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 wealthy and powerful in the kingdom of God, while those that appear...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 322
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, who redeemed the people not for their own sake, but for God. Is the...
Jun 23, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 321
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. Having these images before us gives substance to our unknown fears,...
Jun 16, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 320
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 both the world that is and the world as it should be. And we wonder ...
Jun 09, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 319
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 measure up and whether we can see the Spirit at work today in une...
Jun 02, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 318
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 Christians today take the real power and beauty at the core of Paul’...
May 26, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 317
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 makes a person’s worth before God dependent on our own actions rath...
May 19, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 316
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 make possible ... what might they hinder? And how do community l...
May 12, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 315
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 gospel for him, leading the eunuch to ask for baptism. We discus...
May 05, 2025•59 min•Ep. 314
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 established form of religion is confronted by a disestablished fo...
Apr 28, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 313
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 ways we, too, are slow of heart, like those disciples unable to ...
Apr 21, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 312
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 happening now. We wonder - how can we open our hearts and our ima...
Apr 14, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 311
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 the first, or whether he’s just more savvy. More importantly, we w...
Apr 12, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 310
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 so quickly slip into accusation and arguments about greatness when...
Apr 11, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 309
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 so different from the impending fate of his own body. How can th...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 308
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, perhaps mercifully so, since seeing clearly what was about to tr...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 307
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 THAT chasm? What happens when we build a life that insulates us from ...
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 306
This week we’re reading the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son as told in Luke 15:1-32. While these stories are sometime read separately, we find that reading them together puts them in a different light, one that draws our attention to the value of each individual, the importance of the whole community, and especially the tendency of the kingdom of heaven to break out into a party. Whoever we are—whether the one who has wandered off, the one who made poor decisions, or ...
Mar 17, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 305
This week we read Luke 13:1-9, 31-35, a text that raised the biggest of questions for us. What exactly is the connection between sin and death that Jesus is getting at when he talks about the the Galileans who died at the hand of Pilate, or that freak accident with the tower? How does it hit readers for Jesus to explicitly name his imminent death as central to his purpose in going to Jerusalem, rather than letting us think of it as an unfortunate side effect of his work? We really felt the pull ...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 304
This week we’re reading two stories that are often read separately, the Good Samaritan parable and Jesus’s visit with Mary and Martha as told in Luke 10:25-42. The Good Samaritan has us thinking about the question of our obligations to our neighbors in need. When a lawyer asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?,” Jesus responds with a story that seems to dispense with the category of neighbor altogether, instead insisting that one must show compassion to whomever is in need. The Mary and Martha story l...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 303
Our reading for Ash Wednesday is Luke 9:51-62–a real pivot point in Luke’s story. Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem, and the story gains a sense of focus, momentum, and urgency. Should we be surprised, then, that he wastes no energy on anger or retaliation when the Samaritans won’t host him? Should we be surprised that he asks people he encounters to follow him right there onthe spot, without a care for the people and responsibilities they leave behind? That’s a hard ask to understand if we...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 302
This week we’re reading the stories of Jesus’ transformation on the mountain top and the disciples’ failed attempt to heal a possessed boy as told in Luke 9:28–45. We discuss the significance of Jesus’s transfiguration and the importance of the command from the heavenly voice, “Listen to him!” We talk about the appearance of Moses and Elijah and the coming Exodus that Jesus will undergo in Jerusalem through his crucifixion and resurrection. And we wrestle with the urgency Jesus must feel, knowin...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 301
This week, we are reading Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus, a Pharisee named Simon, and a woman who is a sinner come together at a dinner party. The emotional intensity of this story is hard to overstate. As the woman cries over Jesus’s feet, we wonder – what is the tenor of emotion that has cracked her open? Is it guilt & pleading? Gratitude or vulnerability? Is it longing? Jesus says that her faith has saved her, but what can we say about her faith from this short story where she never speaks? An...
Feb 17, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 300
This week we’re reading Luke 7:18-35. John the Baptist has been in prison since Jesus’s baptism, so he hasn’t been able to witness any of Jesus’ ministry for himself. Now he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he is really the Messiah or if John should look for another. Imagine John, the great disciple preparing the way for the Lord, suddenly doubting his faith in Jesus. Rather than make a declaration to John, Jesus tells John that the blind see, the dead are raised, and the poor have goo...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 299
This week, we are reading Luke 7:1-17 – stories of two miraculous healings, both of which seem to focus more on the person who is well, who is concerned or bereaved, than on the person whose body is failing. What might that tell us about the nature of healing, or faith, or community? And of all the suffering one might alleviate, why does Jesus respond to these two cases? One, an Israelite woman who mourns her son, one a Roman man concerned for his slave. A powerful person and a vulnerable one. I...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 298
This week we’re reading three stories of Jesus told in Luke 6:1-16. In the first two, Jesus is in a dispute with some Pharisees about observing the Sabbath. In one story, Jesus seems to claim authority over the Sabbath, given his identity as the Son of Man. In a second story, Jesus presses the boundaries of mercy, healing a man on the sabbath even though he is not in life-threatening danger, creating anger among the Pharisees. Then, in a third story, Jesus calls the twelve apostles who will carr...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 297
This week, we're reading Luke 5:1-11, a story of a miraculously large fishing haul. In the midst of stories of miraculous healing, why is it this one, about fishing, that launches Simon Peter into his discipleship? Is it because the miracle is so stark against the backdrop of his knowledge and experience? Is it because he has tools to help Jesus in this case, to partner with him? What did it take for Simon to walk away from the kind of catch he’d probably dreamed of all his professional life – t...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 296
This week we’re reading Luke 4:14-30, the story of Jesus giving his inaugural sermon at his home synagogue in Nazareth. In the Gospel of Luke this passage serves as a kind of mission statement for the ministry of Jesus, which he envisions as fundamentally “good news to the poor.” This is a good measure, we think, for our own communities. To what extent is our work in the world good news to the poor, and so to what degree does it conform to the Gospel of Jesus? Yet, while the people of Nazareth a...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 295
This week, we read Luke 3:1-22, a text that orients us first in all of competing political powers at play at that moment in history – and there are many! But then we simultaneously zoom IN to the personal and zoom OUT to the godly with the accounts of baptism. We wonder - Does something change in that ritualized moment, or does the ritual mark a shift that has already happened, or is the ritual lay a foundation for change in the future? Can they all be true? We wonder about the paths we are on a...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 294
This week we’re reading Luke 2:41-52, the story of twelve-year-old Jesus left behind in the temple as his parents return home from the Passover celebration. We talk about the ways repeated rituals like that ancient Passover pilgrimage can open up space for new and profound encounters with God, opportunities to integrate one’s own life into the story of the Torah and into the light of God’s revelation. We also ponder the tension in this text between Jesus’s earthly family and his heavenly Father....
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 293
