After the angels and shepherds go back home, what happens next to the child from the manger? In today’s episode of Crazy Faith Talk, pastors Erica and Steve take a look at another telling of the story of Jesus’ birth—one without any shepherds or mangers, but with a star in the sky, a fearful paranoid puppet-king, and traveling strangers from far away. And even though we may be tempted to tame this story, the story of the Magi (or the Wise Men), too, there is surprising power and urgency in this ...
Jan 02, 2018•30 min
We have a way of sentimentalizing the Christmas story and imagining the news of Jesus’ birth was harmless and disconnected from the world in which Jesus and his family lived, like a self-contained little scene in a snow-globe. But when the Luke the storyteller recounts the birth of Jesus, he is well aware of the struggles of empires and the political messages of Caesar, the Roman ruler who saw himself as divinely chosen and a god himself with a right to rule the world. And in fact, the angels ov...
Dec 26, 2017•33 min
Pastors Erica and Steve take a closer look at a scene from Luke's gospel that feels like a musical, complete with characters breaking into song. And just like in a musical, where the motion of the plot often stops in order to go deeper into what a character is feeling or thinking at the moment, Mary's song--sometimes called "the Magnificat," is one of those moments where the story of Jesus pauses in order to say something about WHY we should be getting excited about Jesus' coming onto the scene ...
Dec 19, 2017•31 min
Everybody says they remember the line, "Play it again, Sam," from the movie Casablanca?, but it turns out that Humphrey Bogart's Rick doesn't ever say those exact words--and neither does anybody else! We have a way of ?thinking? we know how a story goes, and can end up either misunderstanding, misreading, or even inventing details that weren't quite there. Maybe it's no big deal if we do it with an old movie, but what if we are inserting extra characters or parts to Bible stories? Think we'd nev...
Dec 12, 2017•32 min
Sometimes we get a picture in our head of how we think God "has" to act... and then God surprises us. It's there at the heart of the Christian faith--in the midst of expectations of a king to liberate the people like David from Israel's collective memory, there comes Jesus of Nazareth, who defies expectations and announces God's Reign, not by overthrowing the Romans in a bloody revolt, but right under the nose of the empire and while being executed by the Romans, too. Prophets like Isaiah were h...
Dec 05, 2017•37 min
In this last of our series on "Weird Bible Stories," pastors Erica and Steve delve into a strange little story from the wilderness days of the people of Israel in the book of Numbers. An enemy king is afraid of the Israelites, and so he pays a prophet-for-hire to do his bidding and speak a curse on them. But when the prophet for hire, a guy named Balaam, is on the way to speak his paid message, he ends up having a rather frank conversation with his own donkey! It's not just a story about a talki...
Nov 28, 2017•38 min
When somebody claims to speak for God, it makes our ears prick up. Sometimes it's because we think they really have something to say, and sometimes it's becasue we have heard too many charlatans, fakers, and religious snake-oil salesmen, and we are upset when someone panders and tricks people by saying they have "a word from the Lord." The prophets of Israel had the same challenge--too many court prophets just recited back the official party line of the king and told people what they wanted to h...
Nov 21, 2017•35 min
We live in a world of contracts, deals, and terms-of-service agreements. We sign or stamp or notarize important documents, and the world in which we live makes a big fuss over those who proclaim themselves to be expert "deal makers" who squeeze others to get more out of them. And then there is the surprising God of the Bible, who cuts a strange kind of deal... by giving away everything, and making all the promises, without getting a single "concession" or "perk." That is the strange way of the G...
Nov 14, 2017•35 min
As Erica and Steve continue exploring Bible stories that make us scratch our heads, we explore the lesser-known, but vitally important, second half of the story of Jonah, that ends with an object lesson featuring a bean plant that grows up over night, a divinely-appointed worm, and God's surprising love for the ones labeled "the enemy." We'll see that the God we meet, not just in Jonah's story, but throughout the Scriptures, has a way of deliberately seeking out those seen as beyond the reach of...
Nov 07, 2017•34 min
In this episode, Erica and Steve turn to a strange handful of verses from Matthew's Gospel that tell of seemingly random dead people coming back to life at the moment of Jesus' death on the cross, while darkness fills the skies and the temple curtain is torn. It sounds like something out of a Halloween-themed zombie movie or an episode of "The Walking Dead," but there it is in the New Testament, right there in Matthew 27! What on earth is this story all about, and why did the early church hold o...
Oct 31, 2017•31 min
?After having to say Godspeed to Drew, new conversations continue on Crazy Faith Talk with Pastor Erica joining with Steve to wrestle with some of the stranger, lesser-known, and weirder stories from the Bible. Why did they get remembered and written down in the first place? What is going on in the parts we want to skip over? And how might God have something to say to us from passages we have either never read or never paid attention to? In this first of a series, Erica and Steve dig into the ge...
Oct 24, 2017•32 min
Concluding these four weeks, Pastors Steve, Drew, and our new friend Erica, round out the discussion which has progressed-Gather, Gather Around the Word, Gather Around the Sacraments, to this final moment of leaving the assembly. The thought process follows: those called in have been transformed by the acts and words in this place and are now sent out to be those words and actions in the broader world. The people of faith...if you recall...have been called by God to strange, weird, and peculiar ...
Oct 17, 2017•32 min
Continuing their four week series on "Living the Christian Life," Pastors Steve and Drew, joined by guest star Pastor Erica, discuss what it means to for the life of faith to meet and see Jesus in the sacraments (understood here as Baptism and Communion). Continuing the thought process of gathering as God's people, gathering around God's Word, and now seeing and participating with God in the sacraments, Steve, Drew, and Erica discuss how the sacraments transform people of faith and send them int...
Oct 10, 2017•34 min
Last week, Steve and Drew discussed what it means to be "God's people" and provided those buzz words, "weird" or "peculiar." They explained that being God's people means that gathering together is not based on place but on people. Today, they explore further what the "gathered in ones" are to be and do when they gather around the Word of God: Jesus Christ himself. Listen carefully as they talk about listening carefully...and what this means for the lived experience of Christian people.
Oct 03, 2017•33 min
Today's episode marks the beginning of a short four part series focusing on "What does it mean to live the Christian life?" This series has been inspired by the strongly negative examples of living life with grace, humility, and welcoming that are far too commonplace on the news. Steve and Drew use the worship liturgy as a rubric for understanding how Christianity it to be practiced not just on Sunday, but through everyday. Tune in for all four part: Gathering, The Word, the Sacrments, Being Sen...
Sep 26, 2017•32 min
On October 31, 1517 Augstinian monk Marin Luther nailed 95 points for argument to the church door and (unintentionally) began a 500 year trajectory that Christianity has followed. Today, Steve and Drew look back at what happened and what it all meant for the Christianity of its day. And then, they pivot the conversation to considering what does it mean for the next 500 years of church's life and faithful witness. (Of course, they do not make predictions about what it will look like...or do they?...
Sep 19, 2017•36 min
If you remember back to last week, Pastor Steve and Pastor Drew tried to explore the theological implications of natural disasters. As Steve said, the biggest take away is being the hands and feet of Christ in the midst of suffering...even suffering we cannot understand. This week, they open up the conversation on how do people of faith respond in faith to the needs of people 1,000 miles away...and equally to those living right next door.
Sep 12, 2017•36 min
One of our human and faith wrestling tendencies is to ask questions like, "If God is good, why do hurricanes happen?" or "Why didn't God just stop the hurricanes from hurting people?" when natural disasters occur. That's ok. Remember what Steve and Drew have said a lot: we're humans trying to understand divine things in human ways. And that's hard. We as people have a difficult time with making sense out of evil: humans doing evil; "natural" evil that seems to be done to us. We wrestle and strug...
Sep 05, 2017•34 min
In a world connected each day by the famous social media platforms of the world, we lose a lot in the process. Steve and Drew examine the implications of a world that communicates more and more through 140 characters or a post and picture and less and less through embodied human face-to-face conversations. While a technological world may be faster, it is not as effective and leads to bigger problems. Through more nerdy self-disclosure and their usual (bad) jokes, Steve and Drew work to steer us ...
Aug 29, 2017•37 min
Steve and Drew are back at it and this time they're trying to keep you off that pink cloud of cozy Christianity after talking for six episodes about hope. While hope does give us confidence and assurance, Christian Hope does not create a fake world to escape to against the real world all around us. Instead, Christian hope gives us the confidence and the mold to live out our lives as ones who not only look forward to the hopeful return of Jesus but leads us to live the truth of the hope in the ri...
Aug 22, 2017•30 min
Pastor Steve and Pastor Drew share their final thoughts about the end of things (kind of a pun, right?) by putting the entire discussion into the context of, "Why does this all matter?" By understanding that Heaven is not something to be earned and that God is not destructive, the ideas of stewardship, hope, mission, and service are broached. Looking ahead is not a scary proposition, they'll argue. They go on to discuss the question, "So, what difference can I make now?"
Aug 15, 2017•34 min
All throughout this multi-stop journey, Steve and Drew have been keeping us close to the text. By starting in Genesis and Revelation, going to I Thessalonians, and now today in Matthew 24. This particular chapter, just as the I Thess. 4 chapter, are often used in the "Rapture Theology" argument that appears often in today's world. By looking again closely at the words, their original context, and even the meaning of the language of the original author, they expose that this passage shows us that...
Aug 08, 2017•33 min
Continuing today the ongoing discussion of "What is Christian Hope?" Steve and Drew take a stop off at Paul's letter to the Thessalonians. They explore and unpack chapter 4 which is often cited as evidence of "The Rapture." By looking at what the text says (and doesn't say) and considering the original Greek language and Paul's historical context, they hope you'll walk away from today feeling a bit more assured of what the Bible says (and doesn't say) about Christian Hope and "Last Things" as pa...
Aug 01, 2017•33 min
When folks think about "end times" they often flip to the end of the Bible and read Revelation. And while Revelation is correctly placed in the discussion of eschatology (final things), it is often taken far out of its original context and understanding. Steve and Drew look at chapter 1, chapter 5, and chapters 21 and 22 to understand many of the keys to reading this text for all its worth and holding back from reading more into the text than actually exists there.
Jul 25, 2017•32 min
To continue their discussion of Christian Hope, Steve and Drew pause for a moment to provide a helpful and necessary lens through which to read the Bible's Apocalyptic Literature (Revelation and Daniel, for example). In our world of intriuge, scandal, and doubt, we often get caught in the trap of reading Biblical texts for more than what they're actually saying. By using tools that allow us to enter the world of the original authors, we can understand their meaning without scandal and by allowin...
Jul 18, 2017•35 min
Last Things...Eschatology...Christian Hope. Many words, same ideas. Pastors Steve and Drew own their own traditions and show that they come from theological places that rarely speak or consider these ideas. However, they jump into the conversation because discussions and ideas of "last things" come up often in discussions of what it means to be a people of God. By starting at Genesis and weaving in some Revelation, they begin to explain how the Story of Scripture is really an interwoven masterpi...
Jul 11, 2017•30 min
Picking up where they left off last week with the warrior and gym teacher views of God, Steve and Drew this week look at two interrelated but wholly different other "popular" views of God: God the therapist and God the cosmic vending machine. These two have become broadly seen across the culture, in both the church and the broader society, which cause us to misunderstand and misdirect our thinking of God. While last week Steve and Drew saw the "mean God," this week they look at the "nice God." T...
Jul 04, 2017•34 min
Steve and Drew address the misguided thinking that we sometimes have about God...that God is an evil, mean, bloodthirsty killer or God is an overly critical gym teacher for whom nothing is ever good enough. This is part I of two where our two resident theologeeks unpack, discuss, and redirect our often misfired views of God. Steve and Drew fully embrace the fact that many of these "missing the mark" viewpoints are generated by bad teaching of the church and today's episode will hopefully and hel...
Jun 27, 2017•31 min
Today's episode takes a bit of a detour from our standard format as Steve and Drew try their hand at roleplay acting. By channeling his former agnostic self, Drew explores very valid questions that folks around us have: Why do I HAVE TO go to church? Why are church people often not at all like the God they worship? And many others! If you've ever heard these questions (or maybe even asked them yourself) then you'll want to join in the conversation. Remember: Questions and comments can be forward...
Jun 20, 2017•32 min
Since the time of the Ascension of Jesus, the Church has been arguing with itself about which group of Christians is most right and who is teaching the correct way. There have been battles and feuds. There have been wars and separations. So, it leaves which us all wondering...which group is correct? Pastor Steve and Pastor Drew jump into this conversation, with stories from history and the present day, on Christ's vision for a united (not uniform) Christian communion. NOTE: Ignore Pastor Drew's ...
Jun 13, 2017•38 min
