BibleWorm

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.