BibleWorm

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.  

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.  

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.

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?

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.