Episodes
Sunday Dec 24, 2023
Episode 518 Following the Call (Mark 1:1-20)
Sunday Dec 24, 2023
Sunday Dec 24, 2023
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?
Monday Dec 18, 2023
Episode 517 The Christmas Story (Luke 2:1-20) SPECIAL EPISODE
Monday Dec 18, 2023
Monday Dec 18, 2023
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.
Sunday Dec 17, 2023
Episode 516 The Birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5-25 & 57-80)
Sunday Dec 17, 2023
Sunday Dec 17, 2023
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?
Sunday Dec 10, 2023
Episode 515 Rebuilding from the Ruins (Ezra 1:1-4 and 3:1-13)
Sunday Dec 10, 2023
Sunday Dec 10, 2023
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.”
Sunday Dec 03, 2023
Episode 514 Comfort, O Comfort My People (Isaiah 40:1-11)
Sunday Dec 03, 2023
Sunday Dec 03, 2023
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.
Sunday Nov 26, 2023
Episode 513 Hope Against Hope (Jeremiah 33:1-18)
Sunday Nov 26, 2023
Sunday Nov 26, 2023
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.
Sunday Nov 19, 2023
Episode 512 Finding the Torah (2 Kings 22:1-20 and 23:1-3)
Sunday Nov 19, 2023
Sunday Nov 19, 2023
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?
Sunday Nov 12, 2023
Sunday Nov 12, 2023
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.
Sunday Nov 05, 2023
Episode 510 God as Parent (Hosea 11:1-9)
Sunday Nov 05, 2023
Sunday Nov 05, 2023
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.
Sunday Oct 29, 2023
Episode 509 Elijah and the Prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:17-39)
Sunday Oct 29, 2023
Sunday Oct 29, 2023
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!”