BibleWorm
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This week BibleWorm begins not only a new book but a new kind of book in the New Testament – we move from a gospel to the Book of Acts with Acts 1:1-14. We love seeing what the author lays out for us as the sort of “season recap” at the beginning – what parts of the Jesus story are most pressing for us to hold close for this next chapter? And truly it is a new chapter – the disciples sit in the echo of what has happened, but really don’t know yet what it all means for the future. And guess what they are to do, these leaders of the budding church, these people whose lives were turned upside down in every imaginable way? They are to stay put, stay in community, stay in prayer, and wait. How much pressure must they feel to DO something with what they’ve received already – to figure out what should happen next? But something is still missing – you can’t get ahead of the spirit.
This week BibleWorm reads the story of the first Easter as told in Mark 16:1-8. In this most challenging version of the Easter story, we never encounter the resurrected Jesus. Rather, a young man in white tells the women to go to Galilee where Jesus will meet them. It’s strange not to see Jesus on Easter, but isn’t this the way we mostly live our lives? We live the life of faith, based on the testimony of others and mostly without tangible evidence, trusting that Jesus really is resurrected just as the young man said. But Mark tells us that the women, startled and overwhelmed, left the tomb in silence, saying nothing to anyone because they were afraid. So it falls to us, as the readers, to make a choice. Will we go to meet Jesus just as the young man instructed? Do we have enough faith to meet Jesus in Galilee?
On this special Good Friday episode, originally released on April 4, 2020, 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.
This week BibleWorm has a special episode for you – we are reading Mark’s account of the Last Supper, in Mark chapter 14: 12-42. What a story. We can feel the urgency in this supper, just like the original Passover meal – that something new and big and awesome and fearsome is about to happen, and there‘s no way you can really anticipate its magnitude. But alongside that, the text forces us to stare deeply into the frightening idea that no matter our convictions or our intentions, at the end of the day, we can’t really trust ourselves. What do we do with that – how can we live with it? And maybe more importantly, what does Jesus do with it?
This week BibleWorm reads the traditional Palm Sunday text in Mark 11:1-11 as well as the story of a woman anointing Jesus as told in Mark 14:3-9. We focus on the cries of the crowd as Jesus rides into Jerusalem, as they shout “Hosanna! Save us!” Their cry is urgent and hopeful but also quite vague about what, exactly, they need to be saved from. Sometimes, we think, this is the best prayer we can offer, not knowing how we can be saved but trusting that Jesus knows and can do as he promised. When we turn our attention to the anointing at Bethany, we find an unnamed woman doing the best she can to honor Jesus with extravagant love, using a year’s worth of wages to buy oil for his anointing. While others try to shame her for her wastefulness, Jesus lifts her up, making her gift even more profound than even she could ever have known. But that’s just the way Jesus is. He takes what we have—both our cries and our love—and transforms them in profound ways that we could never anticipate.
Today BibleWorm reads from the Markan apocalypse, Mark 13:1-8 and 24-37 - a vision of the thorough undoing of the world as we have come to know it. The most grand of buildings will fall. The weather patterns that sustain our food and water will falter. Even heaven and earth will not endure. My persistent question reading these texts was – for better and for worse, is - what do people do when they think the world is going to end? How can this knowledge root us in the teachings of the Torah, or the word of Jesus, without prompting us to shrink back from a world that still needs us?
This week BibleWorm reads Mark 12:28-44, a collection of texts that begins with the greatest commandment to love both God and neighbor. We think about what it means to love in this context, concluding that fidelity to one’s neighbors is the prerequisite for loving God. But what really interests us is that Jesus and one of the scribes, who have been antagonists throughout the book of Mark, find common ground in this commandment. We wonder whether we, too, could find common ground with our opponents by taking a step back to focus on love of God and love of neighbor. Finally, we discuss the story of a widow putting her last two coins in the temple treasury. Here is the measure of faithfulness that Jesus has been seeking—someone willing to relinquish control and trust her life to God and the community of faith. Now, we wonder, will the community return her faithfulness by sustaining her in her time of need?
Today BibleWorm reads Mark 12:1-17. Jesus is in Jerusalem, in the last week of his life, when he pulls upon Isaiah’s well-known image of Israel as a vineyard to offer another parable - one in which those sent on behalf of the landowner are rejected over and over again by the proverbial management. What does it mean in this context to say that the one that was rejected will be the cornerstone - or does he mean foundation stone? And how does all of this tie into Jesus’s famously clever instruction to pay to the emperor the things that are his, and to God the things that are God’s? Oh – and we also announce our summer series!
This week BibleWorm reads Mark 10:32-52, the last of Jesus’s three predictions of his suffering and death that began back in Mark 8. Once again, we see that the disciples have not quite understood, as James and John respond by asking Jesus to sit at his right and left hand when he comes in his glory. We talk about Jesus’s invitation to James and John to drink his cup and receive his baptism, indicating that they—and all followers of Jesus—must be willing to share in his suffering, becoming slave and servant of all. We also discuss the story of blind Bartimaeus, who asks for mercy and receives his sight. Unlike the disciples, who have been jostling for first place, Bartimaeus becomes a model for Christians, falling in place behind Jesus on the way. What else could he do—and what else should Christians do— but live his life in gratitude for the mercy Jesus showed him?
This week, BibleWorm eads Mark 10:17-31, sometimes referred to in our biblical headings as “A Rich Man’s question”, but that word “Rich” can sometimes let us hide from the tug of this passage on each of us. What is it about our attachment to our possessions, however many or few – about the things that help us feel secure and self-sufficient in this world – that makes it so difficult to really dwell in the kingdom of God? We wonder if this text is more of a call into a life of vulnerability and interdependence, and the ways in which possessions are a barrier to that, than a statement about wealth on its own. But either way, it is a mind-bendingly hard ask for us humans – as hard as getting a camel through the eye of a needle.
On this special Ash Wednesday episode BibleWorm reads Mark 9:30-37, the story of the disciples arguing about who is greatest. We talk about the specter of death that hangs over this text and the way that death anxiety may push the disciples—and us—toward cultural constructions of our their own value. Yet Jesus redirects them, first by insisting that the last will be first and the first last, and then by instructing them to embrace those with no status in the social hierarchy at all. We also wrestle with Jesus’s insistence on explaining his suffering and death to the disciples when they just can’t seem to get it. Sometimes we just need to hear the words even if we don’t have the life experience to understand them yet. Someday we’ll need those words, and what a gift it is to have received them.
This week BibleWorm reads Mark 8:27-9:8 - best known for the story of the transfiguration, but there is so much in this text before we even get to the mountain! Finally in this week’s text, the disciples have “the talk” with Jesus – the talk about who Jesus actually is, about what their relationship actually is. But just because they’ve talked about it doesn’t mean the disciples really understand. How can they - or we - wrap our heads around both the humanness and the cosmic-ness of Jesus? What do we imagine it is like for Jesus to be surrounded by people who, faithful as they are and try as they might, just can't quite get there? We sure do love Peter’s courage as he tries, though.
This week BibleWorm reads a series of texts in Mark 6:1-30, beginning with the story of Jesus being unable to perform miracles in his hometown, which leads us to think about the ways we sometimes struggle to hear truth from those most familiar to us and the possibility that we must sometimes let go of comfortable places to grow into our true potential. We then read the story of Jesus sending out his disciples, empowering them to carry on his work when he can’t do it. We pay special attention to Jesus’s instructions to his disciples, who are to travel without food or money, relying on the hospitality of strangers and ministering from a position of vulnerability and trust in the community. Finally, we read the strange story of John the Baptist being beheaded by King Herod, which we take as a warning about the fickleness of Empire, which recognizes the truth of John’s ministry and yet ultimately executes him anyway.
This week BibleWorm reads Mark 5:21-43, two very different stories of miraculous healing that are intertwined in the way maybe all of our lives are. One, a girl at the threshold of womanhood, and at the threshold of death. The other, a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years - the entirety of the girl’s life. The stories made us wonder about the flow of faith in the world, in us and between us. They made us question our sense of what is truly urgent, and reflect on the factors in our minds as we make that determination over and over again in our own lives. And at the end of the day, they reminded us that the miracle of these stories is a restoration to everyday life in our bodies and in our communities. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that these things alone are a miracle.
This week BibleWorm reads the story of Jesus casting a legion of unclean spirits into a herd of pigs as told in Mark 5:1-20. We struggle with how to think of demon-possession in the modern world, ultimately concluding that demons represent those forces, both spiritual and societal, that intend harm to humans and especially to those living at the margins of society. We notice that when the demons see Jesus they immediately know they are going to be cast out, and we wonder whether the demons of this world likewise tremble when they see us. And we notice that rather than celebrating the restoration of their neighbor, the townspeople demand that Jesus leave their region, raising the question of whether we, too, are more concerned about the healing of our neighbors or worried about the costs of their restoration.
Safe travels! Hope to see you this week. --------- This week, BibleWorm wades into parables with Mark 4:1-34. How striking it is that the chapter starts out telling us that Jesus creates some physical distance between himself and his followers, by going out in a boat before trying to teach the crowds that have gathered on the land. Similarly, he teaches here in a way that slows us down, and creates a little distance between the words we read and the meaning to be conveyed. The parables he tells in this chapter made us wonder: Which truths from our everyday economy will serve us well if we reorient toward God, and which ones do we need to relearn? When you are entrusted with something precious, when is it right to be careful with it, and when is it better to be generous with it? And how big or small is our role in God’s system, anyway?
This week BibleWorm reads Mark 2:1-22, beginning with the story of a man whose friends dig a hole through the roof so they can lower him down to Jesus. We discuss the relative importance of forgiveness and healing, with this text suggesting that the most urgent matter is being set right with God whatever the abilities and limitations of our particular bodies might be. We notice, too, that Jesus heals him based on their faith, and we ponder whether our faith, too, can have effects for others, whether our faith in God or our faith in people themselves. And we discuss a series of stories in which Jesus contrasts a new community of radical welcome with an older structure of righteousness, concluding that God values both the old way and the new way, desiring only that each makes space for the other to thrive.
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?
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.
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?
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.”
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!”
This week BibleWorm reads I Kings 12:1-17 and 25-29. We are just a couple of generations after King David, and boy howdy, kingship in Israel is not going great. As David’s grandson Reheboam steps to the throne, we see parallels with the stories of Pharaoh in Egypt: a king who uses forced labor to control people, and who seeks power and dominance above all else, even when that is politically impractical. And then we meet Jeroboam, who seems to smartly identify a real vulnerability for his community, but then tries to patch it with a sort of quick fix borrowed from another religious culture - definitely a no-no. Both kings consult advisors, but neither consult God. This is pretty much exactly what the deuteronomistic history warned about.
This week BibleWorm reads a selection of texts about David’s praise of God in 2 Samuel 5:1-5 and 6:1-15 as well as Psalm 150. We talk about what it means for everything that has breath to praise the Lord and ponder the unification of all creatures that is possible when we recognize the breath within us that wishes to return to God in praise. We also pay attention to the ways David approaches praise, sometimes as a genuine reverence for God but sometimes as an apparent manipulation that seeks to coopt God into his own political and military agenda. And we discuss the story of poor Uzza, who is struck dead for trying to steady the ark of the covenant, concluding that God does not need to be protected and will not tolerate being treated carelessly. When we come into God’s presence with praise, we do something that is dangerous and powerful, and that can bring us extraordinary blessing.
This week BibleWorm reads Ruth 1:1-17 and 4:13-17 – just the opening and closing of a book that turns all kinds of social norms on their head. That famous line “your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God” – the one that so many people use today in weddings, is not from a wedding at all – but from the mouth of Ruth, who is refusing Naomi’s plea to go find herself a husband, and committing herself instead to her deceased husband’s mother. This text asks us – what, really, is family? And what is peoplehood? Following a theme we are seeing a lot this season, Ruth decides to just care for the life in front of her, whatever that may mean for her future. And this act, as it trickles through the generations, means very good things.
