After a wide survey of scenes and stories from the Bible, from the damp days after the Flood in Genesis to the tail-end of the last book of the New Testament, we've looked at a lot of the ways violence shows up in the pages of sacred scripture. But what does it mean for any of us and how we live our lives? How do we make the difficult decisions about what to do when we feel like violence as the least-worst option in front of us, or when we need to think of alternatives beyond fight-or-flight? Ho...
Nov 24, 2020•35 min
In the early life of the church, followers of Jesus needed a word of hope to assure them that the destructive and arrogant ways of the Empire wouldn't last forever. They needed to know that God's victory over evil was assured, and that there was reason to keep on in their faith, showing love and humility in the face of Rome's cruelty and pride. Against that backdrop, the book of Revelation makes a certain kind of sense--it is resistance literature written in coded language to encourage people to...
Nov 17, 2020•27 min
The wise and faithful Fred Rogers said, "Anything human is mentionable, and anything mentionable is manageable." It was both a touchstone of his approach to children's television in his Neighborhood of Make-Believe, and also a key to his approach to ministry and life. Rogers also taught generations of children to ask the difficult but vital question, "What do you do with the MAD that you feel?" with the understanding that we all feel anger sometimes and need to decide how to use, channel, and pr...
Nov 10, 2020•30 min
Something has gone wrong when we lose our ability to be shocked by terrible things. And sometimes we need to come face to face with the terrible things to which the Bible bears witness--even if they aren't stories we teach our children in Sunday School or don't hear much about in sermons. That can be especially true when the culture or historical setting of a story makes it easier to hide or shrug off the horror. And in cultures throughout human history in which women were treated as the propert...
Nov 03, 2020•38 min
Lots of people know the story of when "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho... and the walls came a-tumblin' down." And from one perspective, the story of the Israelites taking the land of Canaan sounds like a triumphant victory and a happy ending. The freed Israelites at last have a homeland, as God had promised their ancestor Abraham. But what about the people who lived there already, and what do we do with the ways the conquest stories in the book of Joshua have been co-opted later in history ...
Oct 27, 2020•36 min
Lots of people know the story of the Exodus--from the miraculous parting of the sea to the dramatic rise of deliverer Moses to the powerful signs of judgment against Pharaoh's Egypt known as the ten plagues. It's a saga many know, not only from Sunday School lessons in childhood, but also multiple movies that have colored our imaginations. But the story of the plagues sent on Egypt is more complicated that the singing-cartoon or Cecil B. DeMille versions many grew up with. While the plagues are ...
Oct 20, 2020•36 min
Human history is inescapably bloody--and so is the Bible. We aren't great at facing up to those violent episodes in our history, or owning up to the costs of our actions and choices in human lives. And if that weren't hard enough, the biblical writers themselves often seem to permit, allow, encourage, or even endorse violence against other people. And yet, those same biblical voices also insist that all human beings are made in the image of God, and that we are all of infinte worth and sacrednes...
Oct 13, 2020•35 min
After the storytelling is finished, there are still lots of BIG questions to wrestle with from Esther's story, and they are all pressing for our lives today. For starters, while we may feel relieved that Esther, Mordecai, and their people get a happy ending by the end of the book, what do we do with the times in subsequent history when tragedy was not averted? The Jewish people were saved from Haman's plot in this story, but what do we say then about the six million Jewish people who were killed...
Oct 06, 2020•33 min
All the plot twists and tension has been building to this point in the story: Esther finally exposes the wicked Haman's plan, and her people are saved. And as the ancient poets and storytellers of Israel so often spoke of, the schemes of the wicked become their own undoing. It is as close to a storybook ending as you'll find in the Bible, with the villains defeated, the innocent saved, and the heroes vindicated. If you've been joining us along the way this far in our exploration of the book of E...
Sep 29, 2020•29 min
In their ongoing series exploring the book of Esther, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve take a look at chapters five and six as Esther goes to the king to save her people and to defeat the crooked scheming of the villain Haman. In a story already full of big characters and outlandish plot twists, here's a set of almost Shakespearean turns that raise the lowly and start the downfall of the crooked ones in high places. Join us for another episode of Crazy Faith Talk!
Sep 22, 2020•20 min
How do we respond when something truly terrible is about to happen? Do we ignore it and hope it doesn't affect us? Do we make provisions for ourselves alone and hope to weather the storm? Do we risk our comfort, our privilege, and our way of life to speak up? These are the kinds of questions that come to the surface in the fourth chapter of Esther. With the villainous Haman's plan to kill and plunder the whole Jewish people set into motion, and the clock ticking on its execution, Mordecai starts...
Sep 15, 2020•32 min
"To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunitsts who control the fool.... to be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." So warns famous novelist Octavia Butler, but it just as easily could have been a commentary on the book of Esther, as well. As pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve continue exploring this lesser-known book of the Bible, we turn to the rise of a villain, Haman, who persuades the king to permit a governmen...
Sep 08, 2020•32 min
As they move ahead in the book of Esther, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve move onto the second chapter of this story, where we meet Esther and hear how she is chosen to be queen basically by winning a beauty pageant. Along the way, we meet her cousin Mordecai, who will be a wise mentor, confidant, and voice of conscience for her as the story unfolds, and who helps to foil a plot against the Persian king Xerxes (Esther's new husband). Like a clockwork contraption being wound up for movement, the ...
Sep 01, 2020•22 min
In a new series, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve do something they've never tried before in this podcast--to work through an entire book of the Bible, looking at what's going on in the story and how it connects to our lives, too. We'll be exploring the biblical book of Esther, which is not only an epic thriller with life-and-death stakes for a whole nation of people ruled by a foreign empire, but also a story of courage, character, and the community that guides the hero of this story (Esther her...
Aug 25, 2020•33 min
As the close out this short series at the intersection of pop culture and faith, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve talk about the early 2000s series, "Avatar: The Last Airbender," and how there can be a lot for grown-ups to learn about life from a show that is ostensibly aimed at kids. As they look at the fantasy world of this TV show, the three friends around the table look at how we discern the right thing to do, even when the voices around us seem to be giving us bad advice, as well as the impo...
Aug 18, 2020•36 min
The best science fiction often takes the real world in which we live and then heightens, or stretches, some element of it as a way of looking at our actual world. And while it can be entertaining, engrossing, or frightening, those kind of imaginary worlds can also be places for thought experiments that can stretch our faithful imagination, too. So as our three conversation partners, Sarah, Erica, and Steve, continue this new series looking at pop culture and faith, this time Steve brings a novel...
Aug 11, 2020•30 min
What would it look like for church to be known first of all as a place of radical acceptance--and also one where members of the community brought out the best in each other? And what could help us imagine what that could look like? In a new round of conversations, pastors and colleagues in ministry Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a dive into the waters of pop culture they've been interacting with, to learn more about where books, movies, tv shows, and music offer insights for our faith lives. In ea...
Aug 04, 2020•28 min
Almost everything in our lives has been affected in some way or another by the COVID-19 pandemic, including major changes to what church life and ministry looks like. As our regularly gathering conversation partners, Sarah, Erica, and Steve, explore their own reflections on ministry during the time of coronavirus, they are joined by a fourth voice around the table--Russ, who is also a pastor and married to Pastor Sarah. As we explore successes and failures, learnings and struggles, we also uncov...
Jul 28, 2020•34 min
As messy, conflicted, and complicated as families can somtimes be (as we've seen for sure over the course of this series!), the thing about family is that your belonging in it is entirely by grace. You can't earn your family, merit your place in it, or decide to keep someone else out because of their bad behavior--in a sense, in a family, we are all blessedly "stuck" with each other. And it turns out to be a really important thing that the early church didn't run away from that idea, but in fact...
Jul 21, 2020•30 min
We live in an age of click-bait one-dimensional internet quizzes (like, "Answer three questions to find out what personality type you have," or "Click on a picture to find out which Disney princess you are,"), and it can be easy to do the same to biblical characters, too. For a long time, the sisterhood between Mary and Martha in the Gospels has been one of those places church folk have done some armchair psychology, asking one another, "Are you a Mary... or a Martha?" and often have assumed tha...
Jul 14, 2020•30 min
When a loving father gracious welcomed home his troubled son and extavagantly threw a party to celebrate his return, the older brother crosses his arms indignantly and asks his dad, "Don't ALL your sons matter?" And of course, they do. The father loves both of his sons, and both of his sons' needs are taken care of--but at the moment, it is the lost-but-now-found son who needs the focus. That's the climax of Jesus' famous story about a lost son, which is the final of three parables about the fin...
Jul 07, 2020•35 min
On Crazy Faith Talk, we have always tried to be honest and real in our conversations, whether it's about our own struggles, quirks, and stories, or with the stories and issues we explore. So as we continue our series looking at biblical brothers and sisters and how their family stories are often difficult and messy, we need to have some honest conversation about the man remembered as Israel's greatest king, David. His own abuse of power and position to forcibly take advantage of Bathsheba, and t...
Jun 30, 2020•37 min
As they continue their series on sibing rivalries and reversals in the Bible, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve (and a couple of unexpected comments from a dog in the background) turn to the story of young David--the kid who wasn't even considered an option for the crown by his own family, but whom God chose precisely in his smallness and lowliness. When all the conventional wisdom said to choose a leader based on their appearances and the image of "greatness" they projected, God chose this shephe...
Jun 23, 2020•31 min
One of the difficult but necessary lessons of life is that while good can come out of rotten choices or circumstances, we are not off the hook with responsibility for the rotten things we do. Someone can intend to do evil, and yet God can use it for good, as well. In this week's episode of Crazy Faith Talk, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at the way those tensions play out in the stories of Rachel and Leah, and then in the lives of their children (and the children Jacob has with thei...
Jun 16, 2020•36 min
As they keep looking at stories of sibling rivalries in the Bible, and how God turns the tables on our expectations in those stories, pastors and friends Erica, Sarah, and Steve explore the saga of Jacob and Esau, a pair of twins in the book of Genesis, who are constantly fighting and whose story takes some surprising twists. And so does the conversation today, too, since we'll explore this Bible story and what it means for our lives with some unexpected connections to Marvel comic characters, N...
Jun 09, 2020•30 min
Lots of church-folk know the Bible story of how Abraham and Sarah patiently waited for a child in their old age, and then were blessed with a son, Isaac. But we often forget (or ignore) that the Bible itself tells a more complicated, surprising, and table-turning tale. When Abraham and Sarah doubt that God will come through for them, they take matters into their own hands and Abraham has a son with their Egyptian servant-turned-concubine, Hagar. And then when Sarah has a son of her own, overturn...
Jun 02, 2020•27 min
It's been said that the entire Bible is an extended answer to the question Cain first asks near the beginning of Genesis: "Am I my brother's keeper?" In this new series, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at numerous stories of siblings (usually brothers) in the Bible who have rivalries between one another, and also the recurring way God reverses our expectations when there are struggles between older and younger. In this first episode of the new series, we look at the infamous pairing ...
May 26, 2020•35 min
As they continue their series looking at practicing justice in our lives, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve take a look at justice and women today. For a lot of human history, women have been treated as "less than" their male counterparts, or treated like they were defective, or regarded as property of men. And even though there are a lot of ways that has changed over time in many places, there are still ways we implicitly operate as though males were the default way of being human, and that women...
May 19, 2020•33 min
The old line attributed to Dr. King says that "the most segregated hour in America is still Sunday mornings at eleven o' clock." So even though we might like to wish that "racism isn't my problem" or "racism was solved a long time ago" or "racism doesn't have to do with me, because everyone around me looks the same as I do," we--especially we who claim to be followers of Jesus--can't ignore the ongoing ways that injustice is done along racial lines. So in their ongoing series looking at practici...
May 12, 2020•35 min
How does it affect the way we see criminal justice if we are looking at it through the lens of the same Jesus who said, "I was a prisoner, and you visited me," and who was executed by the state as a dangerous troublemaker? What does it mean to see the faces of the incarcerated as bearing both the face of Christ and the image of God? As they continue to look at practicing justice, pastors Erica, Sarah, and Steve turn to what our faith says about criminal justice, and how we sometimes struggle wit...
May 05, 2020•32 min
