BibleWorm

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.

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!

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.