Listen to how Jim responds to being put on the spot with this one: Does God change? And it only gets better from there! Jeremiah 18:1-11 The God who can change, and who can change our futures. Here is the potter who can start over with the malformed lump. Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 When God knows… Read more about Does God Change? with Jim Kast-Keat #LectioCast
Divine hospitality is put on display in God’s great acts of salvation. And God wants God’s people to reflect that lavish hospitality to one another and to expect that God’s own desire is to continue lavishing such abundance on God’s people in the present. Jeremiah 2:4-13 Strong words from God when Israel does not live… Read more about Hospitality and the Fruit of Your Lips with Jim Kast-Keat #LectioCast...
This week we get a picture painted in four different shades of divine deliverance. Luke 13:10-17 A loosing that confronts us with our desire to guard sacred space and time. And a story that reminds us that praise must always be grounded in experience. Jeremiah 1:4-10 Jeremiah is set aside from the time he was… Read more about Deliverance & Praise #LectioCast
God has hopes for creation that include a flourishing of justice for all. The summons and the warning both point toward God being on the side of those who need the world’s abundance to overflow to them and embrace them. Isaiah 5:1-7 An encapsulation of God’s hope for a beautiful, abundant place for everyone and… Read more about Faithfulness Justice with Kimberly Knight #LectioCast
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 Worship in the courts versus justice in the community. Surprise: sacrifice doesn’t give the people the purification they’re after. Maybe our religiosity itself is the evil God despises. Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23 The city that God abandons in Isaiah is the city the people praise in Psalm 50. Here’s an invitation to wrestle… Read more about The Secular as Barometer of Sacred Fidelity with Sean Gladding #LectioCast...
Hosea 11:1-11 A story of a deeply conflicted God: a God who has to discipline, but a God who has treated Israel with tender lovingkindness in its history—that sounds a note of hope for the future. God is the one who always longs to get God’s people out of Egypt—and Egypt out of God’s people.… Read more about Slavery and Food, Sex and Money with Sean Gladding #LectioCast
This week the lectionary hovers around the beauty—and necessity!—of God’s forgiveness. Mercy triumphs over judgment, and demands that we become a different kind of people as well. Hosea 1:2-10 A favorite Christian praise song illustrates the stark judgment of God and also, in the end, the triumph of mercy. Psalm 85 A song the echoes… Read more about Mercy Triumphs over Judgment #LectioCast
Colossians 1:15-28 A hymn to the cosmic Christ. Perhaps the most important thing to get about the Christian story: you are the image of God. Who God is making us is not defined by our sin, failure, or who we are not. Luke 10:38-42 Mary and Martha, distraction and presence. Are we ready to be… Read more about God is Not Ashamed—of Us with Rev. Sarah Heath #LectioCast
Luke 10:25-37 The well-known parable of the Good Samaritan wants to challenge our assumptions about who is worthy of our love. The challenge for us might be owning up to the ways in which we have decided to direct our love to some and not to others. Colossians 1:1-14 Paul celebrates a faith that does… Read more about True Love #LectioCast
2 Kings 5:1-14 – Naaman the Syrian discovers that the power of God does not run in the channels carved by the political and military powers of the world. Servants and messengers upend his expectations and demonstrate that God’s power is often found in the places we are least inclined to look for it. Psalm 30 … Read more about Reconfiguring our Politics for the Fourth of July #LectioCast...
2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 When Elisha takes the mantle from Elijah. This pattern runs deep in the biblical story, including with Jesus and his followers. Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 Another psalm to raise the question, How on earth could there be any Christian culture in which lament is not a regular part of what we do,… Read more about Getting Intimate with God #LectioCast
1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a A classic burnout passage: at the moment of greatest achievement, Elijah is ready for it to all be over. God meets it with compassionate provision. In fact, God seems to be feeding Elijah every time we turn around—it all starts to sound like the Exodus. And in the end, the… Read more about What Are You Doing Here? #LectioCast
The question Jesus asks Simon, Do you see this woman?, becomes a probe for us as well: do we see ourselves, and do we see the people around us. Do we embrace whom God has embraced? Do we recognize our own failed attempts to make the people of God after our own image? Luke 7:36-8:3… Read more about Do You See? with Bryan Berghoef #LectioCast
This week we see a cluster of stories that show God making the impossible possible. Whether it’s life out of death or a transformation of a violent aggressor into a vessel of self-giving love, God has the power to create and renew and rejuvenate. 1 Kings 17:8-16, (17-24) The places and ways that God works… Read more about God Making the Impossible Possible with Bryan Berghoef #LectioCast...
What does God have to do in order to be recognized as God by the nations? What do we need to do to be the kind of people who can make God’s name known? Who do we need to be if we are going to receive the nations into our communities? 1 Kings 18:20-21, (22-29),… Read more about God’s Glory Among the Nations #LectioCast
“Tradition is at once a passing on and a betrayal.” John 16:12-15 “Revelation is progressive.” Ok. But how do we know God’s revelation when we hear it? Looking for community and listening for the Jesus story. Romans 5:1-5 The Spirit empowers the recapitulation of Jesus’s story. But how do we proclaim the Jesus story without… Read more about Heeding the Spirit, Finding the Trinity with Broderick Greer #LectioCast...
The Spirit of God is a life-giver in the midst of chaos, one who works chaos in our lives so that we are forced to reckon with the fact that it’s God who is our life-giver. There is comfort and life from the hand of God. It’s the same comfort and life and parental care… Read more about Life Out of Chaos with Jonathan Martin #LectioCast
In a world where people enact laws, run for office, vote, and protest as people of faith, how do we know when we are in the right? How do we know the Christian story when we see it? This week’s passages give us some pointers. They invite us to be the people who are entrusting… Read more about Trusting Jesus with Our Lives with Jonathan Martin #LectioCast
The story of God is repeatedly a story of coming down: God’s glory coming down to shine on people’s faces, God the Father and the Son coming down to dwell with God’s people, and heavenly Jerusalem coming down to the earth. It’s our past, present, and future. Acts 16:9-15 A Macedonian call to the margins—outside… Read more about The Downward Movement of the Gospel with Jonathan Martin #LectioCast...
Morgan drops the money quote this week: “God’s song is big enough that there is a part for everyone.” This may have something to do with the big reveal from last week:What makes Christians distinct? This is a fantastic week of conversation about what identifies us as the people of God. Acts 11:1-18 The Cornelius… Read more about The breadth of God’s song #LectioCast
The resurrected Jesus stands as an agent of mercy and care—not keeping us from times of trouble, but walking with us through them. The slaughtered lamb upends conventional understandings of what God’s victory means while summoning us to listen. Acts 9:36-43 The way of mercy is embodied both as power from the Lord and in… Read more about There Will Be Valleys, But Christ is With Us #LectioCast...
Easter is about the glory of the resurrection, but that only happens by way of the cross. Acts 9:1-20 Does Jesus ask this question of us: Why are you persecuting me? When we hurt other people we are persecuting our savior. Salvation is not just about heaven on the other side of death, it’s about… Read more about Doing Easter Right with Morgan Guyton #LectioCast
Acts 5:27-32 Copping just the right attitude—what’s needed for civil disobedience. Speaking truth to authority and walking in costly commitment to God. Psalm 150 The definitive Scriptural proof text in favor of the worship band! Revelation 1:4-8 A kaleidoscope of imagery describing both Christ and God. The future of God is God’s arrival for… Read more about Peace, Spirit, Forgiveness, Grace (That’ll Preach) with Micky ScottBey Jones #LectioCast...
Isaiah 65:17-25 “New creation” means that God is up to a whole lot more than saving our souls. There is a process God is engaged in that we get to participate in. Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 This story that we so quickly associate with Jesus is a source of comfort and vision for oppressed people. The… Read more about When God Says, “I Don’t Think So” to the Powers of the World #LectioCast...
What on earth is the Lectionary trying to do lead us into as we go through Holy Week? Tripp Hudgins, an ethnomusicology Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Theological Union breaks it down for us. He leads us into an understanding of this week as the center of the church’s life, and invites us to see… Read more about Holy Week Special with Tripp Hudgins #LectioCast
Isaiah 50:4-9a The prophet models the cost of faithfulness to God, a pattern Jesus fulfills in his own faithful suffering. We learn what it means to be a good teacher—starting with listening and waking up. Following God means that people don’t get to act as judge of what is disgraceful or who is worthy of… Read more about Liturgy of the Passion w/ Micky ScottBey Jones
With Scott MacDougall back on the podcast we explore various dimensions of our embodied spirituality. The great things that God does for God’s people promise to be visible, tangible, and recognizable as great even to those to who do not recognize our God as their own. Lent is our time to set aside some goods… Read more about Embodied Spirituality with Scott MacDougall #LectioCast...
Hitting the halfway point in our Lenten journey, we find ourselves confronted with the wonder of God’s work of new creation and the extraordinary gift of forgiveness on which it’s based. We are invited to consider the question of whether we are willing to both receive and embody the reconciling, unifying forgiveness that God uses… Read more about Freedom, Forgiveness, and New Creation with Scott MacDougall #LectioCast...
It’s a cross-over podcast explosion! Homebrewed Christianity + LectioCast = zesty nerdiness! In the CLOBBERCAST we tackle all the clobber passages some Christians use against the LGBTQ members of the church. Not only do we end up discussing the pastoral consequences and personal tensions connected to the larger conversation, but Rev. Mixon and Daniel share… Read more about The Clobbercast: Sexuality, the Bible, and Ministry #LectioCast #NerdOut...
Scott MacDougall joins us and provides a beautiful overview of how the rhythm of Lent leads us into reality that the life we live is often lived in a period of fallowness and death and decay—all the while we hope for resurrection life on the other side. Isaiah 55:1-9 The invitation to come to the… Read more about Hunger, Thirst, and Provision with Scott MacDougall #Lectiocast #Lent...
