BibleWorm

This week we’re reading Peter’s denial of Jesus as told in John 18:12-27. In what may be one of the most challenging discussions we’ve ever had, we discuss the moral injury that accrues, for Peter and for ourselves, when we encounter the gap between who we thought we were and who we turn out to be in life’s most challenging moments. We think about the incremental decisions that lead Peter to denying both Jesus and his own true self...

Today we are reading John 13:1-17, the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples as they head into the day before Passover.  The story is just steeped in relationship – Jesus's relationship to God as he prepares to return to God, and Jesus’s deep connection to the people who are here with him on earth. How do these things fit together? Why does Jesus’s awareness of the power he derives from his relationship to God cause him ...

This week we’re reading the story of the raising of Lazarus as told in John 11:1-53. We think about the disciples, so keenly aware of the threat to Jesus’s life but willing to follow him anyway, living in the light for as long as there is light to live in. And we ponder Mary’s words that bring Jesus to tears, as she invites him to experience the realities of human death and sorrow, saying to him what he has said to so many—“Come an...

For our Ash Wednesday episode, we are reading John 10:1-18 and, I’m not going to lie, wishing we had a lot more experience with sheep herding and sheep folds. We wonder – who are these robbers and thieves climbing over the fence, and what kind of fence is this if robbers and thieves can just skip the gate entirely? What difference does it make that the shepherd walks out ahead of the flock, where he can lead and guide, but can’t re...

This week we’re reading the rich and challenging story of Jesus healing a man blind from birth, as told in John 9:1-41. The story begins by rejecting the common theology that suffering is a result of sin, insisting instead that this man coming to see is to be a revelation of the glory of God. Yet by the end of the story, we discover not only that this blind man has recovered his sight but also that the establishment religious leade...

Our reading today is John 4:46-54 and 5:1-18 – the first healing stories we’ll read this season. And in this time when access to healthcare seems like its own miracle, stories that really struck us both. We remember the signs and wonders of Exodus, and their importance in building a lasting faith for the people, as we see Jesus offer signs and wonders of a different kind. We imagine what it would be to be so close to that pool of w...

This week we’re reading the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, as told in John 4:1-42. Here we find a story about a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman, from communities that have hated each other for centuries, finding common ground at the well of their mutual ancestor, Jacob. We notice that their interaction starts out tensely, shifting only when Jesus takes the time to see her deeply and acknowledge the pain she ca...

Our reading today is John 3:1-21 ... and it contains within it what is probably the most famous of all biblical verses, John 3:16–for God so loved the world. We find the verse in a story about a man who is drawn to Jesus and seeks him out, but struggles mightily-almost comically-to understand what he’s saying.How do the story and the verse each help us to read the other more fully? What do love, and truth telling, and eternal life ...

This week we’re reading the story of Jesus disrupting Temple commerce during the festival of Passover as told in John 2:13-25. Unlike the other Gospels, which place this story at the end of Jesus’s ministry, John places it at the very beginning, just after Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine in Cana. If that story had led us to think that Jesus was going to be all “yes,” this story puts us squarely into the “no.” In this case...

This week we’re reading John 2:1-11, the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding -his first miraculous sign in the Gospel of John, and an unusual place to start. Jesus himself objects to his mother’s subtle suggestion that he ought to take action when she sees the wine has run out. I mean, come on - the stakes here are not that high. So the party-goers will be disappointed, so the host will be embarrassed.  So? Doesn’t...

This week we’re reading John’s version of the call of the disciples as told in John 1:35-51. Unlike the Synoptic story of Jesus beckoning Peter, James, and John from their fishing boats, this version of the call of the disciples is more subtle and variable. Two disciples follow Jesus because they’re curious, one because his brother invites him. One gets a direct call from Jesus and another is skeptical but goes along anyway. It doe...

This week we move past the introductory material and into the story itself with John 1:19-34. It begins with John – John the Baptist, that is, who is indeed out there baptizing people, but he himself could hardly be more clear that what he’s doing is really not the point. What we should attune to is this lamb of God who is apparently right here among us. What does it mean to call Jesus the Lamb of God – what is that language drawin...

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, ...

For this fourth week of Advent we’re making the move to the New Testament with John 1:1-18, which describes the Word becoming flesh to dwell among us. We think about what it means for God to become flesh, and how lonely it must be to exist in a world where there is none like you, both a human and a divine being. We discuss the darkness of the ways of Empire, oriented toward death, which cannot comprehend the true Light, which orien...

For this 3rd week of advent and our last week in the Hebrew scriptures, we are reading the gorgeous words of Isaiah 55. This text starts us out in these bodies we’ve been given, these bodies that need water and food, and joy, and God. Why do we consume so many things that don’t fill us up? How have things gone so haywire? What if we could just trust that there is a much bigger system we are being invited into, where our lives have ...

For this second week of Advent we’re reading Ezekiel 37:1–14, Ezekiel’s famous vision of a valley of dry bones. We wonder why God asks Ezekiel whether he thinks the bones can live and why on earth he instructs Ezekiel to prophesy directly to the bones, kind of a ridiculous prophetic task. But as the bones come together with new sinews and new flesh, we recognize the importance of a prophet who can speak hope to the hopeless and res...

This week we are reading Daniel chapter 3 - a story that seems for a while to be moving in the direction of an over-the-top, cartoon worthy adventure, until you get to the utterly arresting, mic-drop statement of faith planted somewhere in the middle. We wonder: In an environment where loyalty to the king has been conflated with loyalty to the king’s god, what does it mean to live a life faithful to your god and still within the bo...

This week we’re reading Jeremiah 29:1-14, a text so hopeful about the future that it is often found on t-shirts and graduation gifts. But while the passage is indeed hopeful—“I know the plans I have for you”—in the context of Jeremiah it is a certain kind of difficult hope: a hope that must first reckon with a tumultuous present reality that will not yield in your generation, or your children’s generation, but only seventy years fr...

On this special episode, Amy talks with Bobby about his new book, Reading the Bible with Brueggemann: Scripture's Power to Remake the World. We discuss the nature of truth, the power of imagination, whether and how Jews and Christians can read the Bible together, and whether or not God exists, among many other things. We also encourage you to buy Bobby's book, which you can find here: https://store.acupressbooks.com/products/readin...