Tripp Fuller

The resurrected Jesus stands as an agent of mercy and care—not keeping us from times of trouble, but walking with us through them. The slaughtered lamb upends conventional understandings of what God’s victory means while summoning us to listen.

Acts 9:36-43 The way of mercy is embodied both as power from the Lord and in Tabitha’s acts of love. Mercy is bigger than looking past a wrong, it’s treating other people like family.

Psalm 23   The psalms offers multiple possible exposures for us: David as sheep, David as shepherd, Jesus as shepherd, us as under-shepherds. The care God offers us comes first in the community. Also: we’re not protected from valleys, but God is walking with us through them.

Revelation 7:9-17 The loyalty of every nation, tribe, and tongue, is the point of contention. We have to beware of falling into the trap of conquering people for whiteness. We need to listen for the counter-narrative that stands over against empire. The passage invites us to trust that there is an ending in which God will be victorious.

John 10:22-30 The slaughtered lamb is also the shepherd to whom the sheep must listen. And if we are listening, there’s a faithfulness and beauty that people will be able to see.

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.

Easter is about the glory of the resurrection, but that only happens by way of the cross.

Acts 9:1-20 Does Jesus ask this question of us: Why are you persecuting me? When we hurt other people we are persecuting our savior. Salvation is not just about heaven on the other side of death, it’s about transforming lives here below.

Psalm 30   Images of life out of death. And maybe we find the joy and presence of God in the middle of the trying circumstances and crying out to God.

Revelation 5:11-14 A rightly ordered cosmos is a place where God is praised for doing what God has committed Godself to do for God’s people. But then, how can Jesus be the deliverer in battle when he was the one slaughtered?

John 21:1-19 Breakfast on the beach—but not before Peter puts his clothes back on. We serve up two well-word comments about this passage: one you should avoid and one you might embrace.

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.

Acts 5:27-32 Copping just the right attitude—what’s needed for civil disobedience. Speaking truth to authority and walking in costly commitment to God.

Psalm 150   The definitive Scriptural proof text in favor of the worship band!

Revelation 1:4-8  A kaleidoscope of imagery describing both Christ and God. The future of God is God’s arrival for the sake of the world and God’s people. Jesus models what faithful saints are to be: the faithful witness and first of those risen from the dead. He doesn’t retreat to the “God part,” the prize at the end is Jesus (and ourselves) as more fully human.

John 20:19-31  Jesus accepts the wounds of the violence he endured. The beauty of new life is so deep because of the wounds. Micky tries to get us to tone down the “doubting Thomas” shtick. And Daniel reminds us that if you don’t see the mark where the wounds have been then you don’t have the Jesus story straight, yet.

Micky ScottBey Jones is a “contemplivist” leader and organizer who hosts & facilitates conferences, trainings and online conversations, writes & speaks on a variety of topics including self-care in community (healing justice), contemplative activism, intersectionality, race & justice & theology from the margins, and curates contemplative spaces/activities. Micky was recently named one of the Black Christian leaders changing the world in Huffington Post. You can interact with her work and collaborations at www.mickyscottbeyjones.com, and follower her on Twtter @iammickyjones and like her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MSJSpeaks

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.

Isaiah 65:17-25 “New creation” means that God is up to a whole lot more than saving our souls. There is a process God is engaged in that we get to participate in.

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24  This story that we so quickly associate with Jesus is a source of comfort and vision for oppressed people. The stone that those in power said was wrongly made is the one that God honors and exalts. Easter Sunday, and all the Easters that break into the world, are the days the Lord has made in which we are to rejoice.

1 Corinthians 15:19-26 It’s not the suffering that saves us—it’s the victory, the rebirth on the other side that is our salvation. The resurrection is God’s “I don’t think so” to the normal we find ourselves living by and mired in in our day-to-day lives and God’s affirmation of the primordial plan to have humanity rule the world on God’s behalf.

Acts 10:34-43 God sees our differences and welcomes us all. What matters is responding to the work of God. The same God who worked in Jesus during his time on earth worked to raise him from the dead and works to embrace us all into the family. The question before us is: with whom will we cast our judgment on Jesus? God or those who rejected him?

Luke 24:1-12  Only with the resurrection do people begin to understand. Part of being the Easter community is learning to trust each other’s experiences with Christ. Here, as everywhere else, it’s just at the point when you’re most sure someone doesn’t belong that the truth of the Kingdom of God is being put on display.

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 on earth is the Lectionary trying to do lead us into as we go through Holy Week? Tripp Hudgins, an ethnomusicology Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Theological Union breaks it down for us. He leads us into an understanding of this week as the center of the church’s life, and invites us to see the Lections as an invitation to create a space for experiencing the gravity of the death of God. We catch a vision for a week-long, unbreaking service that does not resolve until Easter.

You won’t want to miss Tripp’s insights, or the sometimes-vocal contributions of his baby, in this first ever LectioCast holiday special.

Tripp Hudgins is Director of Admissions at American Baptist Seminary of the West and is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Theological Union studying liturgy and ethnomusicology. His academic interests include ritual theory, the use of popular music in religious settings, and meaning making through sound or “sonic theology.” He is a member of the Society for Ethnomusicology and the American Academy of Religion. He has served as an adjunct professor and Teaching Assistant at various schools across the GTU including American Baptist Seminary of the West, Pacific School of Religion, and Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

Isaiah 50:4-9a The prophet models the cost of faithfulness to God, a pattern Jesus fulfills in his own faithful suffering. We learn what it means to be a good teacher—starting with listening and waking up. Following God means that people don’t get to act as judge of what is disgraceful or who is worthy of condemnation in the end. Can we recognize strength in cruciform love?

Psalm 31:9-16 This psalm opens us up to the reality that there’s more than what’s right in front of us, and there’s hope for God to carry us through and deliver us.

Philippians 2:5-11 Realize that Jesus is human and everything changes. Here, we see what it’s like for even the human Jesus to use and let go of his privilege for our sake. The Jesus story gives tremendous meaning to our humanity as a whole and provides hope for us even as Jesus himself was exalted by God. And in the highlight of jrdk’s LectioCast career, Micky likens his theological move to what she has learned from indigenous and womanist theologians.

Luke 22:14-23:56 The reading’s the thing, but we can’t stop ourselves talking about it, anyway. The disciples show their humanity, and Jesus invites them to be a better kind of human. The sword is weird, and Jesus doesn’t really have a Jewish trial. Luke’s atonement theology is captured in Jesus’s words from the cross.

Micky ScottBey Jones is a “contemplivist” leader and organizer who hosts & facilitates conferences, trainings and online conversations, writes & speaks on a variety of topics including self-care in community (healing justice), contemplative activism, intersectionality, race & justice & theology from the margins, and curates contemplative spaces/activities. Micky was recently named one of the Black Christian leaders changing the world in Huffington Post. You can interact with her work and collaborations at www.mickyscottbeyjones.com, and follower her on Twtter @iammickyjones and like her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MSJSpeaks

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.

With Scott MacDougall back on the podcast we explore various dimensions of our embodied spirituality. The great things that God does for God’s people promise to be visible, tangible, and recognizable as great even to those to who do not recognize our God as their own. Lent is our time to set aside some goods for the embrace of others—be those goods our good food, good achievements, or good perfume poured out to tell the gospel story.

Isaiah 43:16-21 How are we supposed to think about that past that we’re supposed to forget? There’s a more abundant greatness that God has in store—not just for humanity, but for the whole creation.

Psalm 126 Isaiah’s kind of deliverance. It’s a greatness of glory that the nations can see and respond to as something great and wonderful. The psalm expresses the hope that what is thrown on the ground will spring forth in new life.

Philippians 3:4b-14 Paul’s crash course in the conjunction between spirituality and our physical bodies. Lent invites us into the adjudication between different goods: we set aside some goods for another kind of good. Paul recalibrates everything based on his new relational reality.

John 12:1-8 A woman here enacts faithful and true discipleship in washing Jesus’ feet. It’s an act of love and a demonstration of death. The paradox of the gospel is contained here: life comes through death.

Don’t miss the Clobbercast!

Registration is now open for a new 7-week online course on church in Anglican history, theology, and practice that Scott is teaching. The course is offered through Church Divinity School of the Pacific’s Center for Anglican Learning & Leadership (CALL). For more information about the course and to register, please visit the listing on the CALL website.

Scott MacDougall (Ph.D., Fordham University) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, CA. His research centers on ecclesiology and eschatology. He is interested in the difference a robust theological imagination of the future makes in how Christian community is lived out, both in the church itself and in the wider world. His first book, More Than Communion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology, was published in 2015 and was the subject of a Homebrewed Christianity interview with Tripp Fuller. MacDougall has also published several articles and reviews and has contributed to online publications such as Religion Dispatches and the Huffington Post’s Religion section. Follow him on Twitter at @scottmacdoug

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.

Hitting the halfway point in our Lenten journey, we find ourselves confronted with the wonder of God’s work of new creation and the extraordinary gift of forgiveness on which it’s based. We are invited to consider the question of whether we are willing to both receive and embody the reconciling, unifying forgiveness that God uses to create God’s people.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 A change of perception that aligns with God’s new reality. Cosmic reconciliation means that we are reconciled with each other as well. And we see how humans lie at the heart of the whole biblical story: God transforms us and God’s lovingkindness for the world are embodied in us.

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 The classic story of God’s lavish forgiveness—and our slowness to receive it for ourselves or extend it to others. The father’s embrace of a “far off” son is a manifestation of new creation and asks us to examine our own tribalism and preference for those who are close. Then there are the names: how do the characters name themselves and each other? The father holds the family together as family.

Joshua 5:9-12 A paradoxical provision: in the place where there seems to be food, people have to be more deeply involved. And, we’re deeply dependent upon the social structure and everyone playing their part fairly.

Psalm 32  A penitential psalm that reminds us that sin is real and that our understanding is only partial. And we see a reflection of the reality that sitting on our sin, and hiding in our shame and guilt, is destructive. Then, as usual, we see how the psalm draws us back and forth between the world God promises and the world we experience day by day.

Don’t miss the Clobbercast!

Scott MacDougall (Ph.D., Fordham University) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, CA. His research centers on ecclesiology and eschatology. He is interested in the difference a robust theological imagination of the future makes in how Christian community is lived out, both in the church itself and in the wider world. His first book, More Than Communion: Imagining an Eschatological Ecclesiology, was published in 2015 and was the subject of a Homebrewed Christianity interview with Tripp Fuller. MacDougall has also published several articles and reviews and has contributed to online publications such as Religion Dispatches and the Huffington Post’s Religion section. Follow him on Twitter at @scottmacdoug

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.

It’s a cross-over podcast explosion! Homebrewed Christianity + LectioCast = zesty nerdiness!

In the CLOBBERCAST we tackle all the clobber passages some Christians use against the LGBTQ members of the church. Not only do we end up discussing the pastoral consequences and personal tensions connected to the larger conversation, but Rev. Mixon and Daniel share their own personal and powerful stories.

Tripp and Daniel are joined by Pastor Rick Mixon from the First Baptist Church, Palo Alto. Rick has been Senior Pastor of FBC Palo Alto since 2006.  Rick Mixon has been serving as an openly gay pastor in the American Baptist church for decades. He brings a barrel-aged-wisdom to the infamous clobber passages and these seemingly new struggles in the church.Previously, he served pastorates at Dolores Street Baptist Church in San Franciso and the First Baptist Church of Granville, Ohio. In addition to his ministerial training, he holds a Ph. D. in religion and psychology from the Graduate Theological Union and worked for many years as a psychotherapist and adjunct faculty at Holy Names College (Oakland), Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley) and Saybrook Graduate School in Humanistic Psychology (San Francisco.)

Daniel Kirk has been on a long journey whose first steps came with trying to figure out how to love his gay (non-Christian) neighbor as his straight self. While several of the clobber passages were mere adornments on along the way, a couple put up significant roadblocks. Unsurprisingly, those final roadblocks were cleared in tandem with his parting of ways with Fuller seminary this past year. Daniel is writing an ebook about his journey to becoming an open and affirming evangelical New Testament professor that should be available soon. A fuller treatment is in the works, walking through how we can say yes to the work of God in the lives of our same-sex partnered sisters and brothers, affirm the place of scripture in the church, and say no to the passages that condemn same-sex intercourse. Expect to see Gender, Race, Sex, and Power in 2017.

Scott MacDougall joins us and provides a beautiful overview of how the rhythm of Lent leads us into reality that the life we live is often lived in a period of fallowness and death and decay—all the while we hope for resurrection life on the other side.

Isaiah 55:1-9 The invitation to come to the waters is simultaneously an invitation to reimagine what exactly we need to slake our hunger and thirst. Lent brings our bodies into synch with our souls as hungering and thirsting for God and God’s provision.

Psalm 63:1-8  God’s presence is found in darkness, with the hope of light. And it is found as something that meets physical and spiritual longings. And it appears in both the public of the temple and the private of the bedroom

1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Paul reflects on how a saved and rescued people stumbled and fell: the Exodus community serves as a model for the eschatological people of God. Food and drink are important, they are provided, but they are not the goal. Also… WARNING: Daniel gets his Bible geek on. After you get through, though, there are challenging words for how we live together as the people of God—and ways that the Corinthians and we are apt to get it wrong.

Luke 13:1-9 A Jerusalem judgment trifecta—with roots in the historical Jesus. But there is a call and a time for repentance. Lent itself is a season that directs us toward repentance and full restoration.

Book cited: the only person JRDK ever cites, himself! Read more about becoming the Forgiveness People in Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?

Scott MacDougall (Ph.D., Fordham University) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Theology at the Church

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.