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Getting to the core of the biblical text.

  1. 4 dage siden

    Episode 748 Disputing with God: Persistence and Possibility (Matthew 15:21-28)

    This week we’re continuing our summer series on “Disputing with God” with the story of Jesus’s encounter with a Syro-Phoenician woman as told in Matthew 15:21-28. This story makes us comfortable in a lot of ways, as Jesus appears to ignore the pleas of a foreign woman, who Matthew refers to as a Canaanite, whose daughter is possessed by a demon. Jesus refuses to help, first saying that his mission is only for the lost sheep of Israel and then saying that it is not fair to give the children’s bread to the dogs. When she reminds Jesus that even the dogs eat the children’s crumbs, Jesus commends her great faith and heals her daughter. We struggle with the demeaning language in this text, both Jesus’ reference to her as a dog and her apparent acceptance of that designation even while we admire her persistence as a parent to do whatever it takes to achieve healing for her daughter. We wonder, does this woman change Jesus’ understanding of his own mission, and if so, what cost did she pay to do it?

    1 t. 6 min.

  2. 22. jun.

    Episode 747 Disputing with God: Unrequited Lament (Psalm 88:1-18)

    This week we continue with our summer series “Disputing with God” with Psalm 88, the Bible’s most unrelenting lament psalm. The speaker cries out to God from the depths of the pit, lamenting about the pain, suffering, and isolation that makes their life seem like a walking death, even accusing God of being the one who has caused them to suffer. And yet in this dispute, there is no response from God. Night and day the speaker cries out, from morning until night, every day since their youth—and God simply does not engage. We think of all the ways this psalm can speak to the pain of our own lives, giving voice to that which we might fear to voice before God. And we wrestle with what it means to dispute with a silent God, who is simply nowhere to be found.

    1 t. 9 min.

  3. 15. jun.

    Episode 746 Disputing with God: The Cost of Compassion (Jonah 3:1-4:11)

    This week we continue with our summer series “Disputing with God” with the story of the prophet Jonah in Nineveh as told in Jonah 3:1–4:11. While we have often read Jonah as a comedic parody of Israelite prophecy, this time we explore what happens if we take Jonah’s concerns about God’s mercy seriously. The Ninevites are, after all, the very people who will destroy the northern kingdom of Israel some 30 years after Jonah’s prophecy, so God’s compassion for them ultimately has disastrous consequences for Jonah and his people. This leads us to the question of the cost of compassion. What do we do when God has mercy on enemies who mean us harm? And how should we respond when God calls us to do the same? Like the book of Jonah itself, our conversation ends with an unresolved question. But what an urgent question it is.

    1 t. 11 min.

  4. 8. jun.

    Episode 745 Disputing with God: Righteousness Entangled (Genesis 18:16-33)

    This week we are reading one of the Bible’s most famous disputes with God – Abraham's insistence that God should have mercy on Sodom for the sake of its righteous, found in Genesis 18:16-33. Now, we love mercy as much as the next guy, but this time around we wrestled with the profound entanglement of the righteous and the wicked in this story. There is no discussion here about simply stopping the wickedness in one way or another, or even just eliminating the people perpetrating wickedness while leaving the righteous alone – they are all in it together. But if mercy in this case basically means ignoring the land’s outcry and letting the wickedness stand ... what does THAT mean for the innocent who continue to live there? In a modern society that so values individual autonomy, how do we think about the ways in which our fates are inextricably tied?

    1 t. 12 min.

  5. 1. jun.

    Episode 744 Disputing with God: Reconciling the Relationship (Exodus 33:1-23 & 34:1-9)

    This week we continue with our summer series “Disputing with God,” picking up where we left off last time with the story of the repair of the relationship between God and Israel after the incident of the Golden Calf, as told in Exodus 33:1–23 and 34:1–9. God is at first so angry about the Golden Calf that God seems to be finished with Israel, sending the messenger with them to the Promised Land but the divine presence remaining on Sinai lest God’s anger consume them. By the end, though, through the mediation Moses, God and Israel seem to accept one another as they are. The people confess they are stiff-necked, but God commits to being with them in spite of their shortcomings. Likewise, God reveals a divine Self that is anger as well as compassion, but nonetheless the people would rather stay in the wilderness with God than to enter the Promised Land alone. This relationship is messier than we might like, but God and the people remain together in the messiness, committed to a future together.

    1 t. 13 min.

  6. 25. maj

    Episode 743 Disputing with God: The Unmended Breach (Exodus 32:1-20 & 30-35)

    In this first episode of our summer series on Disputing with God, we are reading the story of the Golden Calf, Exodus 32:1-20 and 30-35. We’ve read it together before, but the regular lectionary stops us pretty early in its unfolding ... and we found that moving farther into the story directed our eyes not to the Israelites or to God, but to the space between them–their relationship, still fairly new and fragile. And you know what else is right between them–our man Moses, holding the tablets, trying to reach in both directions at once. What’s left after this kind of rupture? What's possible?

    1 t. 9 min.

  7. 18. maj

    Episode 742 The Diversifying Power of the Spirit (Acts 2:1-21 & Philippians 4:4-7)

    This week we’re reading the texts for Pentecost with Acts 2:1-21 and Philippians 4:4-7. We ponder the connections between Christian Pentecost and Jewish Shavuot, both commemorating the establishment of a new relationship with God following an act of dramatic liberation. We notice the democratization of the Holy Spirit in this text, which pours out on all people, so that everyone—young and old, male and female, rich and poor, of all languages and cultures—become prophets and visionaries of the kingdom of God. And we linger over the idea that the Spirit brings not only cataclysmic change to the world but also a deep peace that passes understanding, inviting us to engage the world with gentleness even as God’s kingdom is breaking into the world.

    1 t. 12 min.

  8. 11. maj

    Episode 741 Becoming Like Christ (Philippians 2:1-13)

    This week we are reading Philippians 2:1-13, which contain within them the beautiful Christ Hymn, and this passage made us think a lot about the role of community in any given person’s ability to live the kind of life Jesus is asking people to live. What does it really mean to be of one mind, in the way that Paul might mean it here? How can we really, actually, realistically fill our minds with concern for another, instead of attending to our own fear and pain and ego? Is it even possible to live the life Paul is talking about without a community of others trying to do the same?  Possible, maybe, but a lot harder.

    1 t. 10 min.
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Getting to the core of the biblical text.

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    BibleWorm
  • Aktive år
    2019 - 2026
  • Episoder
    376
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