BibleWorm

Episode 432 The Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew20:1-16)

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 20:1–16, often called the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, in which the kingdom of heaven is said to be like a landowner who pays the laborers a full day’s wage no matter how long they’ve worked. We wrestle with the abject unfairness of this wage system and empathize with the workers who have labored a long day in the hot sun. Yet we also marvel at the generosity of the vineyard owner, who gives everyone what they need for the day no matter how much work they’ve done. Maybe, we think, in the kingdom of heaven people are not rewarded for the labor they provide but rather receive what they need to live a full and abundant life. If we read ourselves as the landowners, this becomes a lesson on how we should conduct our own economic practices, not only paying fair wages but giving generously until everyone has enough. And if we read God as the landowner, then this becomes a parable about God’s radical and endless generosity that welcomes more and more people into the kingdom and treats us all as people of dignity and worth.

Episode 431 Accountability and Forgiveness (Matthew 18:15-35)

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 18:15-35 – important and challenging texts about what happens on the ground, in the real and messy world of human community, when something has gone wrong. How can we hold each other accountable with a loving spirit - and when do we need to ask someone to step back from the community because of their behaviors? What is the relationship between compassion, fairness and punishment – between mercy and judgment – here and now, and in the future kingdom? These are hard questions that kinda we wish we didn’t have to think about – but we are messy creatures, us humans, so we do.

Episode 430 SPECIAL EPISODE Who is the Greatest? (Matthew 18:1-14)

On this special Ash Wednesday episode of BibleWorm we’re reading Matthew 18:1-14 in which the disciples ask Jesus who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus not only refuses to answer the question but insists that one must become like a little child in order to even enter the kingdom of heaven in the first place. It is only the empire that thinks in terms of status and greatness. The kingdom of heaven extends a welcome to all. In fact, Jesus tells us to cut off our hands or pluck out our eyes if they tempt us to think and act according to the imperial logic, which distinguishes the great people from the small people, even in acts of charity. Finally, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep, which teaches us not to pursue fairness or equity but rather to make sure that each person has whatever they may need to live a full and abundant life. As Christians enter into the season of Lent, this text calls us to welcome those without status and seek abundant life for all. That sounds like an amazing way to spend 40 days.

Episode 429 The Transfiguration (Matthew 16:24-17:8)

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 16:24-17:8, the story of the transfiguration. We think about symbolic moments like this one, the ones that overflow with meaning, that fill your cup to overflowing, and how difficult it is for us humans to just co-exist with them without trying to grasp onto them somehow. We pull apart the different ways that the word life is used in this passage – preserving life as a focus on avoiding pain, vs preserving life as finding the strength to do what is real and godly even when it is hard … which it will be. And we wonder how we can live with a sense of urgency about the coming kingdom of God, even when the fulfillment seems to have been forestalled.  

Episode 428 Parables of the Kingdom (Matthew 13:24-43)

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 13:24-43, Jesus’s parables of the kingdom. We talk about how to read parables and why we think Jesus uses parables to declare what has been hidden since the beginning of the world. And we discuss three of Jesus parables, which compare the kingdom of heaven to a field of wheat overplanted with weeds, to yeast leavening bread, and to a mustard seed that grows into a nice shrub where the birds can make a nest. In what way is the kingdom of heaven like these things? We talk about the gleaners in the field who throw the weeds into the furnace and we wrestle with the role of fear in Jesus’s description of the kingdom. But mostly we notice that these parables are about bringing life—to the wheat, to the birds, to the bread—and even to the weeds themselves. Maybe the kingdom of heaven is found in nurturing life in everyone we meet.

Episode 427 Do Not Judge (Matthew 7:1-14, 24-29)

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 7:1-14 and 24-29, a section that includes the golden rule, but also comes at its central idea - what is hateful to you do not do to others - from so many different angles. How does it not only help our community, but our own selves when we steer clear of judgment, focusing instead on our own behaviors, where we actually have some power to change things? We love how Jesus’s teachings seem to alternate between admonitions against certain behaviors and a call to value what is holy within ourselves. And we contemplate the metaphor of God as a rock and foundation – not a shelter from the storm, and not something of spectacular beauty, but a rock. And boy, will you be glad if you built your house there when the storm comes.

Episode 426 Do Not Worry about Tomorrow (Matthew 6:25-34)

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus’s well-known instruction not to worry about tomorrow. We talk about anxiety and the difficulty of living in the present moment, entrusting the future into the hands of a loving God. But once we observe that the passage begins with the word “Therefore,” connecting it to the previous verse, things take a turn. “You cannot serve both God and money,” says Jesus, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow.” As it turns out, this passage is about economic anxiety and the fundamental importance of trusting that God will provide enough for tomorrow so that we can tend to the needs of our community today. We talk about spiritual practices that can quell our anxiety and help us trust in God’s capacity to provide. And we discuss the urgency of forming communities of radical trust, in which we place the needs of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger ahead of our own desires for economic security.

Episode 425 REPLAY The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:7-15)

This week BibleWorm returns to our series on the Bible and Economic Justice with a look at Matthew 6:7-15, a text known in the Christian tradition as the Lord’s prayer. As we read the prayer through the lens of economic justice, we begin to realize that that Jesus is calling his followers toward a life of simple trust in God. We ask enough food for today, we promise to forgive the debts of our neighbors, we ask to kept away from the temptation of plenty. In this way, Jesus says, God’s name is made holy. In this way God’s kingdom will come to earth—here and now, among us. We don’t need to ask for more, Jesus says, because God already knows this is all we need.

Episode 424 The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-20)

This week BibleWorm reads Matthew chapter 5:1-20, the Beatitudes. We dive into some nuances of translation that make a big difference to our understanding of this beautiful and well-known text: what world of meaning is being conjured up with the word “blessed,” or “mercy,” or “meek”? We try to sketch, more and more fully, what this text imagines the proverbial kingdom looks like, and what it would mean to live into it right now. In this text that seems both to sit in its present moment and to extend into the future, the question of what we can do right now – and what we can expect when we do it – is at the front of our minds.

Episode 423 Temptation in the Wilderness (Matthew 4:1-17)

This week we’re reading Matthew 4:1-17, the story of the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness. We wrestle with the very concept of the devil, which often strikes modern people as an antiquated idea. But once we recognize the ways that the ways that Jesus is tempted, we begin to recognize the work of the devil all around us—in the economic, political, and prestige systems that that tempt us to turn our own lives away from the kingdom of heaven and toward the ways of the Empire. Jesus is first tempted by his own physical need for bread and water, then by his need to demonstrate to others that he is worthy of love, and finally by the possibility of conforming the whole world to his will—temptations that, in one way or another, come to us all. The devil may tempt you to skip this podcast—but don’t do it! This is urgent stuff!