BibleWorm

On this special edition of the podcast we talk with Dr. Cameron Howard, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, about her latest book, The Old Testament for a Complex World: How the Bible’s Dynamic Testimony Points to New Life for the Church. We talk about biblical interpretation as being less like digging for buried treasure and more like an atomic reaction that generates new energy when text and interpreter come together. We discuss the multiple authors of the Hebrew Bible and the way they represent not a unified voice that speaks to us in absolutes but a diverse set of witnesses that invites us into a conversation about God and the life of faith. And we discuss the ways in which the Bible remixes ancient Near Easter traditions and how that might be a model for creating our own theological remixes today.

This week BibleWorm reads Isaiah 9:1-7, which celebrates the arrival of a righteous king to restore the people. We talk about the anxiety of walking in darkness and the joy that comes when dawn finally breaks. We discuss the experience of oppression, bearing the yoke of hard labor and the rod of the stern ruler and contrast that with the arrival of a new king who breaks the rod and who bears authority on his own shoulders. And we discuss the promise of a new ruler, wonderful counselor, mighty god, everlasting father, prince of peace and wrestle with the significance of that ruler both in Isaiah’s time and in our own.

This week we move into the world of prophecy and poetry with Amos 1:1-2 and 5:14-15 and 18-24. We situate Amos’s call to hate evil and love good within his broader message of economic justice. We make ourselves the audience of this prophecy, and sit with the idea that if we keep taking more than we need as we go about our daily lives,  any real communion with God through worship or through ritual will be impossible. But Amos isn’t asking us to sacrifice ourselves for someone else, he is asking us to have faith that someone else’s thriving will benefit us, too. When justice flows down like a mighty stream, all of our proverbial fields are watered.

This week Bobby and Amy read 1 Kings 19:1-18, the story of Elijah’s encounter with God on Mount Horeb. We talk about Elijah’s journey into the wilderness and God’s miraculous offering of bread for the difficult journey ahead. We think about God’s appearance to Elijah as a “still small voice” and wonder why God sometimes appears as a pillar of fire but here as a nearly inaudible whisper. And we wrestle with the threat of violence, both divine and human, and wonder when we, like Elijah, might need to take a step back from our zealousness.

This week Amy and Bobby read 1 Kings 5:1-6 13-18 and 8:1-13, the story of the Temple’s construction. We think a lot about the messy intermingling of self-interest and service to God or to the good, in Solomon’s time and today, and we appreciate that while the text doesn’t comment on it, it doesn’t try to hide it, either. We see the need to be suspicious about the way that religion can be manipulated to gain political power. And we sit with the almost amusing juxtaposition of an infinite God, who dwells in a cloud, who travels the desert, coming to inhabit this incredibly grand, seemingly permanent, and deeply human structure of cedar. It is a slightly awkward but sort of sweet meeting place for humans and the divine.

This week we read 1 Samuel 16:1-13 and Psalm 51:10-14, the story of David’s anointing and David’s prayer of contrition. We talk about the odd mixture of the religious and the political that permeates both this text and our own lives. We ponder the claim that God looks on the human heart rather than the outer appearance and wonder exactly what kind of heart God might be looking for. And we wrestle with the fact that in this text God uses a religious ceremony to distract the people from what God is really doing in anointing David. What does that mean for the way we practice religion today?

This week BibleWorm reads 1 Sam 3:1-21, where Samuel in his youth is first called by God. We are enamored of this text where the prophet doesn’t realize it is God talking, and we reflect on the role of our community and our mentors in recognizing the divine voice … or to gut check us when it might just be indigestion. We are moved by the loving and complex relationship between young Samuel and his father-figure, Eli, and its numerous points of connection with the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. And over and over again, we see the importance of saying what needs to be said, even when it’s hard -- and the power our speech can have in shaping reality. 

This week Bobby and Amy talk about Exodus 16:1-18, the story of manna in the wilderness. We’re only 6 weeks out of slavery in Egypt, and already the people are anxious about where their next meal is going to come from. We talk about the pernicious power of economies of accumulation, which convince us that there is not enough, turning our neighbors into competitors. We talk about the nature of miracles and the contrast between the pillar of fire in the Exodus and today’s thin layer of dusty bread that prompts the people to say, “What is that?” And we think about the ways God’s provision is like a locking Tupperware container. You’ll just have to trust on that one.

This week we read Exod 2:23-25  3:1-15  4:10-17 -- stories of the earliest days in God and Moses’s relationship. We are struck that it is a full throated and raw cry that draws God’s attention back to God’s own covenented people.  We are humbled to witness the sharing of God’s actual name, and how it both has particularity and intimacy that the title “God” does not, and how it is itself as broad in its meaning as any word we can imagine. I will be what I will be, or I am what I am, or I am becoming what I am becoming. How does Moses -- and how do we, as mere humans -- have a relationship with something as big as God, as big as the verb “to be”? We think it helps to have company. 

On this special episode of BibleWorm we talk with Dr. Brent Strawn, professor of Old Testament at Duke University Divinity School and the author of Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at the Old Testament from Westminster John Knox Press. We discuss common misunderstandings Christians may have about the Hebrew Scriptures and how a better of understanding of the Scripture can enrich both the life of faith and interfaith relationships among Christians and Jews. We discuss the relationship of the Bible to history and whether “historically accurate” is an adequate understanding of what it means to say that the Bible is “true.” We discuss God’s violence in the Old Testament and the difference between a God who is wrathful by nature and a God who exercises wrath on behalf of the poor and the oppressed. And we think about the challenges of interfaith dialogue about Scripture, and whether it is worth it, in the end, to read with people unlike ourselves.