Tripp Fuller

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 When Elisha takes the mantle from Elijah. This pattern runs deep in the biblical story, including with Jesus and his followers.

Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 Another psalm to raise the question, How on earth could there be any Christian culture in which lament is not a regular part of what we do, week by week. Chuck invites us to reimagine our time of confession as a time of corporate lament.

Galatians 5:1, 13-25 The story we tell about God will determine what we think our story is supposed to be as God’s people. The way of health begins with recognizing you are God’s beloved child. 

Luke 9:51-62 The great rupture between Jesus and Elijah/Elisha: Jesus will not have his ministry marked by calling down fire on his enemies. The cross changes everything. The question that looms over the passage is whether we’re willing to be disciples of Jesus in the way that Jesus was messiah for us: walking the way of the cross.

 Chuck DeGroat is Associate Professor of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI, and Co-Founder and a Senior Fellow at Newbigin House of Studies, San Francisco. He brings his pastoral, academic, and clinical experience to his writing in Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self and Toughest People to Love: How to Understand, Lead, and Love the Difficult People in Your Life — Including Yourself. Follow him on Twitter @chuckdegroat. He blogs regularly at chuckdegroat.net. 

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a A classic burnout passage: at the moment of greatest achievement, Elijah is ready for it to all be over. God meets it with compassionate provision. In fact, God seems to be feeding Elijah every time we turn around—it all starts to sound like the Exodus. And in the end, the question is whether or not Elijah recognizes that his God is a different kind of God than Baal.

Psalm 42 and 43 Will God start acting like God? We have permission to speak what we feel and not what we “ought to say.” Sometimes we can even say both.

Galatians 3:23-29 Shifting from the Law to Christ as what contains and demarcates the people of God. Being in Christ means you don’t have to occupy the position of privilege in society in order to fully receive what God offers us. 

Luke 8:26-39 Chuck and Daniel try to figure out what to do with depictions of demon possession. The problems we face are greater than the sum of people’s bad decisions. And our interpretation of the villagers might tell us something about ourselves.

Chuck DeGroat is Associate Professor of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI, and Co-Founder and a Senior Fellow at Newbigin House of Studies, San Francisco. He brings his pastoral, academic, and clinical experience to his writing in Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self and Toughest People to Love: How to Understand, Lead, and Love the Difficult People in Your Life — Including Yourself. Follow him on Twitter @chuckdegroat. He blogs regularly at chuckdegroat.net.

 Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

The question Jesus asks Simon, Do you see this woman?, becomes a probe for us as well: do we see ourselves, and do we see the people around us. Do we embrace whom God has embraced? Do we recognize our own failed attempts to make the people of God after our own image?

Luke 7:36-8:3 Jesus turns Simon’s wondering back on himself. The question, “Do you see?” is one that we need to answer carefully. At bottom the question is, Can you see love?

Galatians 2:15-21 This passage is all about the identity of the people of God: who belongs and how do you know? Works is works of Torah—what makes Jews Jews. Faithfulness looks like the cross and faith looks like trust. The space we have to occupy to be the faithful people of God is not being Jewish but being in Christ. Christ shows us how to be faithful to God.

1 Kings 21:1-10, (11-14), 15-21a Ahab is pouty like Homer Simpson. And God cares about injustice.

Psalm 5:1-8 The psalms never give up on the idea on the idea that the narrative of God’s people should be one of vindication and flourishing—despite the fact that their lives don’t look like they’re supposed to.

Make sure you grab your tickets to Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina on July 7-10! We’ll be recording and I’d love to meet more LectioCastians.

 Bryan Berghoef is a pastor, writer, and pub theologian, and author of the book, Pub Theology: Beer, Conversation, and God.  He insists that good things happen when we sit around the table together and talk about things that matter, and what better setting than at the pub, over a pint? Bryan has been facilitating weekly pub conversations for the past eight years in Michigan and Washington DC. Bryan hosts a weekly podcast, Pub Theology Live, and provides resources for Pub Theology groups at pubtheology.com.

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

This week we see a cluster of stories that show God making the impossible possible. Whether it’s life out of death or a transformation of a violent aggressor into a vessel of self-giving love, God has the power to create and renew and rejuvenate. 

1 Kings 17:8-16, (17-24) The places and ways that God works can and do and should surprise us—that is, if our God is in fact the Lord over all things. What does it take to see and know that God is the true God?

Psalm 146 God is creator and helper and sovereign. This is a good reminder that we shouldn’t put our hope and trust in human rulers—maybe an especially good place to focus during an election cycle in the U.S. 

Galatians 1:11-24 Paul’s cocky—but maybe for good reason. And Daniel goes strong with a claim that Paul is converted no the Road to Damascus—but maybe not in the way we usually think.

Luke 7:11-17 Jesus replays the Elijah story. And God gets the glory through God’s prophet. Again.

Make sure you grab your tickets to Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina on July 7-10! We’ll be recording and I’d love to meet more LectioCastians.

 Bryan Berghoef is a pastor, writer, and pub theologian, and author of the book, Pub Theology: Beer, Conversation, and God.  He insists that good things happen when we sit around the table together and talk about things that matter, and what better setting than at the pub, over a pint? Bryan has been facilitating weekly pub conversations for the past eight years in Michigan and Washington DC. Bryan hosts a weekly podcast, Pub Theology Live, and provides resources for Pub Theology groups at pubtheology.com.

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

What does God have to do in order to be recognized as God by the nations? What do we need to do to be the kind of people who can make God’s name known? Who do we need to be if we are going to receive the nations into our communities?

1 Kings 18:20-21, (22-29), 30-39 Yahweh against the storm God: can Israel’s God overcome water and storm and numbers in order to consume a sacrifice? The goal, though, isn’t just to show that Yahweh’s greater—it’s to draw the people back to their God. 

Psalm 96 A song of praise for all creation and all peoples. So how do we proclaim salvation and good news so that it sounds like good news for folks who aren’t insiders?

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43 God has to do the right things if God wants to be known as the true and living God, worthy of worship.

Galatians 1:1-12 Yes, Paul has a bee in his bonnet. But for all the right reasons: Paul is the champion of creating a diverse people who don’t have to become like us in order to be part of the family of God. He sees Jesus freeing us from the powers that keep some people in positions of privilege and others forced to conform.

Luke 7:1-10 A question of worth, and a story of the nations’ dependence on Israel. Standing and power get turned on their head. And we discover what faith is: entrusting ourselves into the one who exercises God’s authority upon the earth.

Make sure you grab your tickets to Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina on July 7-10! We’ll be recording and I’d love to meet more LectioCastians.

Here are the Luke commentaries we talked about:

Luke Timothy Johnson

Sharon Ringe

Fred Craddock

Justo González 

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA.

He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

“Tradition is at once a passing on and a betrayal.”

John 16:12-15 “Revelation is progressive.” Ok. But how do we know God’s revelation when we hear it? Looking for community and listening for the Jesus story.

Romans 5:1-5  The Spirit empowers the recapitulation of Jesus’s story. But how do we proclaim the Jesus story without perpetuating a narrative of oppression? How about starting with this: God doesn’t give us crosses, the Romans do.

Psalm 8 We learn about where we fit in creation: we are not to dominate—we are stewards, not conquerors. We learn how to be faithful to God in such a way that we do, in fact, show forth God’s glory.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Finding our way in harmony with the created order: listening to Lady Wisdom. The bottom line might be just that: learn to listen. 

Make sure you grab your tickets to Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina on July 7-10! We’ll be recording and I’d love to meet more LectioCastians.

 The Rev. Broderick Greer is curate at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and School where he coordinates ministry to young adults, oversees school chapel worship, and directs a new Episcopal Service Corps program. His work can be found at The Guardian, On Being, and Religion News Service. You can follow him @BroderickGreer

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

The Spirit of God is a life-giver in the midst of chaos, one who works chaos in our lives so that we are forced to reckon with the fact that it’s God who is our life-giver. There is comfort and life from the hand of God. It’s the same comfort and life and parental care that was lavished on Jesus. And Jesus found it in the power of the Spirit raising him from the dead. 

Acts 2:1-21 The chaotic arrival of the Spirit. We need to look for God to be at work in the midst of the world (and our lives) in turmoil. And there’s a promise of this work creating its own chaos as the Spirit empowers people whom we might normally overlook as the stewards of God’s word and power.

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b God gives life, and there’s this frightening part in which God withdraws. The arrival of the Spirit is the arrival of new creation. Also there’s this: “Leviathan is the rubber ducky in God’s bathtub.” 

Romans 8:14-17 The Spirit that makes us children is our life-giver and comforter. And in this we participate in the story of Jesus—a story of suffering that resolves in deliverance. To step into the suffering with Jesus means stepping into new life of resurrection—and there’s no new life without it. 

John 14:8-17, (25-27) We need to keep telling ourselves that when we have seen Jesus we have seen the Father. And, as an extension, by the Spirit we are to become the people who show the Father to the world.

Make sure you grab your tickets to Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina on July 7-10! We’ll be recording and I’d love to meet more LectioCastians.

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

In a world where people enact laws, run for office, vote, and protest as people of faith, how do we know when we are in the right? How do we know the Christian story when we see it? This week’s passages give us some pointers. They invite us to be the people who are entrusting our lives to Jesus, entrusting our lives to God as Jesus himself did when he laid down his life for his friends. 

John 17:20-26 When Jesus prays for people who have to listen to boring academic sermons! Jesus challenges us with the hope and expectation that we will all be one—something to discomfort us as we find ourselves quite at home in our particular tribes. Jesus elevates his followers as bearers of God’s glory—as we follow him in laying down our lives for our friends.

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21  Are we, the bride, calling for Jesus to come? Or are we too content? Are we calling people to join us, as the Spirit calls out to them to join? Revelation unsettles us with its back-and-forth between being terrifying and comforting, calling us to works and calling us to Jesus’s death on our behalf. It leaves us with the question: how do we confront empire?

Acts 16:16-34  “The wrong spirit can say the right thing.” Preach, brother Jonathan. “How many of us would put up with a Jesus who took away our way of making money?” Stop preaching, brother Daniel. Then there’s the jailer—who washes the wounds of the apostles.

Psalm 97  The story can’t be contained: what God is doing in Israel is for the sake of the world.

Make sure you grab your tickets to Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina on July 7-10! We’ll be recording and I’d love to meet more LectioCastians.

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

The story of God is repeatedly a story of coming down: God’s glory coming down to shine on people’s faces, God the Father and the Son coming down to dwell with God’s people, and heavenly Jerusalem coming down to the earth. It’s our past, present, and future.

Acts 16:9-15 A Macedonian call to the margins—outside the gates, where the women are gathered, to the region where Paul’s ministry will make its deepest, longest-lasting impact.

Psalm 67 Recapturing the blessing of judgment. Hoping for judgment to ensure that all injustice in the world will be set to rights. Expecting that God is exposing things that need to  be healed.

Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 A passage full of reorienting surprises: the movement of redemption is down not up, and the nations and kings of the earth come flocking through the gates of the city.

John 14:23-29 Might peace Jesus gives us be a gift that we, in turn, have to offer the world? 

 Jonathan Martin is sacramental hillbilly Pentecostal mystic. He is the author of the forthcoming How to Survive a Shipwreck and Prototype. He serves as teaching pastor at Sanctuary Church in Tulsa, OK, where he now resides. He is a graduate from Gardner-Webb University, has an MA from Pentecostal Theological Seminary, and a ThM from Duke University. His website is http://www.jonathanmartinwords.com. He tweets at theboyonthebike.

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.

Morgan drops the money quote this week: “God’s song is big enough that there is a part for everyone.” This may have something to do with the big reveal from last week:What makes Christians distinct? This is a fantastic week of conversation about what identifies us as the people of God.

Acts 11:1-18 The Cornelius story: the third time’s a charm! How does it hold up a mirror to ourselves and the “circumcision” markers we have created in our own churches? And what does it take to open our eyes to the ways that God is already at work in the people we thought were on the outside?

Psalm 148   A psalm of cosmic praise to God. A massive song with a part for everyone.

Revelation 21:1-6 New creation as a renewal of the old. It has to be recognizable even as it’s transformed. The corruption of power falls away so that everyone can receive healing.

John 13:31-35 Love love love! This short passage captures everything that is supposed to make us and mark us as the people who believe in Jesus. This is the replacement for “ideological circumcision.”

Morgan Guyton is a United Methodist elder who leads the NOLA Wesley campus ministry in New Orleans

with his wife Cheryl. Morgan’s first book How Jesus Saves the World From Us: 12 Antidotes to Toxic Christianity with Westminster John Knox has just been released. He blogs www.patheos.com/blogs/mercynotsacrifice.

Daniel Kirk is a writer, speaker, blogger, and New Testament professor who lives in San Francisco, CA. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament from Duke University and is the author of a pair of books, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God and Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? His third book A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, is off to the printers. He blogs regularly at StoriedTheology.com  (http://patheos.com/blogs/storiedtheology). You can follow him on Twitter @jrdkirk and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jrdkirk.