Job, a great guy, loses everything. His friends say it's because of some secret sin but Job insists he's innocent and we the readers know that he is because we'...
There's a lot of reasons to look at First Peter sideways - what's this about slaves obeying harsh masters because Jesus, or women not braiding hair because auth...
The book of Joshua is a dangerous, genocidal text. The same God who liberates the enslaved Israelites from Egypt now calls them to become oppressors, to violent...
For me, when I read the pages of Genesis, there I encounter the image of a God who gives us all the good news that despite the occasional horrors of human life ...
Joel is one of the minor prophets. In it we find warnings for priests to put on sackcloth and lament. Typical of prophetic writings, there is alot of future ten...
I'm concerned with a God who is capable of destruction but my favorite part of this text is the demand that sons and daughters shall prophecy. Old men shall see...
Paul's first letter to the Corinthians encapsulates grace. Paul begins with the positive truth about God - who he is and his sovereignty - but then speaks hones...
In chapter 7, Isaiah's prophecy comes in the form of a child - a son whose name has a double meaning: God with us. Is this a promise or a threat? It is a comfor...
Genesis, also known as the book of beginnings, is the epic collection of writings that connect the history of the small Hebrew-Jewish nation with the larger his...
The good news in Joshua does not lie within the story itself but how this story challenges Christians to confront the dangers lurking withinthe Bible. These dan...
Revelation is about the New Testament's central conflict: the lordship of Christ versus the lordship of Caesar. In nine visions John describes a God whose power...
Moses is an Israelite. He was raised as an Egyptian prince, but fled after murdering an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite. He meets God in the from of a bur...
The Corinthian church is probably the most problematic church that we see in the whole New Testament, more problems than any other. But what lies at the heart? ...
Of all the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, Isaiah is the one that most significantly influences the prophetic imagination of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the boo...
People say the latest Star Wars movie is a retelling of the first. I'd say the same thing about the Gospels. That's why I love Exodus so much - it's A New Hope ...
Sorry Reformers, but the distinction between faith and works is a false one. Faith is an active participation in the Reign of God, a tree firmly planted in the ...
The book of Joshua is a severe ethical challenge, portraying as it does a religiously motivated campaign of genocidal conquest. It is a story that has too often...
"The book of Romans in thirty seconds or less: the simple letter to the Jesus followers living in and around Rome of the first century was not intended to be th...
"In John's wild vision he sees Jesus dressed like Caesar, speaking to seven illegal churches. And the heavens are torn open and God is in his sacred court. Jesu...
"Why do the innocent suffer? The book of Job is what happens when a creative genius explores that question. The rich Job, a man of deep faith, loses everything ...
It may be possible to squint hard and see the good in First Peter, but I like to imagine is the stuff Peter said to Paul in the infamous tiff they had in Antioc...
The book of Acts chronicles the earliest days of the church. It's in Acts that we find the dramatic story of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit descends upon the people...
This is for the in-betweeners, living between everyday oppression and world peace, the now-is and the is-to-come, in that dry space where nothing is certain. Re...
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined. This is the good news according...
"The prophet Hosea offers us one of the boldest and most controversial metaphors for God in the Bible, controversial then and now. He compares God to a husband ...
The Gospel of Mark reads like good news for Habakkuk's runner. The vision is made plain from his coming out of the river to his coming out of the stone tomb. An...
Relational and marital imagery is used throughout scripture to depict the interaction between God and people. In Hosea we see the role of prophet and partner mi...
The Book of Psalms is a collection of 150 different songs, which function as prayers. The book of Psalms can be found in the Hebrew Bible or in the Christian Ol...
The way Mark tells it, Jesus is a community organizer, Teaching principles that build and sustain powerful leaders and movements. Through repentance, we learn t...
"I don't like easy answers to hard questions. For many, sin causes bad things to happen. That's their easy answer to the hard question, ""If God is good then wh...
It all begins in Genesis. God creates the world and it's all good: light, dark, land, sea, animals, plants, male, female, good, good, very good. But we humans l...
I am forsaken, abandoned at the end of all the paths of peace that were supposed to lead to me. You seek other lovers and the dreams of those dreamers tell lies...
Most people think that the book of Job is about why bad things happen to good people. And while that is the presenting problem the real theme of the book has mo...
Who is Gomer? By all accounts she was an eset zenunim, that is, one who acts like a harlot, ordered to marry Hosea so that Adonai can make a point. Does that bo...
The Holy Spirit shows up. There is confusion. People speak in other languages. There is fear. They fight. They love. They are the church together. The book of A...
The Revelation from Jesus Christ to everyone caught in the thicket of empire, persecution, and death; everyone who hopes for equality, plenty, and life: the tim...
It begins with Joshua son of Nun being described according to the criteria of the Deuteronomist: meditating on the law of Moses day and night and refusing to tu...
If there's one thing about First Corinthians that calls us to the center of the gospel it's the importance of the body. The Corinthians envision a kind of spiri...
In Isaiah we see the coalescing of influences from both the histories of the Northern Kingdom of Ephraim and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The heritage of the ...
The Gospel of Matthew is the Gospel of Mountains. Jesus is tempted by the devil on a mountain, he preaches the beatitudes in a sermon on the mountain, he prays ...
The Bible is a communal library, filled with harmony and dissonance, hope and lament, faith and doubt, questions and answers and more questions to those answers...
From its infamous "In the beginning" to Charlton Heston shouting "Let my people go!" to genealogies and genealogies and more genealogies, to poets and prophets ...
The Gospel of Mark is the oldest of all the gospels. I love it because it's written by a regular person. It's original language is full of grammatical errors an...
There's four basic takeaways in this letter: First, we are reminded that we have already been provided with everything needed to partake in the divine nature, t...
Moses led the Exodus from Egypt. Joshua walked around Jericho and into the land promised to Abraham. Which brings us to Judges, a merry-go-round of tribal leade...
"The book of Revelation is not a crystal ball to the future. It is a mythopoetic vision of what is already happening. We face an apocalypse of our own making, w...
What's the book of James? It's a letter to those who feel scattered, two-faced, pushed-down, or taken in by empty promises... It's a warning to succumb to these...
Matthew was formed by the Hebrew scriptures. When he tells us the good news of Jesus he uses the stories of his heart and of his people. He sings of the saving ...
In Acts, there's in-fighting among the Jesus followers about how big God's grace really is--does it really extend beyond the Jews-- even to the Gentiles? The Ap...
The life and death of a revolutionary and the resurrection of a revolution: this is the New Testament. We see Jesus bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming ...
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