death. You can come to the tomb just as you are.

Episode 337 Good Friday SPECIAL EPISODE (John 19:23-42)

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 19:00:00 -0500

On this Good Friday special episode, BibleWorm reads John 20:23-42, the account of the crucifixion. The intermingling here of cruelty and love, of care and humiliation, creates such a rich and complicated story - and mostly, we just try to hold it all. We raise up the way that even on the cross, Jesus is helping his people find new ways to love each other. We hold tenderly the fact that after he has died, his body is afforded the honor that was absent in his last hours of life. And we wonder what it means for John to cite scripture about how God protects for the righteous in this moment, even this one.

Episode 336 The Executed King (John 12:12-19 and 19:16b-22)

Sun, 03 Apr 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm is pairing the Palm Sunday story in John 12:12-19 with the continuation of the crucifixion story in John 19:16b-22. We wrestle with the image of kingship in John’s Gospel, with the crowds hailing Jesus as “king of the Jews” even as Pilate sneeringly executes him as king of the Jews. We contrast Rome’s militant view of kingship with Zechariah’s vision of an anti-militarist king ultimately embodied in Jesus. We talk about the Empire’s way of violence and Jesus’s way of self-giving love that refuses to exercise power over others but instead lifts up even the ones who have betrayed him. And we discuss the danger these texts have posed throughout the centuries, especially for our Jewish siblings, and recognize the urgency of biblical interpretation that brings more love to the world rather than more violence.

Episode 335 The Trial Before Pilate (John 19:1-16a)

Sun, 27 Mar 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads John 19:1-16a, a continuation of Jesus’s trial, if one can even call it that. Despite the fact that Pilate repeatedly says he finds no charge against Jesus, the machinery of this human penal system is now in motion, and Pilate seems unwilling to stop it. We pull out our hair watching the web of forces that seem to hold sway over the characters – both the religious authorities and the empire’s authorities – many of which are based in fear, and none of which are based in speaking and acting upon what one actually believes to be true. And we see pretty clearly that indeed the empire would lose its power if it could not hold the fear of death over its people. Good heavens, humans are a disaster.

Episode 334 What is Truth? (John 18:28-40)

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jesus’s trial before the Roman governor Pilate as told in John 18:28-40. We talk about the complex interaction of religious authority and political authority and the ways they often operate to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. We discuss the concept of truth and what truth even means in an age of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. And we wrestle with what it means to follow a king who refuses to wield the power of death over and against the enemy but instead submits to death in self-giving love, giving witness to the ultimate power of life. Can the kingdoms of the earth follow this path of love? According to this text, they cannot. But can we? That is the question.

Episode 333 Peter’s Denial (John 18:12-27)

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 15:05:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads John 18:12-27, the story of Jesus being taken into custody by the religious authorities. We try to climb into the character of Paul - the one disciple who defends Jesus with the sword, one of only 2 who chooses to follow him into the next dangerous place, who then unravels in his loyalty and denies him. We think about this in light of Jesus’s attempt to send the disciples home once he has been arrested – Jesus’s recognition, maybe, that humans won’t have the strength to be with him as his story unfolds. We reflect on how both of our faiths, Jewish and Christian, are built with the understanding that humans can strive and strive and have the very best of intentions, and we will still have gaps where we will just need grace and forgiveness. It is a wretching thing to fall into the gaps.

Episode 332 Jesus Washes the Disciples’ Feet (John 13:1-17)

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet as told in John 13:1-17. We talk about the profound way Jesus’s actions destabilize the social hierarchy, envisioning a community in which everyone honors and lifts up the other regardless of social status. We marvel at the idea that the incarnation seems to have made God’s relationship with humans more intimate—from God loving the world in John 3:16 to Jesus loving us as his own in this text. And we wrestle with the presence of Judas the betrayer at this intimate encounter. If Jesus chooses to wash even Judas’s feet, what does that mean for the way we treat those we suspect of betraying us today?

Episode 331 The Resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1-44)

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week we read John 11:1-44, the story of Lazarus being resurrected from the dead. We see the fully human Jesus unfold and bloom in this story – a Jesus who must hold back from healing someone for whom he holds a particular love, a Jesus who weeps for a man’s death before he calls him back to life. We hear this Jesus say “I am the resurrection” – the light, the word, and now even the resurrection. In just one chapter, he embodies the biggest and most abstract realities, and also walks into the depths and particularities of human suffering.

Episode 330 SPECIAL EPISODE The Gate and the Good Shepherd (John 10:1-18)

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 19:00:00 -0600

On this special Ash Wednesday episode we’re discussing the image of Jesus as both the shepherd and the gate in John 10:1-18. We talk about what it means to be gathered into the sheep pen and why, according to this text, you can’t simply stay there. Somebody is going to lead you back out into a dangerous world—what matters is who you follow. We think about Jesus as the gate, who keeps out the thieves and outlaws and lets only the good shepherd in. And we think about Jesus as the good shepherd, who knows our names and is willing to lay down his life to keep us safe. And, on this Ash Wednesday, we ask what it means for us to be people of faith willing to go forth into a dangerous world, leaving the safe confines of our spiritual enclaves to bring abundant life to the world.

Episode 329 The Light of the World (John 9:1-41)

Sun, 20 Feb 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week we read John 9:1-41, the story of a man whose blindness is healed by Jesus. We watch the incremental changes in the way the man seems to understand what has happened. We wonder about the different beliefs that may lie behind the statement that God’s work could be revealed through this person in particular, precisely because he is blind. And we think a lot about the things that garner our attention, that make us think we know, that actually blind us to whole layers of reality.

Episode 328 Living Water (John7:35-52)

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week we’re reading the story of Jesus’s offer of living water as told in John 7:37-52. We talk about the significance of the Holy Spirit as living water, and wonder about what it means when Jesus says that living water will flow out from the heart of believers? Is it possible that we can be sources of living water? We notice that the religious leaders reject the idea of Jesus as the messiah simply because he comes from Galilee, and we wonder whether we, too, sometimes miss the amazing things that God is doing in our midst because we get too wrapped up in the fixed meaning of Scripture. And we wrestle with the tension between the religious scholars and the common people, in that day and in our own. How might it be possible to embrace the wisdom of the people while also guarding against dangerous theologies. All that and more in today’s BibleWorm!

Episode 327 The Bread of Life (John 6:35-69)

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads John 6:35-69--which is 10 verses beyond the narrative lectionary, because we just couldn’t help ourselves. Why does Jesus lean so hard into the shocking language that his followers ought to eat his flesh and drink his blood? What is it about food – as a universal human need, and also as an appetite that can go way beyond need - that opens up what Jesus is asking of his followers? Does the metaphor suggest an elevation of spiritual needs in place of physical ones, or does it wrap them ever more closely together? This teaching is difficult, say the disciples - indeed it is.

Episode 326 Two Healing Stories (John 4:46-5:18)

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads two miracle stories told in John 4:46-5:18. In the first story, Jesus saves the child of a royal official, who believes Jesus’s word even before he sees evidence of the healing. In the second story, Jesus heals a man who has been sitting by the healing waters of Beth Zatha for 38 years with no one to help him into the pool. We wonder how a community could allow someone to suffer for so long and marvel at the healing Jesus offers him. We ponder the motivations of Jesus, who seems reluctant to heal in one case and heals without being asked in the other. And we struggle with how to read miracle stories in our own day, when all too often those who need miracles seem not to receive them. How do we read miracles stories in a miracle-free world?

Episode 325 SPECIAL EPISODE Exodus and Interest Free Loans (Laura Kahn, JIFLA)

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 19:00:00 -0600

On this special episode, we are joined by Laura Kahn, board chair of an organization called Jewish Interest Free Loans of Atlanta, to read from the Jewish lectionary parshah Mishpatim (Exodus 22:21-28). We discuss the ways that JIFLA enacts and embodies the teachings of Exodus 22 when it comes to their lending practices.

Episode 324 The Woman at the Well (John 4:1-42)

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm reads John 4:1-42, a story of Jesus’s encounter with a Samaritan woman. What starts off as an almost comical “Who’s on first” kind of scene, where the woman and Jesus seem to be speaking right past each other, ends with a gorgeous and profound and HUGE statement from this woman – that Jesus may be not just the messiah as the biblical tradition has understood that, but the savior of the world. Our reading moves freely between the metaphorical, metaphysical, and truly just plain sense. These are two humans who are working past social norms. And the element of the conversation that captures her imagination is not lofty metaphor. But it’s enough. And when it comes down to it, enough is …. enough.

Episode 323 For God So Loved the World (John 3:1-21)

Sun, 16 Jan 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jesus’s nighttime visit from the Pharisee Nicodemus in John 3:1-21. We talk about what it means to be born again from above, giving up one’s life as a child of the Empire to be reborn into a life of reconciliation with both God and neighbor, We wrestle with the idea that those who love the darkness are already condemned, and we wonder what that means for our own denials of past and present injustices that prevent us from receiving the new life promised by God. And we marvel at that most famous claim that in Jesus God moves toward the world not in condemnation but in reconciling love—and we wonder if we might be able to do the same.

Episode 322 Disruption at the Temple (John2:13-25)

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week we read John 2:13-25, this gospel’s version of Jesus’s spectacular scene in the Temple at Passover. Unlike the synoptic gospels, John does not suggest any corruption or dishonesty at play in the Temple system - so what is bothering Jesus? We have an honest, interfaith conversation about what happens when one person stands up for what they think is right, in a way that ensures that many others cannot do what they think is right. We wonder how lonely it might have been for Jesus to walk through the world knowing already the pitfalls of human nature; knowing that he couldn’t really entrust himself to anyone. And we recognize again and again the abiding patience of the disciples, who couldn’t possibly understand the import of what Jesus said as he said it, but held onto the memory of it to unlock it later.

Episode 321 Water Into Wine (John 2:1-11)

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana in John 2:1-11. We talk about the improvisational nature of Jesus’s first miraculous sign, which he does at the urging of his mother even though it is not yet his time. And we wonder whether we, too, might be improvisational when it comes to fulfilling our own callings. We also ponder the subtlety of Jesus’s first miracle, which almost no one seems to notice, and which the bridegroom ultimately gets credit for, and we wonder what else God might be up to in the world that nobody seems to notice. And we talk about abundant wine as a sign of the arrival of the messianic age and imagine the hospitality of God’s coming kingdom, which has plenty of merriment to go around.

Episode 320 Come and See! (John 1:35-51)

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads the story of John the Baptist as told in John 1:19-34. We ponder John’s declaration of who he is not as well as who he is and we think about what it would mean to confess our own identity in the world. We talk about John’s acknowledgment that he himself would not have would not have recognized Jesus if it hadn’t been for the dove descending on him, and we wonder if recognizing Jesus today might be a little more more complicated than we sometimes think. And we discuss the idea of Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, wrestling with what it means to call Jesus a Lamb and what that has to do with the brokenness of both ourselves and the world.

Episode 319 The Testimony of John the Baptist (John 1:19-34)

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 19:00:00 -0600

Episode 318 (REPLAY) Christmas Eve SPECIAL EPISODE (Luke 2:1-20)

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 19:00:00 -0600

In this special Christmas eve episode from 2020, we read Luke 2:1-20. We imagine ourselves with the shepherds in the field, taking in the mindblowing magnitude of their theophany in the field, and wondering who are the proverbial shepherds in our society today. We see not only the theological but the political revolution bubbling up in the story. And we wonder -- though the text is silent on this point -- was there a donkey in the manger? We are willing to bank our reputations on it.

Episode 317 In the Beginning Was the Word (John 1:1-18)

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm begins the Gospel of John - chapter 1: 1-18. We slide between John’s images of Word and Light and Life, and Grace and Truth, and try to hold all of them in our hearts, if not in our minds, at once. We try to place ourselves historically as we read, recognizing in this poetic, mystical, and awfully complex bit of text the peak of the period of differentiation between the Jewish community and this budding Christian one - and we grapple with the best way to read and understand these in our very different historical context.

Episode 316 Come to the Waters (Isaiah 55:1-13)

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Isaiah 55:1-13, a gorgeous poem of hope, persuasion, urgency and witness. Set either right near the end of the exile or right afterwards, it paints the picture of a limited window of time when God is ready to be sought and found, preserving a sense of God’s freedom, saying it is time, right now, to make a move toward God. But while this divine unpredictability might sound a little frightening, it also underscores the vastly forgiving nature of God. And finally, it elevates the natural world as a witness -- to God’s power, and to our lives – offering yet another connection between us and the divine.

Episode 315 The Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

Sun, 28 Nov 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week we read Ezekiel 37:1-14, another text set in the time of the exile. In a book known for bizarre visions and sign-acts, this chapter shows us the valley of dry bones. We dive into the great chasm between hopeless and hopeful, and find Ezekiel somewhere in the middle, willing to prophesy to scattered bones in a field as he's been told, but honestly unsure what will happen when he does. We discuss the role of stories that feel scary in our lives of faith, and how the concrete images of bodies and of death in this chapter force us to go all the way to our most frightening thoughts before it pulls us back. And we see the sort of alchemy between God’s power and Ezekiel’s willingness to speak God’s words into the world, even when he’s not entirely sure what will happen.

Episode 314 Seek the Peace of the City (Jeremiah 29:1-14)

Sun, 21 Nov 2021 19:00:00 -0600

For this first week of advent, BibleWorm reads Jeremiah 29:1-14, a text of in-between times, historically set between the first exile from Jerusalem and the full devastation of the second exile. We imagine the grief and confusion of the people in exile, and try to take to heart Jeremiah’s call to them -- live your life. Even here, even now, right where you are. How do we accept the wildly imperfect present and use the fullness of our heart and our limited power in this moment, without getting so comfortable in the present that we forget the greater, underlying hope for the future? How can we exist in both worlds? This question resonates through traumatic moments that are societal and personal, past and present, and Jeremiah holds us in that tension.

Episode 313 SPECIAL EPISODE The Old Testament for a Complex World (Dr. Cameron Howard)

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 19:00:00 -0600

On this special edition of the podcast we talk with Dr. Cameron Howard, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, about her latest book, The Old Testament for a Complex World: How the Bible’s Dynamic Testimony Points to New Life for the Church. We talk about biblical interpretation as being less like digging for buried treasure and more like an atomic reaction that generates new energy when text and interpreter come together. We discuss the multiple authors of the Hebrew Bible and the way they represent not a unified voice that speaks to us in absolutes but a diverse set of witnesses that invites us into a conversation about God and the life of faith. And we discuss the ways in which the Bible remixes ancient Near Easter traditions and how that might be a model for creating our own theological remixes today.

Episode 312 Unto You A Child Is Born (Isaiah 9:1-7)

Sun, 14 Nov 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Isaiah 9:1-7, which celebrates the arrival of a righteous king to restore the people. We talk about the anxiety of walking in darkness and the joy that comes when dawn finally breaks. We discuss the experience of oppression, bearing the yoke of hard labor and the rod of the stern ruler and contrast that with the arrival of a new king who breaks the rod and who bears authority on his own shoulders. And we discuss the promise of a new ruler, wonderful counselor, mighty god, everlasting father, prince of peace and wrestle with the significance of that ruler both in Isaiah’s time and in our own.

Episode 311 Let Justice Roll Down (Amos 1:1-2 and 5:14-24)

Sun, 07 Nov 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week we move into the world of prophecy and poetry with Amos 1:1-2 and 5:14-15 and 18-24. We situate Amos’s call to hate evil and love good within his broader message of economic justice. We make ourselves the audience of this prophecy, and sit with the idea that if we keep taking more than we need as we go about our daily lives, any real communion with God through worship or through ritual will be impossible. But Amos isn’t asking us to sacrifice ourselves for someone else, he is asking us to have faith that someone else’s thriving will benefit us, too. When justice flows down like a mighty stream, all of our proverbial fields are watered.

Episode 310 Elijah and the Still Small Voice of God (1 Kings 19:1-18)

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week Bobby and Amy read 1 Kings 19:1-18, the story of Elijah’s encounter with God on Mount Horeb. We talk about Elijah’s journey into the wilderness and God’s miraculous offering of bread for the difficult journey ahead. We think about God’s appearance to Elijah as a “still small voice” and wonder why God sometimes appears as a pillar of fire but here as a nearly inaudible whisper. And we wrestle with the threat of violence, both divine and human, and wonder when we, like Elijah, might need to take a step back from our zealousness.

Episode 309 Solomon‘s Temple (1 Kings 5:1-5 and 8:1-13)

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week Amy and Bobby read 1 Kings 5:1-6 13-18 and 8:1-13, the story of the Temple’s construction. We think a lot about the messy intermingling of self-interest and service to God or to the good, in Solomon’s time and today, and we appreciate that while the text doesn’t comment on it, it doesn’t try to hide it, either. We see the need to be suspicious about the way that religion can be manipulated to gain political power. And we sit with the almost amusing juxtaposition of an infinite God, who dwells in a cloud, who travels the desert, coming to inhabit this incredibly grand, seemingly permanent, and deeply human structure of cedar. It is a slightly awkward but sort of sweet meeting place for humans and the divine.

Episode 308 The Anointing of David (1 Samuel 16:1-13 and Psalm 51:10-14)

Sun, 17 Oct 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read 1 Samuel 16:1-13 and Psalm 51:10-14, the story of David’s anointing and David’s prayer of contrition. We talk about the odd mixture of the religious and the political that permeates both this text and our own lives. We ponder the claim that God looks on the human heart rather than the outer appearance and wonder exactly what kind of heart God might be looking for. And we wrestle with the fact that in this text God uses a religious ceremony to distract the people from what God is really doing in anointing David. What does that mean for the way we practice religion today?

Episode 307 The Call of Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1-21)

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads 1 Sam 3:1-21, where Samuel in his youth is first called by God. We are enamored of this text where the prophet doesn’t realize it is God talking, and we reflect on the role of our community and our mentors in recognizing the divine voice … or to gut check us when it might just be indigestion. We are moved by the loving and complex relationship between young Samuel and his father-figure, Eli, and its numerous points of connection with the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. And over and over again, we see the importance of saying what needs to be said, even when it’s hard -- and the power our speech can have in shaping reality.

Episode 306 Manna in the Wilderness (Exodus 16:1-18)

Sun, 03 Oct 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week Bobby and Amy talk about Exodus 16:1-18, the story of manna in the wilderness. We’re only 6 weeks out of slavery in Egypt, and already the people are anxious about where their next meal is going to come from. We talk about the pernicious power of economies of accumulation, which convince us that there is not enough, turning our neighbors into competitors. We talk about the nature of miracles and the contrast between the pillar of fire in the Exodus and today’s thin layer of dusty bread that prompts the people to say, “What is that?” And we think about the ways God’s provision is like a locking Tupperware container. You’ll just have to trust on that one.

Episode 305 The Call of Moses (Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; 4:1-10)

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read Exod 2:23-25 3:1-15 4:10-17 -- stories of the earliest days in God and Moses’s relationship. We are struck that it is a full throated and raw cry that draws God’s attention back to God’s own covenented people. We are humbled to witness the sharing of God’s actual name, and how it both has particularity and intimacy that the title “God” does not, and how it is itself as broad in its meaning as any word we can imagine. I will be what I will be, or I am what I am, or I am becoming what I am becoming. How does Moses -- and how do we, as mere humans -- have a relationship with something as big as God, as big as the verb “to be”? We think it helps to have company.

Episode 304 SPECIAL EPISODE Brent Strawn: Lies My Preacher Told Me

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this special episode of BibleWorm we talk with Dr. Brent Strawn, professor of Old Testament at Duke University Divinity School and the author of Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at the Old Testament from Westminster John Knox Press. We discuss common misunderstandings Christians may have about the Hebrew Scriptures and how a better of understanding of the Scripture can enrich both the life of faith and interfaith relationships among Christians and Jews. We discuss the relationship of the Bible to history and whether “historically accurate” is an adequate understanding of what it means to say that the Bible is “true.” We discuss God’s violence in the Old Testament and the difference between a God who is wrathful by nature and a God who exercises wrath on behalf of the poor and the oppressed. And we think about the challenges of interfaith dialogue about Scripture, and whether it is worth it, in the end, to read with people unlike ourselves.

Episode 303 The Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 27:1-23 and 28:10-17)

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week we find ourselves in Genesis 27 and 28, the stories of Jacob deceiving Isaac to receive his blessing and Jacob’s late night encounter with God at Bethel. We wonder at the ways of God, who works outside of human systems of privilege, blessing the younger son over the older and prophesying through the mother rather than the father. We struggle with the deception of Rebekah and Jacob and what it means to follow God faithfully when one is excluded from power. And we marvel at God’s gracious appearance to Jacob on the road to Haran, reminding us to be attentive to God, who often shows up in unexpected places.. Hang onto your sheepskins everybody, it’s about to get real.

Episode 302 The Binding of Isaac (Genesis 21:1-3 and 22:1-14)

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read Genesis 21:1-3 and 22:1-14, the harrowing account of God’s command that Abraham sacrifice his long awaited and much-beloved son and heir, Isaac. In a text that is so fraught by the very nature of its plot, there is so much left unsaid. We sense deep connection and togetherness between Abraham and Isaac, even as Abraham moves toward fulfilling this terrible thing. We wonder as modern people how this could be and whether, if one is truly sure it is God speaking, there is any other choice. We think we see God changing over the course of this story, leaning farther into the still new territory of a covenanted relationship with one guy. And we see the stories of so many people we know, who deeply love a person who has been rejected by their religious community or doctrine, who are pressed to choose.

Episode 301 God's Generous Creativity (Genesis 1:1-2:4a)

Sun, 05 Sep 2021 07:00:00 -0500

This week we begin Season 3 of BibleWorm by going allllll the way back to the beginning of creation as told in Genesis 1:1–2:4a. We talk about the amazing generosity of God, who not only creates but beckons forth the creativity of others—humans, animals, and the earth. We discuss the creation of humankind in God’s image and ask what it means to have dominion over a creation that God has called good. And we marvel at the Sabbath command, which sanctifies time and gives us divine permission to rest. Welcome to Season 3, everybody! Let there be BibleWorm!

Episode 250 (Replay) Resisting Ethnic Nationalism (Esther 3:1-11 and 7:1-10)

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this episode from August 2, 2020, BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible with a look at Esther 1:1-22, the story of the Persian Queen Vashti and her refusal to appear before the king. We discuss the fragile egos of the king and his courtiers who fear the capacity of women to say no. We talk about the power of the patriarchy and the lengths it will go to to suppress voices of dissent. We admire Vashti’s courage to protect her own sense of dignity and the dignity of all women even though it costs her the crown. And we wonder about the ripple effects of such acts of courage, which make ruling ideologies tremble, if only for a moment.

Episode 249 (Replay) Resisting the Patriarchy (Esther 1:1-22)

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 09:22:00 -0500

On this Episode from July 26, 2020, BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible with a look at Esther 1:1-22, the story of the Persian Queen Vashti and her refusal to appear before the king. We discuss the fragile egos of the king and his courtiers who fear the capacity of women to say no. We talk about the power of the patriarchy and the lengths it will go to to suppress voices of dissent. We admire Vashti’s courage to protect her own sense of dignity and the dignity of all women even though it costs her the crown. And we wonder about the ripple effects of such acts of courage, which make ruling ideologies tremble, if only for a moment.

Episode 248 (Replay) Reading Ruth Against the Grain (Ruth 1:14-18 and 3:1-15)

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this episode from July 19, 2020, BibleWorm explores Ruth chapters 1 and 3, trying to imagine Ruth’s own perspective and calling out some of the ways that the book portrays painful parts of the immigrant experience. We see how the scene at the threshing floor plays on the worst stereotypes of Moabite women, and how Ruth’s beautiful statement of loyalty to Naomi also carries with it an erasure of her own heritage. We try to recognize our own blind spots, and lean into the scholarship of others who can help shed new light.

Episode 247 (Replay) Making Ancient Israel Great Again (Ruth 2:1-20 and 4:9-17)

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this episode from July 12, 2020, BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible, with a look at the book of Ruth 2:1-20 and 4:9-17. We look at the way the book of Ruth challenges anti-immigrant sentiment in the time of Ezra-Nehemiah and in our own day. We discuss how the book lifts up the foundational contributions of Ruth the Moabite, whose persistence saves the family line of King David, without whom ancient Israel would never have been great in the first place. We think about how the book tries to counter anti-immigrant sentiment by depicting Ruth as hardworking, culturally astute, and dedicated to her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi. We also wonder what damage such rhetoric might do to Ruth—but that’s a conversation for next week.

Episode 246 (Replay) Solidarity and Allegory (Song of Songs 5:2-9 and 8:5-10)

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this episode from July 5, 2020, BibleWorm continues our study of the Song of Songs, learning more about the awesome and fearsome passion of our young lovers, and seeing the jarring ways in which the world around them - well, to be more specific, the men around them - seeks to control that passion. And in case you weren’t sufficiently challenged to read this as both erotic poetry and an allegory about our relationship with God, how bout we flip the roles in that allegory and see what happens then? You know you want to try.

Episode 245 (Replay) The Joy of Sex (Song of Songs1:12-2:6 and 7:1-13)

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this episode from June 28, 2020, BibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible, turning our attention to Song of Songs 1:12-2:6 and 7:1-13. We wonder at the presence of erotic love poetry in the biblical canon and wrestle what it means for our understanding of bodies, sexuality, and God. We explore themes of sexual empowerment, invitation and consent, and the joy of sex. We think about how the Song invites us to admire and respect human bodies, challenging a culture that alternately shames and sexualizes bodies for profit. Mostly, we consider how this ancient text, set free in our churches and synagogues, might empower us to speak more authentically about human sexuality.

Episode 244 (Replay) Trauma Has Many Voices (Lamentations 3 and 5)

Sun, 13 Jun 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this episode from June 21, 2020, BibleWorm continues our study of Lamentations, meeting an individual survivor in chapter 3 and hearing the voice of the community in chapter 5. We raise up the differences between this individual man’s relationship to his suffering compared to what we heard from Daughter Zion last episode, and look expectantly to the communal voice to tell us which perspective is the better on to adopt. Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t. Instead, in magnificent and strikingly ambiguous poetic language, it creates space in scripture to hold multiple perspectives on suffering.

Episode 243 (Replay) Trauma and Protest (Lamentations 1:18-22 and 2:10-22)

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this episode from June 14, 2020, ibleWorm continues our summer series on the Forgotten Books of the Bible with Lamentations 1:8-22 and 2:10-22. Written in the wake of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, Lamentations presents the community’s response to trauma given in multiple voices. This week we look at the voice of the funeral singer, a bystander who has witnessed the trauma but not experienced it, and Daughter Zion, the personified city of Jerusalem, who has experienced trauma and humiliation in her body. We talk about the role of protest in faith, the urgency of speaking truth before power, and the theological imperative to challenge God. We also think about the role of allies, who can recognize the pain of the traumatized, share in their sorrow, and encourage them to use their voices.

Episode 242 (Replay) For Everything There is a Time (Ecclesiastes 1:4-11 and 3:1-11)

Sun, 30 May 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this episode from June 7, 2020, BibleWorm continues our look at Ecclesiastes, focusing on 1:4-11 and 3:1-11. We ask ourselves—is it really true there is nothing new under the sun? We look at that most famous poem “To everything there is a season,” and see exactly why you’d best not look at only the net total of life’s experiences. And we wonder what Qohelet might say about issues of justice in our time.

Episode 241 (Replay) Everything is Vapor (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 and 8:16-9:10)

Tue, 25 May 2021 09:41:50 -0500

In this episode from May 31, 2020, we return to our summer series on the Hebrew Festival Scrolls with a look at Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 and 8:16-9:10. We discuss Qohelet’s idea that everything is mere breath and ask what it means to live in a world where nothing adds up to much of anything. We talk about the inscrutability of God and why good people often suffer while the wicked get all the rewards. We ask whether it is possible to accomplish anything meaningful in life and, if not, how we might be better off to reorient our goals to enjoy the moments of each day, whether playing with a toddler or listening to the birds sing. Also, Amy asks what kind of person would use Ecclesiastes as a wedding text. Hint: It was not Amy.

Episode 240 The Fruit of the Spirit (Acts 2:1-4 & Galatians 5:16-26)

Sun, 16 May 2021 19:00:00 -0500

On this last week of the narrative lectionary season, we read Acts 2:1-4 and Galatians 5:16-26. We appreciate the way that Paul draws out and builds upon imagery and tradition from the Hebrew Bible at this moment of new community formation -- the winds, the fire, the role of language, all on the Jewish holiday that marks the giving of Torah at Sinai. We continue to wrestle a bit with the balance in community life between having explicit shared norms and having a shared horizon that each person moves toward through their own individual discernment. And we hear the imperative, from both Hebrew Bible and New Testament, to lift our eyes from our own interests to something much bigger and greater.

Episode 239 Unity in Christ (Galatians 3:1-9, 23-29)

Sun, 09 May 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week we continue our foray into Paul’s understanding of faith and Torah with Galatians 3:1-9 and 23-29. We discuss the relative roles of faith and practice in the drama of salvation and wonder whether finding God is like waiting at the bus stop hoping the God buss will roll by. We notice Paul’s appeal to the faith of Abraham and ask whether others can be faithful to God without knowing Jesus. And we wrestle with Paul’s idea that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free. It’s a beautiful idea that comes dangerously close to erasing both cultural difference and systemic injustice. What do we do with that?

Episode 238 Faith and Torah (Galatians 1:13-17 & 2:11-21)

Sun, 02 May 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week, we read Galatians chapter 1:13-17 and 2:11-21. It’s a challenging set of texts for an interfaith podcast, and a set of texts with a troubled history in the Jewish-Christian relationship. As we read, we wondered - what is the role of faith and of action in our relationship to God? When is the uniqueness of each person important, and when should we look past difference to similarity?

Episode 237 The Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-21)

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of the Council in Jerusalem in Acts 15:1-21 in which Peter, Paul, and Barnabas debate with the Jerusalem church over whether Gentiles must follow the rules of the Torah. We discuss the need for boundaries and commonly-held practices that bind a community together. We wonder at Peter’s insistence that God works outside those boundaries and wrestle with the balance of tradition and experience. And we recognize that, no matter what boundaries we set, we must always be prepared that God might be working something new among us as God did among the Christians of the early church.

Episode 236 Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:26-39)

Sun, 18 Apr 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Acts 8:26-39, a story of an Ethiopian Eunuch. We discuss the ways in which he would have been pressed to the margins of the Israelite temple community or other communities like it, and share the joy in his realization that there is nothing to prevent him from diving right square into this community of Jesus followers. We see Phillip’s beautiful example of responsive, respectful sharing of the gospel. And we learn of a talented puppeteer from days past … we think you may know him.

Episode 235 The Stoning of Stephen (Acts 6:1-7:2, 44-60)

Sun, 11 Apr 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read the story of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as told in Acts 6 and 7. We observe the struggles of the early Christian church as it grows from a small and homogenous movement to a large community of both Judean and Hellenistic disciples. We discuss the apostles’ neglect of the Greek-speaking widows and the community’s efforts to care for its own. And we discuss the trial and stoning of Stephen, part legal proceeding and part lynching, as he challenges the practice of establishment religion among the Jews of Jerusalem.

Episode 234 The Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)

Sun, 04 Apr 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads Luke chapter 24:13-35. We try to put down what we know as readers and step into the moment of this text -- the grief, the swirling confusion, the sadness of Jesus’s followers. We wonder why Jesus disappears just at the moment of recognition and begin to see a faith that will always be a little bit beyond what any individual can grasp hold of. We connect this unfolding, multi-part revelation with the revelation at the beginning of this gospel: many individuals get a piece of the puzzle, but in order to make anything of it, they have got to find one another, share what they’ve seen, and trust in other experiences, too.

Episode 233 Resurrection and Remembrance (Luke 24:1-12)

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the Easter story as told in Luke 24:1-12. We ponder the witness of the women, dismissed by the male apostles as an idle tale, and wonder whose testimonies we may dismiss today. We wrestle with the angels’ question, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” realizing that the Easter story itself would never have unfolded if the women had not gone to the grave to attend to the dead. And we grapple with the significance of remembrance in this resurrection story, which insists that we already have what we need to imagine a new future, even if we just can’t quite recognize it yet.

Episode 232 Good Friday SPECIAL EPISODE (Luke 23:32-49)

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 20:53:16 -0500

On this special Good Friday episode, BibleWorm discusses 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.

Episode 231 Palm Sunday without the Palms (Luke 19:29-44)

Sun, 21 Mar 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Palm Sunday in Luke 19:29-44—except in this version there are no palms and no one shouts “Hosanna!” Can we even call it Palm Sunday? We talk about Jesus orchestrating a donkey-jacking and the implicit claim that Jesus is lord of all. We comment on the tenderness of the people in the midst of a tragic story, as they lift Jesus up on a colt and spread their cloaks in front of him. And we wrestle with our addiction to systems of violence, which prevent us from living in peace if we cannot manage to see God in our midst.

Episode 230 The Blind Man and Zacchaeus (Luke 18:31-19:10)

Sun, 14 Mar 2021 19:00:00 -0500

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 18:31- 19:10. We imagine the awkward silence after Jesus’s followers once again cannot grasp the increasingly detailed prediction of Jesus’s imminent suffering. We pause to think about the faith of the blind man who cries out to Jesus, and wonder about the life experiences that gave him the faith and courage to ask for what he needed. And we meet Zacchaeus - either a stigmatized fellow whose been ostracized from his community, or a sinner who sees the light only after his encounter with Jesus. Either way, you’ve got to appreciate someone who will scamper up a tree for his faith.

Episode 229 The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Luke 16:19-31, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. We discuss the lavish lifestyle of the rich man, who uses his gated home as an excuse to avoid responsibility for the needy man outside his gate. And we talk about poor Lazarus, who suffers at the gate in life and yet would cross a great chasm to show the rich man compassion in death. And we wrestle with our own privilege, wondering what barriers we construct to separate ourselves from the very relationships that might transform us into better members of God’s community.

Episode 228 Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son (Luke 15:1-32)

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 15:1-32-- three parables of things that were lost and have been found. Somewhat in spite of ourselves, we can’t help but melt into the sheer joy of the finder. We wonder about the experience of those who were never lost. And Amy manages to embarrass herself so thoroughly that this episode is 1 minute too long because we couldn’t bear to cut the story out. It has to do with middle school - so you know it’s bad.

Episode 227 The Parable of the Fig Tree (Luke 13:1-9, 31-35)

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Luke 13:1-9 and 31-35, which includes Jesus’s discussion of the causes of suffering, the parable of the fig tree, and Jesus’s lament over the city of Jerusalem. We wrestle with the popular theology that bad things happen to the worst sinners and with Jesus’s apparent counterclaim that all of us, in fact, are sinners who deserve punishment. We ponder Jesus’s parable of the fig tree, which offers a model for nurturing rather than threatening people into repentance. And we encounter Jesus’s tender lament over Jerusalem, the city he wishes to embrace, but which is so enthralled with its own power that it cannot receive his prophetic voice.

Episode 226 Eternal Life and Truly Living (Luke 10:25-42)

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Luke 10:25-42 -- the story of the Samaritan who is sometimes called good, and the story of Jesus’s visit with Mary and Martha. We watch Jesus skillfully reframe the lawyer’s questions, from “how to attain eternal life” to “how to live”, and from “whom must I love,” to what love of neighbor looks like. We see ourselves in the very human desire to make and carry out plans. And we hear the call of these stories to re-focus -- to be present in the moment, to see what emerges, and to respond to the person in front of us, whomever that may be.

Episode 225 Ash Wednesday SPECIAL EPISODE (Luke 9:51-62)

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 14:53:18 -0600

On this special Ash Wednesday episode BibleWorm discusses Jesus’s journey through Samaria in Luke 9:51-62. We talk about what it means that Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem, and what it means in our own time to find resoluteness in our own journeys toward the fulfillment of justice. We ponder the story of the disciples wanting to call down fire on the Samaritans and Jesus’s rebuke of their inclination toward violence. And we wrestle with the stories of three would-be disciples who ultimately do not follow Jesus, grappling with the difficulty of leaving relationships behind in the interest of a greater purpose. You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Episode 224 The Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-45)

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 9:28-45. As the gospel begins to speak of Jesus’s departure, we climb deep into his connection with the folks he meets up on the mountain -- not only to their shared mountain theophanies, but also to the unexpected ways that each of their days on earth came to an end. We feel for the disciples, who just can’t manage to really take in the world-changing things they are seeing and hearing. And we can’t help but picture the mom from The Goldbergs up there with them, bedazzling Jesus’s robe and offering everyone a cheese tray.

Episode 223 Of Centurions and Widows (Luke 7:1-17)

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm discusses the two healing stories in Luke 7:1-17. We struggle with the story of Jesus healing a man enslaved by a Roman Centurion. If Jesus is supposed to let the oppressed go free, why does he restore this man to his enslaver? Shouldn’t we expect more than that from Jesus? And we ponder Jesus’s resurrection of a widow’s son, recognizing here the Jesus who acts out of mercy and compassion rather than social expectation. And we wonder: how can we reconcile these two stories of healing, and what do they mean for us today?

Episode 222 Sabbath Controversies (Luke 6:1-16)

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 6:1-16. We draw out the connections between King David and Jesus early in their careers, both walking through the world as God’s anointed before anyone really knows it. We think of the debates between Jesus and this group of Pharisees as akin to the debates that encircle our public health crisis. And we wonder, for a moment, what it was like for the man who was minding his own business at synagogue one day, when a part of his body -- his withered hand -- became a location for this debate.

Episode 221 Leaving It All Behind (Luke 5:1-11)

Sun, 17 Jan 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week Bobby and Amy discuss the story of Jesus calling his first disciples in Luke 5:1-11. We think about Jesus, teaching outside the synagogue and surrounded by the crowds, looking for a familiar face to accompany him in his ministry. We marvel at the response of Simon, James, and John, who set aside their tiredness and their obvious technical expertise to respond to the call of Jesus to go back out and drop the nets one last time. And we admire these men who look past their sudden economic boom and leave everything to follow Jesus.

Also, we worry about the fate of the fish, who were having a pretty good day until Jesus got involved. What does it mean to catch people like that—and do we really want to do that to them?

Episode 220 Hometown Visits are Hard (Luke 4:14-30)

Sun, 10 Jan 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke 4:11-30, the story of Jesus’ visit to his hometown of Nazareth. We revel in the moments where everything is good -- where the people are enthusiastically with him -- before things fall apart terribly. Did the people of Nazareth have unreasonable expectations? Did Jesus kind of pick a fight? And really, why is it that with all the healing he’s got planned, none of it is for the people he grew up with? Hometown visits sure are complicated.

Episode 219 Baptism, Danger, and Delight (Luke 3:1-22)

Sun, 03 Jan 2021 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm discusses the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus’s baptism as told in Luke 3:1-22. We explore John’s vision of repentance, which balances individual responsibility with commitment to the most vulnerable in the community. We wrestle with John’s insistence that no one should have excess—not just among the ultra-rich but also in the middle class, being pinched from both sides. And we talk about God’s delight in Jesus’s baptism, wondering whether God might find delight in us, too.

Also, we ponder how fabulous Jesus might be walking the red carpet. But we digress.

Episode 218 Meeting the Tween Jesus (Luke 2:41-52)

Sun, 27 Dec 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This week, BibleWorm reads Luke chapter 2:41-52, the story of Jesus as a 12 year old, sitting in the Temple and learning with the community leaders. We shower Luke with love for including this story of adolescence, this awkward time in between the passivity and infinite possibility of babyhood and the full strength and differentiation of adulthood. We watch the tween Jesus push away from Mary and Joseph like the side of a pool, but then come back to hold on again. We draw out this model of community learning where a 12 year old's questions -- and answers! -- are taken seriously. And we wonder -- is this whole thing the biblical precedent for the movie Home Alone?

Episode 217 Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:21-38)

Sun, 20 Dec 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This BibleWorm follows Mary and Joseph as they bring the infant Jesus from the pastures of Bethlehem to the Jerusalem temple in Luke 2:21-38. There we encounter the righteous man, Simeon, and the prophet Anna, both of whom have been waiting patiently for the messiah. We marvel at the persistent years of seemingly mundane religious practice that have prepared these two for this moment, wrestle with Simeon’s pronouncement that Jesus will cause the rising and falling of many, and ponder the significance of the prophet Anna, who takes her place along side the great women prophets of the Bible in welcoming the messiah.

Also, we imagine a possible future career for Simeon as the most amazing flower girl ever. You’ll just have to trust us on that one.

Episode 216 Christmas Eve SPECIAL EPISODE (Luke 2:1-20)

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 19:00:00 -0600

In this special Christmas eve episode, we read Luke 2:1-20. We imagine ourselves with the shepherds in the field, taking in the mindblowing magnitude of their theophany in the field, and wondering who are the proverbial shepherds in our society today. We see not only the theological but the political revolution bubbling up in the story. And we wonder -- though the text is silent on this point -- was there a donkey in the manger? We are willing to bank our reputations on it.

Episode 215 Christmas is a Revolution (Luke 1:26-56)

Sun, 13 Dec 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This week we find ourselves in Luke 1:26-56, the story of Mary receiving the good news of Jesus’s birth from the angel Gabriel. We talk about the remarkable composure of the young Mary, who boldly takes up her role among the matriarchs and prophets of Israel. We relish the tale of Mary’s visit with her cousin Elizabeth, two women profoundly blessed and empowered by the Spirit. And we wrestle with sweet little Mary’s powerful song about the overturning of the world.

Episode 214 Good News to the Poor (Isaiah 61:1-11)

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads the short but radiant chapter Isa 61, where the text walks with us incrementally from the indignities of captivity - whether economic, spiritual, or deep in our own bodies - through freedom and clear into glory and splendor. We imagine a jubilee that can reset the ever-growing avalanche of injustices in our world, and envision ourselves as the people who serve those who have been held captive. Amy also imagines some kind of bizarre armed robbery wherein the robber wields a charred cow as a weapon. Wait, you don’t see that in the text?

Episode 213 Rend Your Hearts (Joel 2:12-29)

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm turns to the prophet Joel 2:12-29. There we find Joel prophesying to a people suffering from a plague of locusts, promising that God is about to restore them if only they will return to God with their whole hearts. We wrestle with Joel’s call to “rend our hearts” and ask what it means to tear open the pain, sorrow, and regret we carry deep inside. We relish Joel’s description of a God gracious, merciful, and abounding in steadfast love and the promises of a land and a people restored. And we ponder God’s promise to pour out the spirit on all flesh, welcoming everyone—young and old, male and female—into the prophetic community of God.

Episode 212 In the Lions' Den (Daniel 6:1-28)

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm reads Daniel 6:1-28, where we revisit the ever-complex power triangle between king, people, and God. How do we make decisions about loyalty when the points of that triangle appear to be in tension? And to put more a finer point on that question, there’s a lion in a pit who is eagerly awaiting your decision.

Episode 211 The Power of the Word (Jeremiah 36 and 31)

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm turns to Jeremiah 36 and 31, in which God commands Jeremiah to write a scroll of prophecy and yet promises to write a new covenant directly on the hearts of the people. We think about the king’s attempt to suppress the truth by burning it, and the irrepressible power of the word set free among the people. Also, we talk more than we probably should about the Spice Girls. Zig-azig-ah.

Episode 210 Encountering God (Isaiah 6:1-13)

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This BibleWorm reads Isaiah chapter 6. We step into the incredible sense of awe Isaiah describes as he stands among the skirts of God’s robe and witnesses the angelic liturgy. We understand why, standing there, he would feel lost and out of place -- and see a God whose angels both recognize Isaiah’s human inadequacies and help him address them rather than sending him away. And we wrestle a little bit with the verses that follow - the heavy weight of the call Isaiah has accepted.

Episode 209 The Limits of Mercy (Jonah 1, 3, & 4)

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 19:00:00 -0600

This week BibleWorm turns to the book of Jonah, chapters 1, 3, and 4, where we meet God’s most reluctant prophet. We wrestle with why Jonah runs away from God and why he would seemingly rather die than go to the land of his enemies to prophesy. We think about who counts as “God’s people” and what it means that sometimes the people most responsive to God’s call are the ones we think of as outsiders. And we compare the limits of God’s compassion with the limits of our own, recognizing that sometimes God wants to reconcile the very people we might consider our worst enemies. Also, Amy tells us why she sometimes calls her children “Jonah.”

Episode 208 Day-to-Day Miracles (1 Kings 17:1-24)

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week we meet the prophet Elijah. We discuss his increasingly vulnerable existence through a period of drought, and his ultimate reliance on another paradigmatically vulnerable character -- a widow and her child who are already unable to take care of themselves. We talk about the idea of God’s care during the hardest of times, and the pairing in this story of a miraculous healing with the more commonly encountered miracle of having just enough to last you through one more day. And we introduce a strange coping strategy to get through the moments when the internet is out.

Episode 207 The Davidic Covenant (2 Samuel 7:1-17)

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm turns to the story of God’s covenant with David in Second Samuel 7:1-17. We talk about gift giving, both with God and with each other, and the tendency to give others what we think they want rather than listening to what they ask of us. We wrestle with the significance of a God who dwells in tents versus as God who lives in a Temple and the ways God can be invoked to legitimate the ruling authority. And we wrestle with how one can tell a story about David without sounding like an episode of Schitt’s Creek. Ewww, David.

If you'd like to listen to the extended version of this episode, visit our Patreon at patreon.com/biblewormpodcast.

Episode 206 Prayer and Promise (1 Samuel 1:1-20 and 2:1-10)

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads the story of Hannah, expanding the Narrative Lectionary a little bit to I Samuel 1:1-20 and 2:1-10. We step into a scene that reads like the worst Thanksgiving meal ever, complete with taunting, sulking, and refusals of food. We discuss the nature and impact of prayer on God and on ourselves, and connect the experience of triumph over obstacles in our own lives with hope for the larger society.

If you'd like to listen to the extended version of this episode, visit our Patreon at patreon.com/biblewormpodcast.

Episode 205 The Covenant Under Threat (Exodus 32:1-14)

Sun, 04 Oct 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm looks at the story of Aaron and the Golden Calf in Exodus 32:1-14. We wonder about the unrealistic expectations that the people could wait in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights without getting anxious, and struggle with the decisions Aaron makes to keep the people from rebelling. We try to parse the difference between worshiping false gods and worshiping God falsely, and wonder whether there is really a difference. And we wrestle with what it means to worship a God who becomes angry but who also relents of anger when faced with a human interlocutor who insist on covenantal fidelity.

If you'd like to listen to the extended version of this episode, visit our Patreon at patreon.com/biblewormpodcast.

Episode 204 Ritual Preparation for Liberation (Exodus 12:1-13 and 13:1-8)

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm discusses the original Passover ritual described in Exodus 12-13. We think about the mix of urgency and powerlessness that the Israelites may have felt, each in their own homes, just as we may feel today. We consider the ways in which ritual can form us and prepare us for what’s next, even when we can’t see around the pike. And we call out the losses and sorrows that accompany the struggle for liberation.

Episode 204E (EXTENDED) Ritual Preparation for Liberation (Exodus 12:1-13 and 13:1-8)

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 19:00:00 -0500

In this special extended episode, BibleWorm discusses the original Passover ritual described in Exodus 12-13. We think about the mix of urgency and powerlessness that the Israelites may have felt, each in their own homes, just as we may feel today. We consider the ways in which ritual can form us and prepare us for what’s next, even when we can’t see around the pike. And we call out the losses and sorrows that accompany the struggle for liberation.

Episode 203E (EXTENDED) The Complexities of Being Family (Genesis 37 and 50)

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 19:00:00 -0500

On this special extended episode, BibleWorm turns to the Joseph story in Genesis chapters 37 and 50, exploring the complicated family dynamics of Jacob and his eleven sons. We discuss how a sense of scarcity, whether of grain or of a father’s love, can create divisions in families and among peoples who would otherwise get along. We discuss the idea that God can turn even evil plans toward good outcomes if only we can learn to trust divine promises. And we think about the relative value of love and justice, and how love unevenly applied can lead to disastrous outcomes.

Episode 203 The Complexities of Being Family (Genesis 37 and 50)

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm turns to the Joseph story in Genesis chapters 37 and 50, exploring the complicated family dynamics of Jacob and his eleven sons. We discuss how a sense of scarcity, whether of grain or of a father’s love, can create divisions in families and among peoples who would otherwise get along. We discuss the idea that God can turn even evil plans toward good outcomes if only we can learn to trust divine promises. And we think about the relative value of love and justice, and how love unevenly applied can lead to disastrous outcomes.

Episode 202 Anxiety and Promise (Genesis 15:1-6)

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week, BibleWorm discusses Genesis 15:1-6 -- God’s covenant with Abraham. We talk about the honest, holy mess of it, the sussing each other out, and the early days in a relationship when everything feels fragile and trust goes an especially long way. We talk about waiting, and the anxiety of waiting when we don’t have access to the full plan. And we talk a surprising amount about the time-space continuum, and how Abraham, God, and even BibleWorm fit into it.

Episode 202E (EXTENDED) Anxiety and Promise (Genesis 15:1-6)

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 19:00:00 -0500

In this special extended episode, BibleWorm discusses Genesis 15:1-6 -- God’s covenant with Abraham. We talk about the honest, holy mess of it, the sussing each other out, and the early days in a relationship when everything feels fragile and trust goes an especially long way. We talk about waiting, and the anxiety of waiting when we don’t have access to the full plan. And we talk a surprising amount about the time-space continuum, and how Abraham, God, and even BibleWorm fit into it.

Episode 201E (EXTENDED)The Angst of Being Human (Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17; 3:1-10)

Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:00:00 -0500

In this special extended episode, BibleWorm returns to our study of the Narrative Lectionary by going allll the way back to the creation story in Genesis 2 and 3. We discuss what it means that human beings are made of dust and breath and ponder our relationship to plants, animals, and the earth. We wrestle with the tree of knowledge of good and evil and why it is that such knowledge is so troubling for humankind. We wonder about the serpent in the garden and ask whether it was ever possible that Eden was going to work in the first place. And we think about humans hiding our true selves from God, embarrassed to be only what God created us to be.

Episode 201 The Angst of Being Human (Genesis 2:4b-7, 15-17; 3:1-10)

Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm returns to our study of the Narrative Lectionary by going allll the way back to the creation story in Genesis 2 and 3. We discuss what it means that human beings are made of dust and breath and ponder our relationship to plants, animals, and the earth. We wrestle with the tree of knowledge of good and evil and why it is that such knowledge is so troubling for humankind. We wonder about the serpent in the garden and ask whether it was ever possible that Eden was going to work in the first place. And we think about humans hiding our true selves from God, embarrassed to be only what God created us to be.

Episode 152 Esther 3:1-11 and 7:1-10 Resisting Ethnic Nationalism

Sun, 02 Aug 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 151 Esther 1:1-22 Resisting the Patriarchy

Sun, 26 Jul 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 150 Ruth 1:14-18 and 3:1-15 Reading Ruth Against the Grain

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 149 Ruth 2:1-20 and 4:9-17 Making Ancient Israel Great Again

Sun, 12 Jul 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 148 Song of Songs 5:2-9 and 8:5-10 Solidarity and Allegory

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 147 Song of Songs 1:12-2:6 and 7:1-13 The Joy of Sex

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 146 Lamentations 3 and 5 Trauma Has Many Voices

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 145 Lamentations 1:18-22 and 2:10-22 Trauma and Protest

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 19:00:00 -0500

Episode 144 Ecclesiastes 1:4-11 and 3:1-11 For Everything There is a Time

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm continues our look at Ecclesiastes, aka Qohelet, focusing on 1:4-11 and 3:1-11. We ask ourselves—is it really true there is nothing new under the sun. We look at that most famous poem “To everything there is a season,” and see exactly why you’d best not look at only the net total of life’s experiences. And we wonder what Qohelet might say about issues of justice in our time.

Episode 143 Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 and 8:16-9:10 Everything is Mere Breath

Sun, 31 May 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm begins our summer series on the Hebrew Festival scrolls with a look at Ecclesiastes 1:1-3 and 8:16-9:10. We discuss Qohelet’s idea that everything is mere breath and ask what it means to live in a world where nothing adds up to much of anything. We talk about the inscrutability of God and why good people often suffer while the wicked get all the rewards. We ask whether it is possible to accomplish anything meaningful in life and, if not, how we might be better off to reorient our goals to enjoy the moments of each day, whether playing with a toddler or listening to the birds sing. Also, Amy asks what kind of person would use Ecclesiastes as a wedding text. Hint: It was not Amy.

Episode 142 Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12 Pentecost and the Body of Christ

Sun, 24 May 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week we read Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12, the story of Pentecost and the body of Christ. We visit the first moments of the birth of the church, rich with imagery familiar from creation and the exodus from Egypt. We try to embrace what it means for a group of people to function like a body, each part precisely designed and wholly dependent on the others.

Episode 141 1 Corinthians 15 Paul and the Resurrection of the Body

Sun, 17 May 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm looks at 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul reprimands the church in Corinth for not believing in bodily resurrection. We wonder whether believing in resurrection is a way of trying to escape the reality of death or an authentic means of coming to terms with the persistence of evil in the world. We wonder why Paul opposes the concept of a spiritual resurrection and ask why it is that bodies matter even in the time to come. Also, we try to imagine the BibleWorm as a cosmic death eater. But Amy bursts the bubble.

Episode 140 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 The Greatest of These is Love

Sun, 10 May 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm reads 1 Corinthians 13, Paul’s famous passage on love as a sort of diagnostic check of our motivations in our attempts to live lives of faith. We talk about love—or lack of love—across the political aisle and about the limits of loves’s patience in the face of injustice. We talk about the importance of doing a serious gut check about where we ourselves are drawn with real love, and the necessity that we lean into that even if our acts of faith may look different than someone else’s. And we wonder what Paul would have to say about social media. Well, actually, we can guess.

Episode 139 Acts 18:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 Unity in the Body

Sun, 03 May 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm follows Paul to Corinth by readings Acts 18:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 1:10-18. We talk about factionalism in our communities and the importance not of uniformity but of commitment to the core principles that hold us together. We think about the human tendency to attach ourselves to our leaders and Paul’s insistence that the Christian community should attach itself only to Christ. And we wrestle with Paul’s contrast between eloquent wisdom and the foolishness of the cross, which alone conveys the power of God.

Episode 138 Acts 17:1-9 and 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Paul in Thessalonica

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 00:57:50 -0500

This Week BibleWorm reads from Acts 17 and 1 Thessalonians 1, where we get to see Paul in action as an evangelist and pen-pal pastor. We consider how our communities might respond if a new guy began attending services and arguing that we had misinterpreted our own texts. We appreciate Paul’s ability to see God moving and working beyond the boundaries of the community he grew up in. We sit with the importance of leading with encouragement, taking every opportunity to remind our community members how precious and brave they are. And, in celebration of Thessaloniki, Amy tells just a little bit of Little Red Riding Hood in Greek.

Episode 137 Acts 3:1-16 Peter and John Heal a Man

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week we’re reading from Acts 3:1-16, in which Peter and James meet a crippled man and restore him to health. We think about evangelism that begins with acts of mercy and turns to preaching the faith only belatedly, once people have responded to compassion. We discuss the power of looking one another in the eye and ponder the miracles that can occur when we move beyond treating one another as transactions to viewing relationships as opportunities for transformation. And we struggle with Peter’s preaching that blames the Jews for the death of Jesus and fails to recognize his own culpability in human violence. Thanks for joining us!

Episode 136 Acts 1:1-14 The Ascension of Jesus

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 19:00:00 -0500

BibleWorm begins our study of Acts with the story of Jesus's ascension in Acts 1:1-14. We talk about the huge transition from disciple to apostle, from learners to teachers of Jesus’s message, and that moment of fear when your charismatic teacher departs on a cloud. We notice that humans both then and now are quite taken by the question of when, regardless of our teachers’ constant redirection. And we sit with the profound and holy power of pause—just pausing to wait for the spirit to move.

Episode 135 Mark 16:1-8 The Markan Easter Story

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 00:35:45 -0500

This week we read the Easter story as told in Mark 16:1-8—a story in which there is no resurrected Jesus and the women run from the tomb in fear. We talk about how the sparseness of this Easter tale resonates with the reality of lived experience, in which the evidence for faith is often hard to come by. We think about the women’s experience at the tomb with its mixture of awe and fear, and wrestle with what to make of their silence. And we find that the story ultimately opens up toward us, as readers and people of faith, inviting us to meet Jesus in Galilee. Will we stay or will we go? That’s what we really want to know.

Episode 134 Mark 15:16-41 Good Friday BONUS EPISODE

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 02:04:58 -0500

On this special Good Friday episode, BibleWorm explores the story of Jesus's crucifixion in Mark 15:16-41. We talk about the humiliation and abandonment that so often accompanies and exacerbates our suffering, about vessels of God’s holiness breaking open into the world, and about what it means to have supporters out there that you may never know about.

Episode 133 Mark 11:1-21 and 14:1-9 The Triumphal Entry and a Woman's Gift

Sun, 29 Mar 2020 19:00:00 -0500

BibleWorm reads the Palm Sunday text, Mark 11:1-11 with the story of Jesus overturning tables in the Temple added in for good measure. We talk about the symbolism of Jesus riding a donkey and how the shouts of Hosanna mingle praise and desperation. We wonder why Jesus curses a fig tree instead of commanding it to produce figs and wrestle with Jesus’s anger toward the money changers. We also read the story of a woman anointing Jesus with nard in Mark 14:1-9 and marvel at the way Jesus validates her gift to him. We also make some really bad jokes—but you’ve come to expect that by now.

Episode 132 Mark 13:1-37 The End of the World as We Know It

Sun, 22 Mar 2020 19:00:00 -0500

BibleWorm reads Mark 13:1-37, the Markan apocalypse. We sit with the ways the text anticipates an unveiling of fault lines in our society that were already there and see how that applies to us today. We see the imperative to speak and act with integrity even in the face of fear and suffering. We insist upon the Gospel’s promise of good news. And we fondly remember Clippy, the little paperclip in Microsoft Word who would pop up and solve all our problems. Man, we miss that guy.

Episode 131 Mark 12:28-44 The Greatest Commandment and the Widow's Offering

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 20:28:36 -0500

This week the Narrative Lectionary finds us in Mark 12:28-44, where Jesus gives the great commandment and a widow gives her last penny. We discuss the twin commandments to love God and love neighbor and whether they can really be separated. We wrestle with the story of the widow’s mite and whether she is being commended or exploited. And we struggle with how to make sense of this text in the middle of a pandemic, where we’re all struggling with how best to be communities and people of faith.

Episode 130 Mark 12:1-17 The Parable of the Tenants and the Question of Taxes

Sun, 08 Mar 2020 19:00:00 -0500

This week BibleWorm looks at Mark 12:1-17. We look at the ways the power structures of the biblical day are baked into the scriptures and what that means for us as modern readers. We see Jesus do the ultimate mic-drop when asked about everyone’s favorite topic—taxes. And Amy shares the legend of BibleWorm!

Episode 129: Mark 10:32-52 Blind Bartimaeus

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 18:09:48 -0600

BibleWorm continues our Narrative Lectionary series with Mark 10:32-52, the third and final time Jesus predicts his death and resurrection, the request of James and John to sit at Jesus’s right and left hand when he comes in glory, and the story of a blind man named Bartimaeus, who asks Jesus for mercy. We talk about the human struggle to imagine power structures different from those of the empire, Jesus’s invitation to the disciples to share in his suffering if not in his glory, and the need to discern when to cry out for mercy and when to fall in line without drawing attention to ourselves.

Episode 128 Mark 10:17-31 The Eye of the Needle

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 01:21:04 -0600

BibleWorm continues our Narrative Lectionary series with Mark 10:17-31, the story of a man seeking eternal life but unable to give up his possessions. We talk about the communal nature of the coming age as a community of mutual vulnerability and interdependence, the challenges of giving up our reliance on wealth and other modes of independence, and the unfathomable grace of God, who covers over the impossibility of eternal life with the abundance of undeserved grace.

Also, Bobby does his impression of a camel trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle. It is not good.

Episode 127: Mark 9:30-37 Who is the Greatest?

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 18:14:55 -0600

This week BibleWorm continues our Narrative Lectionary series with Mark 9:30-37, in which the disciples argue about who is the greatest and Jesus welcomes a little child. We talk about the urgency Jesus faces in getting his disciples to understand his mission in the short time he has left with them, the challenge of giving up power to welcome the most vulnerable and marginal in society, and the danger of our well-meaning welcome turning people into props for our own sense of accomplishment.

Also, we argue about which of us is, in fact, the greatest. Amy wins.

Episode 126: Mark 8:22-9:8 The Mount of Transfiguration

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 18:00:00 -0600

This week in our Narrative Lectionary Series, BibleWorm looks at Mark 8:22-9:8, the stories of the double-healing of a blind man, Peter's confession of Jesus as messiah, and the Mount of transfiguration. We witness Peter's very human struggle to understand what Jesus is saying to him, think about what it means to live lives of integrity and the risks that may pose to our physical comfort and safety, and long for the fanatsy world of the mountaintop, where you're above the fray and your whites are Oxy-Clean clean. Our theme song this week is sung by Tom Harris of Govans Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.

Episode 125 Mark 7:1-23 Controversy over Handwashing

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 18:00:00 -0600

BibleWorm continues our Narrative Lectionary Series with Mark 7:1-23, the story of Jesus arguing with the Pharisees over proper ritual observance. We talk about what it means that nothing from outside us can make us unclean, how to disagree constructively with people who have different sources of authority, and how the only thing that really matters is what we put out into the world.

Episode 124 Mark 6:1-29 Jesus Sends Out the Twelve

Sun, 02 Feb 2020 18:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson explore Mark 6:1-29, the stories of Jesus returning his hometown and sending out the twelve as well as John's beheading by King Herod. They discuss the relationship between human faith and God's power, the challenge of seeing people in our communities as they are and not as they were, and the transfer of God's power to human communities. Also, they invoke Meatloaf--the rocker, not the hot dish.

Episode 123 Mark 5:21-43 Jesus Heals Two Women

Sun, 26 Jan 2020 18:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Mark 5:21-43, the story of a synagogue leader’s daughter and a woman with a twelve-year flow of blood. They wrestle with Jesus countering the expectation that a privileged person’s needs should be addressed first, what it means that a woman receives healing from Jesus without him knowing it, and whether faith is really enough in a world marked by suffering and pain. Also, they wonder whether Jesus might have made a good fifth Beatle.

Episode 122 Mark 5:1-20 Jesus Heals a Man Possessed by Unclean Spirits

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 18:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Mark 5:1-20, the story of Jesus casting out unclean spirits from a man in Gerasa. They consider the theological and political implications of the story, ask who might be considered outcast from our own societies, and discuss why the townspeople ask Jesus to leave them alone. Also, a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

Episode 121 Mark 4:1-34 Parables of the Kingdom

Sun, 12 Jan 2020 18:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson interpret Mark 4:1-34 in which Jesus teaches about the kingdom of heaven in a series of parables. They discuss the promise and problems of interpreting parables, what it means that Jesus says he teaches in parables so that people will not understand, and how the seed parables depict the kingdom of heaven taking root in the world in unexpected and uncontrolled ways. Also, they explain why you shouldn't keep Jesus under the bed.

Episode 120 Mark 2:1-22 Community and Conflict

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 18:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Mark 2:1-22, the healing of a paralytic, eating with tax collectors and sinners, and picking grain on the sabbath. They talk about sin and forgiveness, Jesus's mission to those excluded from community, and the painful rending that sometimes happens when we try to do something new within old institutional structures.

Episode 119 Mark 1:21-45 The Beginning of Jesus's Ministry

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 19:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Jesus’s first public teaching, his first public healing, and his first exorcism of an unclean spirit.They talk about what it means to teach with authority, how preaching sometimes takes precedence over healing both in Jesus’s ministry and in our own, and the comforting knowledge that even Jesus sometimes became exhausted by the demands of his ministry.

Episode 118 Mark 1:1-20 Baptism and Call

Sun, 22 Dec 2019 18:48:48 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Mark 1:1-20, the introduction to Mark's Gospel including Jesus's baptism, temptation, and the call of the first disciples. They discuss the narrative pace of Mark that frustrates reflection, the counter-imperial call of the Gospel, and how lovely it would be for Jesus to come along and repurpose your fishing skills.

Episode 117 Luke 2 Christmas Eve SPECIAL EPISODE

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 18:01:12 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss the story of Jesus's birth as told in Luke 2:1-20. They discuss God's revolution of peace taking place in the mundane realities of life, the imperial backdrop for the good news of the Gospel, and the mysteries of faith that are revealed and confirmed only in community. Also they sing a little.

Episode 116 Luke 1 The Birth of John the Baptist

Sun, 15 Dec 2019 16:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss the birth of John the Baptist in Luke 1. They discuss its orientation toward the future and its theme of preparedness, the notion of the Gospel taking root in the wilderness, and the significance of the angel Gabriel telling Zechariah to talk to the hand.

Episode 115 Ezra 1 and 3 Rebuilding the Temple

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 18:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Ezra 1 and 3. The people are released from Exile to return to Jerusalem, where they find the Temple in ruins and the altar torn down. They discuss the importance of ritual in connecting the people with God and with each other, the mingling of joy and sorrow that attends to new beginnings, and the urgency of pressing ahead even when the situation seems overwhelming.

Episode 114 Isaiah 40 Comfort My People

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 18:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Isaiah 40, a vision of comfort for the people at the end of the exile. They discuss who is supposed to comfort whom, why Isaiah refers to the Persian king Cyrus as "my messiah," and how recovery from trauma requires a community. Also, there are robot voices.

Episode 113 Jeremiah 33 Hope in a Time of Despair

Sun, 24 Nov 2019 18:00:00 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Jeremiah 33:1-18, Jeremiah's vision of a restored community. They discuss the audacity of hopefulness in the midst of despair, the ambiguous promise of a Davidic king, and what (if anything) this text has to do with the Christian season of Advent.

Episode 112: 2 Kings 22-23 Josiah's Reform

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 18:20:15 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss the story of King Josiah's reform in 2 Kings 22-23. They grapple with God's insistence that people are responsible for keeping Torah even when it's been lost, our responsibility to establish justice for future generations, and the possibility that some people might do what is right even without the threat of punishment.

Episode 111 Isaiah 5 and 11 How Does Your Vineyard Grow?

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 01:26:08 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Isaiah chapters 5 and 11, the Song of the Vineyard and the vision of an ideal king. They discuss Isaiah's poetic strategy for persuading the people of their unrighteous ways, the measure of an ideal king being justice and equity for the poor, and whether you can reasonably sue your garden for producing bad lettuce.

Episode 110 Hosea 11 God as Parent

Sun, 03 Nov 2019 23:32:28 -0600

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss the prophecy of Hosea 11. Topics include the metaphor of God's love for the community as a parent's love for a child, God's compassion that overrides anger, and whether God would bring you pants when it's 30 degrees outside.

Episode 109 1 Kings 18 Elijah and the Prophets of Baal

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 03:00:49 -0500

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal. We discuss the difficulty of belief in the face of more reasonable alternatives, competition among gods in our own day, and what to do if your false god needs to poop.

Episode 108 1 Kings 12 The Division of the Kingdom

Sun, 20 Oct 2019 20:18:48 -0500

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss the division of the kingdom of Israel in 1 Kings 12. Topics include the exercise of power at the expense of covenantal community, the importance of understanding tradition, and the unending masculine obsession with loin size.

Episode 107 2 Samuel 5-6 David Brings the Ark to Jerusalem

Sun, 13 Oct 2019 20:21:47 -0500

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss 2 Samuel 5-6, the story of David bringing the ark to Jerusalem. They wrestle with divine sanction for ruling authorities, the holiness of God, and the importance of wearing underpants.

Episode 106: Ruth 1:1-17 Ruth and Naomi

Sun, 06 Oct 2019 23:21:55 -0500

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss Ruth and Naomi, the status of foreigners, immigrants, and minorities in our communities, and whether the Bible passes the Bechdel Test.

Episode 105: Deuteronomy 5 and 6 The 10 Commandments and the Shema

Sun, 29 Sep 2019 21:40:01 -0500

This week the Narrative Lectionary leads us into Deuteronomy where Dr. Robert Williamson and Dr. Amy Robertson discuss the 10 commandments and the great commandment known as the Shema.

Intro music "Up Folk" by Ketsa. Used by free license via Creative Commons. URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/Above_and_Below/Up_Folk_1789

Episode 104: Exodus 3-5

Sun, 22 Sep 2019 18:27:31 -0500

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, the brave women of the Exodus, Moses' encounter with the burning bush, and the mysterious name of God.

Intro music "Up Folk" by Ketsa. Used by free license via Creative Commons. URL: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/Above_and_Below/Up_Folk_1789

Episode 103: Genesis 32

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 20:20:36 -0500

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson wrestle with the story of Jacob and his midnight encounter with God at the River Jabbok.

Episode 102: Genesis 18 and 21

Sun, 08 Sep 2019 20:05:49 -0500

Dr. Amy Robertson and Dr. Robert Williamson discuss the story of God visiting Abraham and Sarah at the Oaks of Mamre.

Episode 101: Genesis 2:4-25

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 20:55:12 -0500

In this week's episode, biblical scholars Robert Williamson Jr and Amy Robertson dig into the creation of humankind as told in Genesis 2.