Welcome to the Surviving the Bible podcast. This is a lectionary podcast not just for pastors or preachers, but for Bible nerds everywhere. Each week Christian and Amy Piatt (from the Homebrewed CultureCast) and Tripp Fuller (from the Homebrewed Christianity podcast) explore the bible readings for the week. You’ll get three different perspectives on three different texts to help you survive reading the Bible.

This week is Trinity Sunday.

Christian takes a look at Isaiah 6:1-8, John 3:1-17, and Romans 8:12-17. He explains why he hears more of a Pentecost message in these texts, gives us an overview of the themes in this Sunday’s texts, how we are similar to Isaiah and what Isaiah can teach us today, not second-guessing God, leaving the ways we have viewed ourselves and others behind to make room for new life, the rebirth of Isaiah into a spiritual calling, Jesus inviting people into a similar calling, Paul’s explanation of the need to transcend the cycle of inheritance, and the breaking down of divisions and hierarchy.

Plus, the connection to the Pentecost message, being mindful of our role as path-forgers, not gate-keepers, and tearing down barriers between humanity and the divine.

Amy tackles John 3:1-17 and shares what Michaelangelo’s process for sculpting has to do with Nicodemus, the important context for John 3 which a lot of people overlook, what it means to be born of the Spirit, the uncertainty of God’s Spirit, and the shame that prevents us from being reborn.

Welcome to the Surviving the Bible podcast. This is a lectionary podcast not just for pastors or preachers, but for Bible nerds everywhere. Each week Christian and Amy Piatt (from the Homebrewed CultureCast) and Tripp Fuller (from the Homebrewed Christianity podcast) explore the bible readings for the week. You’ll get three different perspectives on three different texts to help you survive reading the Bible.

This week is Pentecost.

Tripp kicks of with a look at Acts 2:1-21. First, he gives some context for the text (just in case you haven’t been using the Acts texts the past few weeks), then explains how the Kingdom of God has always been the agenda of the Spirit in Luke-Acts, the ongoing investment of the Spirit in the world, how easy it is to get distracted by what Pentecost has come to mean, and our responsibility to the Spirit’s mission. Plus Tripp helps us not to get too freaked out about speaking in tongues by giving us 4 observations about glossolalia that help us in these divisive times.

Christian takes a different look at the Pentecost moment. He shows the similarities between Pentecost and the Last Supper, the openness of the disciples to something from God happening to them, the commissioning of reconciliation, and Christian shares his own Pentecost moment.

Amy is focusing on the Holy Spirit in John 15:26-27 and 16:4b-15. She draws upon 4 of her favorite sources for articulating the experience of and relationship to the Holy Spirit: Romans 8, her daughter Zoe, Richard Rohr, and Frederick Buechner, and asks – will we allow ourselves to be moved by the Spirit, or not? will we allow it to become a part of who we are?

Welcome to the Surviving the Bible podcast. This is a lectionary podcast not just for pastors or preachers, but for Bible nerds everywhere. Each week Christian and Amy Piatt (from the Homebrewed CultureCast) and Tripp Fuller (from the Homebrewed Christianity podcast) explore the bible readings for the week. You’ll get three different perspectives on three different texts to help you survive reading the Bible.

This week is the seventh Sunday of Easter.

Both Amy and Christian take a look at John 17:6-19 this week, but from very different angles.

Christian focuses on the moment when Jesus asks the gospel messengers to be sanctified and asks: what’s so special about this moment? He talks about the challenge to dualistic thinking, the inseparability of the physical and the divine, where we seek wisdom, meaning, and purpose, accepting our divine role, and what happens when we treat morality like the spoon in the Matrix.

Amy focuses on the very human experience of longing for wholeness. She talks about our desire of being one with God, the struggle we all have for wholeness, living out our unity with God, the highest calling for followers of Jesus, and the obstacles to unity and wholeness. What will make us whole? How do we grow into belonging?

Welcome to the Surviving the Bible podcast. This is a lectionary podcast not just for pastors or preachers, but for Bible nerds everywhere. Each week Christian and Amy Piatt (from the Homebrewed CultureCast) and Tripp Fuller (from the Homebrewed Christianity podcast) explore the bible readings for the week. You’ll get three different perspectives on three different texts to help you survive reading the Bible.

This week is the sixth Sunday of Easter.

Tripp looks at Acts 10:44-48 and explains why this is such an important turning point in the life of the church. First, he helps to set the stage for this text by looking at Peter and Cornelius – the first conversion of a gentile who didn’t have to convert to Judaism first. Then, he gives us some historical context for the inclusion of gentiles and how it disrupted the life of the church, discusses how the Spirit of God moves against tradition and the assumptions of the community (including privileged assumptions about who is included), and what Peter’s courage can teach leaders today.

Christian gets psychological this week. The theme? Growing up and living into the fullness of what we are made to be. Jesus is modeling and inviting us into this life.

Christian also talks about the shift from from focusing on bettering ourselves to improving others and the world, self-actualization, meta-cognition, and learning to introspect.

Amy asks if it is possible to be a true friend and not also a servant. In John 15:9-17, Jesus calls his disciples friends. Amy looks at what is significant about this, the both/and of friendship and service, the challenge of true friendship in our society today, the covenant of love, and the consequences of choosing to live a life of love.

Welcome to the Surviving the Bible podcast. This is a lectionary podcast not just for pastors or preachers, but for Bible nerds everywhere. Each week Christian and Amy Piatt (from the Homebrewed CultureCast) and Tripp Fuller (from the Homebrewed Christianity podcast) explore the bible readings for the week. You’ll get three different perspectives on three different texts to help you survive reading the Bible.

This week is the fifth Sunday of Easter.

Tripp takes a look at Acts 8:26-40 – the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. This is the first salvation story of a Gentile and demonstrates to us that the very heart of the gospel reorganizes our relationship to organized religion and tradition and pushes us into a more life-affirming stance. Tripp also offers some context for this story in the larger biblical narrative, the ways we justify excluding people, what this encounter is demonstrating, and how we sometimes serve the text before we serve the spirit.

Christian addresses 1 John 4:7-21. Love, life, Jesus, and God are all intertwined in this passage. Christian draws out some connections between this text and the gospel text, the symbols of the grape vine and branches, and the vulnerability of God and God’s dependence on us, the importance of not just saying we love, but living it out, and helps us understand what perfect love might really mean (and a brief lesson in Greek).

Last week Amy talked about sheep, and this week she’s talking about grapes and wine in John 15:1-8. Amy tells us about the importance of pruning for good fruit, how new vines are planted, and why that is important for reading this passage. Plus, she shares about times in her life when she’s been pruned, what happens when we focus on just one grape instead of the whole vine, and what it means to abide in God.

Welcome to the first episode of the Surviving the Bible podcast. This is a lectionary podcast not just for pastors or preachers, but for Bible nerds everywhere. Each week Christian and Amy Piatt (from the Homebrewed CultureCast) and Tripp Fuller (from the Homebrewed Christianity podcast) explore the bible readings for the week. You’ll get three different perspectives on three different texts to help you survive reading the Bible.

This week is the fourth Sunday of Easter.

Tripp looks at the Acts 4:5-12 story of Peter healing the lame man. He suggests that if you pay attention to the Acts passage from last week, this story becomes so much larger than how the last verse is usually understood. When understood in its context, it asks some pretty powerful questions, like, what does the word “saved” mean in this text?

It brings to the surface the problems of empire Christianity, how the healing itself confronts ritual purity laws, the sociological category of “sinners,” and challenging to the content of faith, not the form of it.

Christian gives us an overview of this week’s texts and points at some larger themes found therein. We just got through Easter – after a long slog through Lent – and yet here we are, already getting texts about death and darkness. He talks about the shift of leadership and how the sheep have now become the shepherds, disciples performing miracles and deemed a threat to the state, and how there’s so much more to Psalm 23 than just feeling comforted.

Amy tackles John 10:11-18. She gives us a quick lesson about sheep, explores social science about kids on playgrounds, and explains why that’s relevant. Plus, how challenging the boundaries is different than having them removed altogether, why having fewer choices might not be what we need, dismissing people as sheep, and the boundaries of the church (both the good and the bad).

It’s Holy Week, and Tripp, Amy and Christian are here on the LectioCast to help you survive Easter.

John 20:1-18 | Amy shares the Easter message she would preach, the calling out of Mary’s name and the importance of the act of naming, the significance of Jesus the gardener, opening ourselves to truth, being broken open by suffering, what we’ve missed about the resurrection, and how it relates to Genesis 3.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11 | Tripp shares his frustration with this passage and how this (and others) are used to kick people out for not ‘believing’ the correct thing, the invitation to be resurrected, the urgency of the message, and can you believe God really does anything?

Acts 10:34-43 | Tripp tries to convince Amy that this is the text she should preach on Easter, the resurrection as the rupture of Peter’s understanding of the gospel, how the proper affirmation of the resurrection removes the barriers to our embodied existence, and being witnesses to transformation.

Plus, Christ is risen, he is risen indeed? Who are our Easter services for?

And don’t forget you can enter to win some sweet new bibles from our friends at the Common English Bible.

This week is the Palm Sunday Edition of the LectioCast: the Triumphal Entry versus the Annunciation. Christian tries to convince Amy and Tripp that they should preach on the Annunciation texts, and not the triumphal entry, by showing how they’re connected.

In Isaiah 7:10-14, Christian tells us about the scandal of particularity, and being participants in Easter without making it about us. Then Tripp and Amy turn to the triumphal entry in Mark 11:1-11 and how we’ve lost the significance of Palm Sunday, the messianic secret and the turn towards Jerusalem, the contrast between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the Roman Army’s entry before Passover, the real threat Jesus poses, and the conflict of two different types of power.

Plus, how throwing a party that celebrates our ignorance is good news, David and Goliath as the opening match for Jesus and Pilate, the power at play in re-reading a text, and the anxiety surrounding our own agency and the possibility of transformation.

And don’t forget you can enter to win some sweet new bibles from our friends at the Common English Bible.

This week on the LectioCast Tripp gives you your Bible-nerd fact of the day, you’ll hear about why David is like the Harvey Weinstein of the Hebrew Bible, what Mandy Moore has to do with the Psalms, and our avoidance of suffering.

First up, Jeremiah 31:31-34. Tripp once again gives you many options for preaching this text: who has access to God in the new covenant? the tension between institutions and movements, the democratization of God, the deep political divisions latent in the passage, and how new life is stymied by needing to be right in that divide.

In the Psalm (51:1-12) we see David’s internal struggle and our uncomfortability with God using someone like David for something good. For Hebrews 5:5-10, Tripp helps explain how the text can short-circuit latent penal-substitutionary atonement interpretations by noticing what it doesn’t say, how Jesus’ faithfulness helps re-frame our understanding of sin and salvation, and how Jesus changes the job description of high priest.

Lastly, in John 12:20-33, Christian and Amy talk about our inability to recognize the truth right in front of us, the requirements of transformation, what is truly necessary to be born again, and hurting for the right reasons. Plus, Amy gives some advice and reasons for engaging in contemplative practices.

And don’t forget you can enter to win some sweet new bibles from our friends at the Common English Bible.

This week on the LectioCast you’ll hear about snakes on a stick (Numbers 21:4-9), Eddie Izzard, and Princess Leia. Christian and Amy Piatt join Tripp to talk about some of the problems of reading this passage literally, the role this text plays in the relationship between God and Israel, those wilderness times in our lives, and what this has to do with a cake or death decision.

They’ll also tackle the most important verse in the whole bible: John 3:16. Plus, those other ones nearby: John 3:14-21. Why do we so often life this passage out of context and use it as a test of faith? How can we avoid using this text to harass people? Plus the way John connects the cross with the snake in numbers.

Lastly, Ephesians 2:1-10. What is the difference between grace and mercy? Do we often miss the really radical part of grace? How does this text help us shift our economic understandings of how grace and mercy work?

And don’t forget you can enter to win some sweet new bibles from our friends at the Common English Bible.

If you want to join the Surviving the Bible for Lent group, it’s not too late!

Sure, we all know Bible verses and may have even tried to read the “whole Bible,” maybe even more than once. But it can be confusing, contradictory and – if we’re being honest – really freaking boring in places. But there’s another way to approach scripture that can actually make sense, and might even be enjoyable.

Join the CultureCast’s Amy and Christian Piatt, along with Tripp, in figuring out how to “Survive the Bible” together this Lent.