What do Christians do with Leviticus? That's what Kameron Mazurek and I are talking about this week, and it mostly involves paying closer attention to Jewish interpretation and tradition. Jesus lived near the end of an era in Jewish history, and it's that time period that we're looking to for wisdom.
The prophets in the Hebrew Bible urge the people of God to resist empire, but maybe they also confront their own community's traditions in search of better ways of worshiping and knowing God. In Ezra and Hosea this week, we're encouraged to see resistance as a mechanism of active change - and the prophets are nothing if not agents of change.
Don't forget, you can now register for the Living Faith Study Day 2019 on EventBrite! It's a gathering for those exploring their relationship to faith, the Bible, and community. There'll be four thought-provoking topics packaged in short talks, with ample time for questions and discussion. I'll be giving one of those talks, "Christian Ethics and Social Justice: The Gospel of the Human Jesus". It's going to be a great day for building faith, and for taking the Bible seriously - both in its ancient context, and in the present day.
Monday's episode on 2 Chronicles 12-13 was notably missing any content from 2 Chronicles 13. Well here it is! A few minutes on Abijah/Abijam, son of Rehoboam king of Judah, who gets a post-exilic, Braveheart makeover by the Chronicler. It's epic, y'all.
Don't forget, you can now register for the Living Faith Study Day 2019 on EventBrite! It's a gathering for those exploring their relationship to faith, the Bible, and community. There'll be four thought-provoking topics packaged in short talks, with ample time for questions and discussion. I'll be giving one of those talks, "Christian Ethics and Social Justice: The Gospel of the Human Jesus". It's going to be a great day for building faith, and for taking the Bible seriously - both in its ancient context, and in the present day.
This week, each passage is a reframing a familiar, biblical narrative for a different moment in time. We consider how the Chronicler retells an Egyptian invasion of Judah; how Ezekiel recounts a vision of an Israel united under very different terms; and how the Evangelist in the gospel of John recasts the return of Jesus, the kingdom of God, and present community of faith.
Three really literary passages this week, where reversal and revision are the order of the day. Manasseh flip-flops, the names of Hosea's kids are inverted, and Peter does an about-face on Torah observance for the Gentile Christians.
At the end of the Kings history in 2 Kings 24-25, we're feeling the pain of loss as Judah and Jerusalem are humiliated over and over again as the nation finally falls. In Ezekiel 13, the prophet is letting rip the full fury of God against the false prophets who cheerfully cherry-pick their affirming messages, heedless of God's true intentions, to fit their own version of God into local current affairs. And in Luke 9 we're drawn fully into the work of a humble, human Messiah who reaches out and invites us to participate.
Welcome to the first full episode of 4QS! We're reading 2 Kings 8, Lamentations 4, and 2 Corinthians 1-2, and trying to strike that difficult balance between mourning and hope. Join me for a look at the role of the prophet in ancient Israel, how the exiled Jews in Babylon coped with the destruction of their home, and how Paul could live with joy in the midst of depression.
This episode features loss, grief, and depression as central themes.
