BibleWorm

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. ...

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 ...

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 we...

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, w...

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. Ha...

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 bot...

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 ...

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 Chr...

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 ma...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 s...

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...

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,...

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 THA...