This week we’re reading the story of Jesus disrupting Temple commerce during the festival of Passover as told in John 2:13-25. Unlike the other Gospels, which place this story at the end of Jesus’s ministry, John places it at the very beginning, just after Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine in Cana. If that story had led us to think that Jesus was going to be all “yes,” this story puts us squarely into the “no.” In this case, Jesus’s “no’ is to the intersection of worship and business, as Jesus declares, “Do not make my Father’s house a house of commerce.” But what does it mean that the temple—and by extension our own churches and synagogues—shouldn’t conduct business related to worship? Sure, we see how having a church gift shop might be a bit over the top, but travelers need to exchange money, pilgrims need to buy animals for sacrifice, and pastors need to feed their families. Perhaps, we think, Jesus is holding out an idealized view of a future in which money is no longer needed for worship. But here and now, in a world in which money is in fact necessary, perhaps we can at least try to minimize business of worship, making sure our finances support true worship rather than designing our worship to bring in more business.

This week we’re reading John 2:1-11, the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding -his first miraculous sign in the Gospel of John, and an unusual place to start. Jesus himself objects to his mother’s subtle suggestion that he ought to take action when she sees the wine has run out. I mean, come on - the stakes here are not that high. So the party-goers will be disappointed, so the host will be embarrassed.  So? Doesn’t Jesus have bigger fish to fry? But in choosing to act, he brings a hospitality beyond our wildest imagination into the story. Now, if Jesus can overcome his hesitation to act, if he’s willing to adjust the actual cosmic clock of the kingdom of heaven in the interest of hospitality...  what exactly is it that holds us back from generosity? and what we might be able to overcome? 

This week we’re reading John’s version of the call of the disciples as told in John 1:35-51. Unlike the Synoptic story of Jesus beckoning Peter, James, and John from their fishing boats, this version of the call of the disciples is more subtle and variable. Two disciples follow Jesus because they’re curious, one because his brother invites him. One gets a direct call from Jesus and another is skeptical but goes along anyway. It doesn’t matter how you receive the call of Jesus, we think, but just that you take the next step, however big or however small. “Come and see!” becomes a refrain in this text—but what do these new disciples see? They see Jesus, the kingdom of heaven come to earth, walking around and being human, not just teaching them but also showing them how to live a life, how to be human with deep authenticity that invites further relationship. How can we, too, embody that kind of life? Come and see, Jesus says. Come and see.

This week we move past the introductory material and into the story itself with John 1:19-34. It begins with John – John the Baptist, that is, who is indeed out there baptizing people, but he himself could hardly be more clear that what he’s doing is really not the point. What we should attune to is this lamb of God who is apparently right here among us. What does it mean to call Jesus the Lamb of God – what is that language drawing upon? What does it mean to say he takes away the sin of the world – takes away, in the present tense, even before his crucifixion? And why does he say the SIN of the world, and not the sins? We’re pretty sure there is more than one. 

On this special Christmas Eve episode we’re discussing the birth of Jesus as told in Luke 2:1-20. We talk about the imperial setting of this story, which takes place during the reigns of Augustus, Herod, and Quirinius but announces the good news of a different lord and savior who brings peace to all rather than to the few. We ponder the way that the message makes its way into the world—through an unwed mother, a band of shepherds, and an assortment of people who happen to be awake in the middle of the night—leaving the official power structures unaware of the fact that the world has been fundamentally changed. And we talk about how this story challenges us to pay attention to who we listen to, where we look for good news, and what divine announcements we might sleep through because we’ve gotten too comfortable. Merry Christmas, y’all.

For this fourth week of Advent we’re making the move to the New Testament with John 1:1-18, which describes the Word becoming flesh to dwell among us. We think about what it means for God to become flesh, and how lonely it must be to exist in a world where there is none like you, both a human and a divine being. We discuss the darkness of the ways of Empire, oriented toward death, which cannot comprehend the true Light, which orients toward the fullness of life for all humankind. And we take courage in the invitation to live in that light, knowing that the powers of darkness cannot overcome it. Take courage, friends. The light of life is coming into the world.

For this 3rd week of advent and our last week in the Hebrew scriptures, we are reading the gorgeous words of Isaiah 55. This text starts us out in these bodies we’ve been given, these bodies that need water and food, and joy, and God. Why do we consume so many things that don’t fill us up? How have things gone so haywire? What if we could just trust that there is a much bigger system we are being invited into, where our lives have meaning both alone and intertwined? And what if there’s a pathway to that way of being, coming up just ahead on the right? Would you take it? Can we trust it? 

For this second week of Advent we’re reading Ezekiel 37:1–14, Ezekiel’s famous vision of a valley of dry bones. We wonder why God asks Ezekiel whether he thinks the bones can live and why on earth he instructs Ezekiel to prophesy directly to the bones, kind of a ridiculous prophetic task. But as the bones come together with new sinews and new flesh, we recognize the importance of a prophet who can speak hope to the hopeless and restoration to a community in despair. We also notice that the breath that animates these restored bones comes not directly from God but from the four winds reminding us that we need to be open to the enspiriting breath of the world around us, from which our own renewal may come.

This week we are reading Daniel chapter 3 - a story that seems for a while to be moving in the direction of an over-the-top, cartoon worthy adventure, until you get to the utterly arresting, mic-drop statement of faith planted somewhere in the middle. We wonder: In an environment where loyalty to the king has been conflated with loyalty to the king’s god, what does it mean to live a life faithful to your god and still within the boundaries of the society where you find yourself? Could Shadrach, Meshach and Eved-nego have de-escalated this conflict? Should they have? And how sure were these guys that they were going to come out of that furnace okay?

This week we’re reading Jeremiah 29:1-14, a text so hopeful about the future that it is often found on t-shirts and graduation gifts. But while the passage is indeed hopeful—“I know the plans I have for you”—in the context of Jeremiah it is a certain kind of difficult hope: a hope that must first reckon with a tumultuous present reality that will not yield in your generation, or your children’s generation, but only seventy years from now, when Babylon’s time is up. So what then must we do in the meantime, until that hopeful day finally arrives? Build houses, plant gardens, have children. Seek the welfare of the community—the whole community, the Babylonian community—for only when it thrives can you survive until the day God’s promises are finally realized.