For this week's podcast, we take up THE holiday question:  Mary, did you know?!

We continue with our Pieces for Peace theme this Advent, focusing on the angels.  They appears lots in the first fear chapters of Luke.  And they keep telling people "Do not be afraid."  Why is this?  What peace of Christ do they offer us?

This Advent we will focus on "Pieces for Peace" how the different pieces of the manger scene can invite us to come into the peace of Jesus.  We start off with the animals in the manger.   Of course we get to Jesus and the restoration of all things.  Plus a coda on the question - are there dogs in heaven?

"Render unto Caesar the things of Caesar and to God the things of God."  These are words of Jesus that have shaped the course of human history!

In the first half of the podcast, we consider the story behind the quote, which focuses on money and idolatry.   In this part of the podcast, we focus on the disconnect between Sunday and Monday around finances.  In the second half of the podcast, we consider this quote, reflecting on why the year 1648 continues to shape our understanding of church and state.  In short, we finally unpack where this gap between Sunday and Monday came from!

Episode 5:  Talk about a Sunday-Monday gap.  Last Saturday I watched as Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas.  Last Sunday I heard about the peace that passes all understanding!  A world at war is a world that Christ has not fully overcome.  It is also a world that leaves us with many haunting questions

What do we make of the human tendency toward violence?

What do we do with Bible passages, like the parable in Matthew 22:1-14, that suggest that God ordains violence?

How do we respond when we are hurt, breaking cycles of retribution?

In the second half of the podcast, I go a big deeper into working Bible passages that don't fit with our understanding of the God we have met in Jesus Christ.

Jesus throws down the gauntlet with the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 21:33-46).   In so doing, he challenges us to consider our own lives and what we build our lives on - what is our cornerstone?  Behind this lies the question, how do our Sunday commitments line up with our Monday actions?  And over this question is a deep umbrella of grace, which I also being to explore but invite you to consider in your own life.  In the second half of the podcast, I delve into the historical meaning of the parable and the reality that the history of church is a struggle between the institution and the prophetic!

For our third episode of this season, we focus on Jesus interaction in the Temple (Matthew 21:23-32), which culminates in Jesus telling a parable rich with both judgment and mercy.

The focus of this episode is Jesus as teacher; the first half is more focused on what that looks like in our lives; the second half is a theological unpacking of how understanding Jesus as teacher does not weaken the role of Jesus as savior!

We continue looking at parables from Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 20:1-16), playing with the disconnect between the world and ethics of the Bible (peace, forgiveness, love, grace) and the world and ethics of the World (conflict, jealousy, anger).  We are calling this the Sunday-Monday gap.  In this story, the lord of the vineyard (God!) gives everybody the same amount regardless of how many hours they worked in the vineyard.   Grace isn't always fair and that can drive us nuts!

It is a new season on the podcast, looking at bridging the Sunday to Monday gap.  To get at this gap, we will reflect together on the parables of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel.

For our first parable, we look at Matthew 18:21-35 and the story of the forgiven yet unforgiven servant.  This parable suggests, hauntingly enough, that the forgiveness of Sunday doesn't translate into gracious living on Monday

Is forgiveness the same as erasing of a debt?

We wrap up our season on the first chapters of Paul's letter to the Romans, focusing on Romans 4:16-25.  Turns out that the God we've come to know in the cross of Jesus Christ is interested in something far more grand than simply canceling debts...