This week we conclude our series on Revelation and Resistance with John’s vision of New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:1-7, 22-27, and 22:1-5. The text presents a moving depiction of God come to earth, dwelling among the people and wiping every tear from their eyes. In a renewed world with no death or suffering, humanity thrives beside the river of living water, eating from the tree of life, relieved…
This week we are reading Revelation chapter 7, a vision that unfolds in the midst of the unsealing of seals and undoing of worlds as we have known them. It’s a vision that seems anchored in the past and the future simultaneously, a vision that evoked for us Ezekiel and Isaiah and Genesis and Kohelet and Exodus and also a also future time when whatever suffering the faithful have endured, they can…
This week we’re continuing our series on Revelation and Resistance with the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2:1-7 and 3:1-22. We note that most of the churches receive both praise and admonition from Jesus, celebrating what they have done well but warning them against their shortcomings. But we also notice that in these letters appearances can be deceiving. Those churches that appear…
This week we are reading Revelation 5 – the whole thing, which is only 14 powerful verses long. We encounter the image of a scroll covered with words that might change the world as we know it - but it has been sealed tight, with nobody to open it. We encounter the Lamb, in a series of images that just make no sense – this lamb who is the lion, this lamb who stands as if slaughtered. This…
This week we’re continuing our series on Revelation and Resistance series with Revelation 13:1-18 and 17:1-6. We examine the grotesque images of the Beasts rising from land and sea as images of the Roman Empire, a misshapen, deceptive, and violent creature trapping people unknowingly in the worship of Satan. Then we turn our attention to Woman Babylon, the beautiful seductress whose goblet is…
Welcome to our summer series, Revelation and Resistance. This week we begin at the beginning, with Revelation 1:1-20, which sets the stage so beautifully for us and especially for me, who has never read Revelation before. We contemplate the “is-ness” of God – one that is beyond time as we know it – and hold all of the evocative images and sound metaphors like complex treasures. We relate to the…
This week we conclude our special series on Disputing with God with the story of Jesus praying with his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane as told in Mark 14:32-42. We notice at least two disputes in this text, the first between Jesus, who is praying in anguish, and his disciples, who keep falling asleep. We ponder the human propensity toward avoidance in moments of impending crisis, whether by…
This week we’re continuing our summer series on “Disputing with God” with the story of Jesus’s encounter with a Syro-Phoenician woman as told in Matthew 15:21-28. This story makes us comfortable in a lot of ways, as Jesus appears to ignore the pleas of a foreign woman, who Matthew refers to as a Canaanite, whose daughter is possessed by a demon. Jesus refuses to help, first saying that his mission…
This week we continue with our summer series “Disputing with God” with Psalm 88, the Bible’s most unrelenting lament psalm. The speaker cries out to God from the depths of the pit, lamenting about the pain, suffering, and isolation that makes their life seem like a walking death, even accusing God of being the one who has caused them to suffer. And yet in this dispute, there is no response from…
This week we continue with our summer series “Disputing with God” with the story of the prophet Jonah in Nineveh as told in Jonah 3:1–4:11. While we have often read Jonah as a comedic parody of Israelite prophecy, this time we explore what happens if we take Jonah’s concerns about God’s mercy seriously. The Ninevites are, after all, the very people who will destroy the northern kingdom of Israel…
