BibleWorm

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew chapter 3, the story of Jesus’s baptism. What does baptism even mean for someone like Jesus – what kind of transition does this mark for him? And what does it mean for someone else to baptize him – can you even imagine the imposter syndrome John must feel? We see in this story a call to action – to do the hard work of turning our hearts and minds. We also get to see the gorgeous and abounding delight that God takes in Jesus at this transitional moment.

On this special episode of BibleWorm we’re reading the story of Herod and the magi as told in Matthew 2:1-23. This text tells a side of Christmas that we may not want to talk about, as it narrates the story of a fearful King Herod who kills all the babies of Bethlehem in his quest to destroy the baby Jesus, whom he perceives as a threat to his political power. We talk about the arrival of the magi from the East, who discern from the stars that the world is changing, and the religious authorities of Judea, who derive from the text where the child is to be born. We marvel at the power of dreams as a means of God communicating urgent messages that bypass rational thought. And we wrestle with the ways that religious knowledge—and yes, even Christmas— can be coopted by fearful people of power in service to death, asking how people of faith might instead be faithful witnesses to the God of life, who is coming into the world.

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 1:1-17, seventeen juicy verses of genealogy to get us started in this gospel. This origin story seems to be framed a little bit like a new Genesis, giving us all the raw materials, all the ancestors, that went into the creation of this new baby, Jesus. His lineage does offer “legitimacy” insofar as he is in the line of David. But it has both heroes and folks who are not remembered so favorably. And it goes out of its way to name at least a couple of women, all of whom had to abandon social expectations at some point in order to wield the singular power of their life in the way that only they knew was right.  It makes us wonder - how do we tell our own stories, our community’s story? Who do we highlight, and who do we leave out? All of it makes us who we are.

In this replay of our 2020 Christmas eve special episode, BibleWorm reads Luke 2:1-20. We imagine ourselves with the shepherds in the field, taking in the mindblowing magnitude of their theophany in the field, and wondering who are the proverbial shepherds in our society today. We see not only the theological but the political revolution bubbling up in the story. And we wonder -- though the text is silent on this point -- was there a donkey in the manger? We are willing to bank our reputations on it. 

This week BibleWorm concludes our Advent series with the less famous version of the Christmas story as told in Matthew 1:18-25. This quieter version of the Christmas story focuses on Joseph, who marries his betrothed Mary despite her unplanned pregnancy, gives Jesus his name, and adopts Jesus into the family line of David, credentialing him as the Jewish messiah. Joseph’s role is mostly to keep his male ego out of the way, and he ultimately does so without hesitation. We also discuss the two names given to Jesus in this text and what they tell us about both Jesus and God. The name Jesus, or Joshua in Hebrew, indicates God’s power to save humankind from the powers of sin and death, while the name Emmanuel, or “God with us,” gestures to the intimate presence of that God here among us in quiet and unassuming ways. In this baby Jesus, God’s saving power is present among us. What a beautiful image.

On this special episode in our series about biblical women, BibleWorm discusses Bathsheba. We met her first in II Samuel 11, but she was more acted upon than an actor herself in that story. This week we meet her again in I Kings 1, when David has gone from a model of virility, power, and traditional (sometimes toxic) masculinity to a fairly pitiable state in his old age. At this awkward moment when David is still King but is losing control of both the kingdom and his own facilities, it is Bathsheba alone who knows how to take the wheel. Trust, intimacy, loyalty and power all look a little different in this story. Can you find them? 

This week BibleWorm continues on in the third week of our Advent series, reading Isaiah 42:1-9, one of the well-known Servant Songs of Isaiah. We talk about traditional interpretations of the servant, some which view the servant as the Messiah but others which view the servant as the people of Israel—or by extension, the people of faith. In typical BibleWorm fashion, we try to read it as both—a view of the Messiah we are waiting for and a model for how we should try to be in the meantime. In that light, we discuss Isaiah’s vision of the servant as one who brings justice to the nations, not through violent retribution but by showing gentleness and compassion to the most vulnerable. “I have called you for a good reason,” says God, “to open blind eyes and to lead the prisoners from prison.” That is what the servant is to do—and that is what you and I can do even here and now, as we wait for God to do a new thing.

This week BibleWorm reads Esther chapter 4, the story of a woman who didn’t know the power that she had … until suddenly she did. Her story makes us think of what it is to have a fate that is tied to the most vulnerable people – arguably a fate we all have. It made us wonder about the breadth of details in a person’s life story that prepare them in some way for the biggest challenges they will face. And it made us ask - what is possible once we put aside the primary goal of protecting ourselves?  

This week BibleWorm enters into the Christian season of Advent by reading from the prophet Habakkuk. We marvel at the way Habakkuk moves us from the articulation of profound suffering to the casting of a hopeful vision and then to expectant rejoicing in a restoration that has not yet come. We discuss the urgency of being honest about suffering and despair, not just in Habakkuk’s day but in ours as well. We think about the importance of articulating a vision that is so profound that it can inspire hope and yet so simple that it can be read by people on the run. And we ponder the beauty of a resilient hope that rejoices even in the midst of despair, believing that the world has already turned even though there is no evidence that anything has changed.

This week BibleWorm reads Isaiah 36:1-3, 13-20; 37:1-7; and then 2:1-4 - a set of texts that calls us to sit with questions about the power of rhetoric to confuse, mislead, and exhaust us in times of fear and conflict. How can we preserve our energy for the proverbial moment of birth, when the stakes could not be higher? What would the world be like if political struggle and violence could be taken off the table – what could we turn our attention to instead?