This week BibleWorm reads the story of Paul and Barnabas in Lystra as told in Acts 13:1-3 and 14:8-18. We talk about Paul’s public healing of a man who cannot walk and think about the mutual faith that is required between the man and Paul, to trust each other enough for a healing to take place. We discuss the confusion of the townspeople, who want to worship Paul and Barnabas as gods, and recognize the tendency of all humans, including ourselves, to confuse the power of holiness with the physical forms in which we experience it. And we notice Paul’s observation that God is constantly working miracles in subtler ways. If we’re impressed by a healing, how much more so should we be impressed that God gives us rain, harvest, food, and happiness. The miraculous is all around us, if only we have the faith to see it.

Episode 441 Paul and Barnabas in Lystra (Acts 13:1-3 and 14:8-18)

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This week BibleWorm continues on in our summer series on creation care with Job 38:1-38 in which God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, reminding Job of the beauty, grandeur, and complexity of nature that is beyond human understanding. Where humans were said to have “dominion” over the world in Genesis 1, in Job 38 humans seem almost irrelevant—God guides the constellations; God nurtures the sea; God sends the lightning bolts on their courses, and they respond, “Here I am.” This text invites us to lean into our not-knowing, to relinquish our supposed mastery of the universe to revel in its complex beauty. More than that, it reminds us that, in a world often marked by suffering, we are not alone. There is a whole world before us and around us, alive with responsiveness to God. Truly a balm for the soul.

Episode 543 CREATION CARE From the Whirlwind (Job 38:1-38)

This week BibleWorm begins our summer series on Creation Care with “the” Creation text, Genesis 1. For such a familiar text, it sure did open up a lot of questions for us. How should we think about our place so late in the proverbial line-up – what does it mean to us that God has already issued a commandment directly to the animals before we are here; that we are created on Friday afternoon as everyone is closing up shop for the Sabbath, instead of a busy Monday morning? And as we try to inhabit what it is to be created “in the image” of God, how might God’s disposition toward the created in the 5 ½ days before we arrived help us find our way?

Episode 542 CREATION CARE In the Beginning (Genesis 1:1-2:4a)

This week BibleWorm concludes the Narrative Lectionary cycle with the Pentecost readings, Acts 2:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 12:1-13. We talk about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, which empowers the original disciples to speak in languages they don’t know, calling them outward from the culturally homogenous group to enter into the cultures and languages of others. That same Spirit, Paul says, pours out on the Christians in Corinth—and on Christians today—empowering us with a diversity of gifts, from miraculous gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues, to floppier gifts like wisdom and knowledge. Whatever our gifts, Paul says, the community needs them all. If we withhold our gifts, or if we fail to recognizes the diverse gifts of others, we fail to live up to God’s vision for us as the body of Christ.

Episode 541 The Gifts of the Spirit (Acts 2:1-4 & 1 Corinthians 12:1-13)

Today BibleWorm reads from I Corinthians 15:1-26 & 51-57, a section of Paul’s letter that is focused unwaveringly on bodily resurrection. It seems this was one of harder aspects of the faith for the people of Corinth, and it is a tough one for many modern readers too. But Paul insists that you have to believe the impossible thing, the thing that goes against what you have seen with your own eyes. There is no hedging: You not only have to wholeheartedly believe the testimony of others, that Jesus was resurrected in body, but that it will happen again. It will happen for all Christians, and, Paul seems to say here, even universally. What happens when we shift from a shift from a spiritual orientation toward the idea of eternal life to an embodied one? Why is this body piece so important to Paul? What are people, anyway?

Episode 540 The Resurrection of the Body (1 Corinthians 15:1-26 & 41-47)

This week BibleWorm reads Paul’s famous discussion of love as given in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. It’s not every day that Bobby and Amy talk about Paul’s letters and find ourselves in full agreement that Paul is in fact right. But both our Jewish and Christian traditions can fully affirm what Paul says here—that love is the one undeconstructible reality, the most fundamental principle of the cosmos and, one might say, the very essence of God. The sort of love Paul calls us to in this passage is anti-imperial, the sort of soft love that seems foolish to those who live in a world where domination, control, and pride are the logic of the day. By contrast, Paul calls us to a softer way of inhabiting the world, characterized by patience, kindness, and yielding to others, trusting and hoping in the power of love toward which the world is ultimately moving.

Episode 441 Paul and Barnabas in Lystra (Acts 13:1-3 and 14:8-18)

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