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 hopeful and excited about a promised coming ruler who would finally put things right--but even Isaiah would never have guessed that the Chosen One he dreamed of would look like the itinerant rabbi Jesus.  In our own lives, too, we have a way of pinning down our expcectations of how God "should" act or what God "has to" do in our lives--and the living God always reserves the right to defy our expectations and surprise us... And that's what Advent is really all about--the intentional time for Christians to pause and let God surprise us again as we look to Jesus.  Join Pastors Steve and Erica as they open up a conversation about the God who surprises...

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 talking animal--it's a story about the power of words to speak life or death, and about the living God who doesn't do the bidding of paid prophets like a magic genie.  As outlandish and odd as this story is, it meets us today in a culture where religious voices are easily co-opted to say whatever the powers of the day want them to say, where talk is cheap, and where we need to recover a sense of the power of words.  Join us for this conversation and listen in!

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 hear.  And when a real prophet arose with a minority report, who could speak truth to power, people didn't want to listen.  So how would a real voice from God stand out from the pretenders and court prophets?  Elisha was one of those voices raised up to speak up and speak out when the powerful were not practicing justice and mercy.  But even Elisha seemed to cross the line defending his own authority when he unleashes an attack of wild bears on some teenagers who made fun of him in this strange story from 2 Kings in our ongoing series of "Weird Bible Stories." So... what do we do with stories from the Bible in which someone invokes the name of God to do violence?  What do we do when they are voices of authority that we have respected?  And what does GOD do with US when WE are the ones praying angrily and vengetfully against OUR enemies?  Join the conversation and listen in...

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 God who met Abraham out under a starry sky one night...

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 grace, whether it's Israel's arch-enemy, the people of Nineveh, or those we place on the other side of the line between "us" and "them" in our day, too.  Give it a listen, and join the conversation!

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 onto it?  Join us for a conversation about the way God's power for life breaks out all over the place and overflows even in the moments where it looks like death wins.

?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 genealogy of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel--the long list of names who are given as Jesus' ancestors.  For us in an era and culture that might have very little interest in tracing our roots or knowing our ancestors' stories, it can seem odd to even care about the long list of names we have a hard time even pronouncing that makes up Jesus' geneaology in Matthew.  And on top of that--Matthew's geneaology is different from the way Luke's Gospel gives it!  What's that all about?  In today's episode we'll find that Matthew the gospel writer is more subversive and surprising than we give him credit for, dropping hints about the ways God intentionally includes people who had been deemed "unacceptable" or "unworthy" to be a part of the divine story.

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 in the world and this work begins on the first step outside the door.

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 into the world to be transformative.

(NOTE: Forgive the sound quality; we recorded this week...and next week's...episode in a large, high ceiling room. Just turn your volume up :-) ).

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.