The Mystery and the Grace of Hope

Lectionary Date: April 4, 2021 [Resurrection of the Lord, Year B]

What?! Preach the First Reading on Easter Sunday?! Stay with us here: you'll find that this ancient prophetic word is incredibly relevant to our present moment and to the hopeful message of Easter. Our guest this week is Dr. Joel Kemp, Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at Emory’s Candler School of Theology. Dr. Kemp is an expert in the latter prophets. But he also has an incredibly broad range of interests—in part because biblical scholarship is a third career for him. He worked as an attorney and a minister prior to his current work, and carries those interests into his scholarship. His latest book is just out: Ezekiel, Law, and Judahite Identity (Mohr Siebeck, 2020). It investigates how the book of Ezekiel uses legal elements to advocate for the reconfiguration of a Judahite identity under Neo-Babylonian dominance.