Papa’s Got a Brand New Bible

How long can you dance?

November 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

by Unvirtuous Abbey

Gospel Reading:  John 18:33–37

For Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012—Christ the King Sunday

The King James Brown version of the Bible might say, “The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing.” And that’s what Jesus and Pilate are doing in John’s Gospel, the hardest working Gospel.

High-stakes Flaminco

The Gospel writer sets the stage apart from Matthew, Mark, and Luke with a group outside of the praetorium and Pilate shuffles back and forth trying to reconcile the antagonists. [Read more...]

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They All Come Tumbling Down

Waiting for the end or waiting for the end of the day?

November 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

by Jodi-Renee Giron

Gospel Reading: Mark 13:1-8

For Sunday, November 18, 2012, Year B − Ordinary 33

After a day spent talking about loving your neighbor and commending sacrificial widows, Jesus and the disciples walk away from the temple in Jerusalem. Seemingly buoyed-up from their theological one-up on the scribes, the disciples point out to their teacher the glorious architecture surrounding them.

Maybe it’s indicative that Jesus didn’t share their triumphant attitude because he tells the disciples that not one stone of this architectural grandeur will be left standing. [Read more...]

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Michal

July 8, 2012 By 2 Comments

Literary Tool, Nagging Wife, or Real Person?

by Lia Scholl

Old Testament Reading: 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19

For Sunday, July 15, 2012: Year B—Ordinary 15

I sat in a Southern congregation on Mother’s Day. The pastor opened his sermon asking who among us had mothers. Everyone raised a hand. Then he said, “Fathers, you need to know that your children look to you for their first understanding of who God is.”

Moments later, he said, “Mothers, your children look to you to see how to be in relationships.” Whether he meant it or not, he said indirectly that women are not made in the image of God, but men are.

His next story was about a nagging mother.

Who’s This Really About?

Just a word of advice, pastors. If you speak of a nagging mother or a nagging wife from the pulpit, I assume that you have problems with the women in your life. I assume that you feel henpecked. And I assume your wife is probably justified in nagging you.

Michal, King David’s wife, has been presented as a nagging wife, because she disdained his dancing before God. But was she really?

Was Michal A Nagging Wife?

Let’s have a little background on Michal. She’s the daughter of King Saul. She falls in love with David. Saul sees Michal’s love as an opportunity to kill David—he sends him out to procure the foreskins of 100 Philistines (1 Samuel 18). Saul assumes that David will die, and his competition will be gone.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: 2 Samuel, Featured, Old Testament, YearB Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Where Are the Birds?

June 11, 2012 By 3 Comments

What will it take to get them to nest in our branches?

by Christian Walther

Gospel Reading: Mark 4:26–34

For Sunday, June 17, 2012: Year B – Ordinary 11

Did I feel guilty moving into a brand spanking new suburban development a few years back?

Kind of, to be honest.

But it wasn’t the commute—my wife and I work very close to home. It wasn’t the mega-mall/big box dependency—we’ve got some great local shops and restaurants and a revitalized old downtown close by.

That Mound

More than anything, it was that mound to the west that made me feel guilty for moving into our development. All that valuable farmland, millennia of topsoil formation, stripped off and piled up like some misplaced mountain rising from the desolate wasteland of yellow clay and thistle that was our new neighborhood. OK, so they sprinkled a few precious inches back on my yard and rolled out some sod, but the ecosystem had been raped.

Almost every nice evening I could sit on my front porch and see that hulking mound of soil to the west and, wonder, as I did, how come there were no birds by us.

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Which Madness Will You Chose?

June 3, 2012 By 3 Comments

Is there any sanity in this text or is it an invitation to madness?

by Roy M. Terry IV

Gospel Reading:  Mark 3:20-35

For Sunday, June 10, 2012: Year B − Ordinary 10

It is hard to differentiate the voices in your head.

Oh, come on now, you all have them, the “voices” that is. Admit it. Our minds are a flurry of questions, doubts, fears, struggles and even ego trips. Determining which of the voices is of God or “Satan,” well that’s where it gets difficult.

We live in the illusion of sanity and that illusion is defined by community allegiance, talk radio, agendas we support, hip new authors and our desire to be content. How we define sanity is really a result of which narratives we believe to be true, practical and contribute to our comfort and survival. Everything outside of that, well that’s crazy!

Accusation of Insanity

The text for this week is full of conflict and tension. The crowds have grown so large that Jesus cannot even get around. His family is trapped in their quarters and Jesus is basically cornered for display.

The accusations rise and the crowd becomes combative. All this “in-breaking kingdom” stuff, with healing, miracles, demons, well—to be quite honest—is getting out of control.

There has to be a solid rational reason for all this stuff that’s going on through Jesus. “Satan!” Ah, the good old Satan “rational”. It makes sense doesn’t it? Fueled by the Scribes and the Pharisees the crowd starts to label Jesus as “…out of his mind,” “Beelzebul,” everything but God.

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The Burden of a Not-So-Burdensome Commandment

May 6, 2012 By 2 Comments

Living Out Love In the Real World.

by Jodi-Renee Adams

Epistle Reading:  1 John 5.1-6

For Sunday, May 23, Year B − Easter 6

John insists in a kind of circular argument that if you are a child of GOD then you are yourself full of GOD’s love and sharing that with the world.

According to the, so-called, favored disciple, there’s evidence for this great adoption. The evidence of our relationship is found in our obedience to GOD’s commands which, according to the guy who was tortured by the Romans, aren’t too heavy to carry out.

My Yoke is Easy and My Burden is Light.

In an ever-flowing prose, John keeps trying to find new ways to talk about this great, new Christian ethos. The way the words repeat, the ideas tumble over themselves, you almost get the impression that he’s bubbling over with a kind of urgency and excitement and concern.

It makes sense. But it’s not as cut and dried as it may seem at first read: “These are GOD’s children—those who keep his commandments. And GOD’s commands are not too heavy. And they’ll completely give us victory over this crazy world. So let’s totally be like Jesus.”

But here’s the thing: GOD’s command, if I’m not mistaken, is to love GOD with all my heart, mind, and strength and to love my neighbor as myself. Not to quibble with the best friend of the Messiah, but I’ve never found it easy to do either of those things; and if “easy” doesn’t seem to be the way the word strikes you, I imagine that “burdensome” feels even less on the nose.

Overwhelming versus Overcoming

Let’s be honest, loving well – especially the neighbors – is often a really burdensome task. At least it maybe is for me and this is now my confession to all of you.

Yet John makes this promise: this love is how we overcome the world, i.e. all of the things that stand in opposition to the kingdom of GOD, all of the things that scream out the opposites of humility, shalom, beauty, generosity, justice, mercy.

The powerful, almost military, language feels like a real paradox here. When I read words like victory, overcoming, conquering, I get images of subduing something or someone, of exerting power to gain advantage; words that, ironically, remind me of what the world stands for.

But there’s another way overcoming happens

[Read more...]

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Nic at Night

March 11, 2012 By 4 Comments

Does the Gospel include God’s past deeds being exposed to the light as well our own?

by Russell Rathbun

Gospel Reading:  John 3:14-21

For Sunday, March 18, 2012—Lent 4

The state of humanity is snake bit. The poison of the serpent has entered our collective blood stream, a metallic taste in our mouth, our whole body going numb, it attacks our nervous system, and it is getting hard to breath.

Address the Elephant?

The deep evangelical groves in my brain keep pulling me to address the elephant in this verse—John 3:16—but my need to debunk the narrow interpretations of ye must be born again, are more easily resisted, perhaps as a result of years since those battles were heated for me.

Now I don’t need to engage—I think we should all be born again, what ever you mean by it, rock on—I am more interested in the snake on a stick.

Light/Dark Magic

While I literally have eaten snake on a stick at both the Minnesota State Fair and the Beijing Night Market, this is something else entirely. There is some kind of dark/light magic going on in this verse. Nicodemus comes at night looking for something, but Jesus doesn’t give him a chance to say what it is.

Jesus either senses what he wants or knows what he needs. He tells Nicodemus, no one sees the kingdom of God with out being born from above. Nic takes the bait and goes into his, how can anyone be born after growing old line. Jesus fleshes out the metaphor, throws in the Spirit, water, wind. Nic’s head is reeling. “How can these things be,” he asks? Jesus says, “You are a teacher of the law, you know your Bible, and you should be able to understand.” Then Jesus provides this learned man a deep track from the scriptures.

Just As?

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him hay have eternal life.

Is Jesus messing with him? He didn’t get the born again metaphor, so Jesus moves on to this allusion to a crazy story in Numbers (see my post on the OT reading for the back story)? It is true that this lifting up of the serpent on a pole seems to be a clear reference to Jesus being lifted up on the cross, but aside from both Jesus and the serpent being lifted up on wooden things what else do they have to do with each other?

At the end of this book Jesus will be raised up on a cross where he will die and it is through that death and resurrection that all is reconciled, real and eternal life is possible. In Numbers 21 Moses makes a bronze serpent and places it on a stick and raises it high above his head. All of the people, who had been bitten by poisonous, fiery serpents, need only look up at it and they will have life.  There is a clear correlation for sure, except for one glaring fact—God is the one who sent the poisonous, fiery serpents to bite and kill the Israelites. God provides Moses with a fix to save the people from the gruesome death God had inflicted on them.

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Jesus the Exorcist II

January 29, 2012 By 6 Comments

Is healing one of the promises of the kingdom?

by Jodi-Renee Adams

Gospel Reading: Mark 1:29-39

For Sunday, Feb. 5, Year B − Epiphany 5

Jesus starts his ministry with a bang by healing a dying woman and starts an ongoing trend of redefining Sabbath rest.

It only takes a few hours for the villagers catch word of this new teacher and his supernatural authority, and as soon as the sun sets on the Sabbath day, every crazy, ill, or demon possessed person shows up at his door hoping for his touch.

After a typical long night of casting out demons, Jesus tells his disciples that they need to move on; this is why he came and other towns need this preaching, making one wonder what Jesus had in mind when he went out to “preach.”

To preach? Surely not in our limited use or sense of the word.

Frank Perretti Theology?

Demons wig me out. I’ve spent the last few years trying to avoid having to form a theology, philosophy, or even an opinion of demons. I’ve tried even harder to avoid being one of “those” evangelicals who prays that Satan would keep his grimy mitts off of the sound system or out of the weather during the youth group ski trip.

Reading the first chapter of Mark, there’s no way to get around this demon thing, no way to wrap it up tidily especially since the Jews

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Reading the Text Abundantly or Protectively

November 6, 2011 By 5 Comments

What is the difference?

by Russell Rathbun

Gospel Reading:  Matthew 25:14-30

For Sunday, Nov. 13 , 2011: Year A—Ordinary 33

Jesus never comes right out and says “The Kingdom of Heaven is…” He says “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” And then he tells some odd story that at first hearing seems not to clarify the issue but to confuse it. 

Keep Awake

The opening words of the “Parable of the Talents” tie it to the conclusion of the previous parable—For it is as if. It’s as though today’s parable is some sort of explanation of what Jesus had just said.

And what Jesus had just said was: Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. That is the conclusion of a parable about the Kingdom of God. The “keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” is an admonition of how one should live in light of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Not About the Money

One could read this parable this way: Jesus is leaving but he will return and usher in the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven. Until then he has bestowed upon us the gift of free market capitalism which we should dedicate ourselves too so that when Jesus returns we will have made him a healthy profit and if you don’t at least show some minimal gain through compound interest you can go to hell. 

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The Yoke of the Law

October 23, 2011 By 8 Comments

What burden is it that the Pharisees refuse to lift a finger to move?

by Russell Rathbun

Gospel Reading: Matthew 23:1-12

For Sunday, Oct.30 , 2011: Year A—Ordinary 31

Things are about to get ugly, well, more ugly and more interesting.

The Ultimate Fight

Matthew’s Jesus has spent the last two chapters arguing, through parable and debate, that the chief priests, Herodians, Sadducees, scribes and Pharisees—all the religious leaders and power players—have squandered their positions as the guardians of the Law and administers of God’s justice and mercy.

Therefore, their place in the Kingdom of Heaven will be taken from them and given to others. Jesus then goes on for another chapter “Woe”-ing the hell out of the Pharisees and another two chapters describing the apocalyptic world their misdeeds have wrought.

Softening Them Up

I cannot help noting that Jesus begins his litany of charges against them with two clichés: Do as they say and not as they do; and they don’t practice what they preach. I would hope for more rhetorical flourish. But, perhaps, when Jesus said them they weren’t yet clichés, perhaps this is the origin of the clichés, and of course, clichés are clichés because they are true (to use another cliché). Or maybe the clichés are just to soften up the hearer for what comes next, a more complex charge leveled in one short verse.

They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.

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