Jesus At 2am - A Humorous, Intelligent Look At The Bible, Church History & The Life Of Faith

So what now???  What happens after the Messiah has been raised from the dead?!?  Is this when God comes to establish the fullness of his Kingdom of earth?  Is Easter – the day of Jesus’s resurrection – also the day of  judgment?  No. No?  Really…?  Because from what we know so far, it kinda seems […]

At last we put all of the pieces together, and I offer my explanation of the atonement –  how it is that Jesus’s death and resurrection fulfills the covenant with Abraham and accomplishes the salvation of the world.  It was not by satisfying a wrathful God (as though God was saving us from himself!).  Nor was […]

The most distinctive act of early Christian worship was participation in sacrament of Communion.  Sermons, scripture readings, the singing of hymns and psalms were indeed a part of the church’s worship, but much of this was done – originally – in the synagogues on the Sabbath.  Christians would gather again on Sunday – in celebration of […]

Why was Jesus crucified?  Was the cross an act of God (to satisfy the divine wrath)?  Was it simply the inevitable result of Jesus’s challenge to the Sadducees and Pharisees?  Was he betrayed by followers who felt he had failed his promises to deliver a political kingdom?  Or was this an act of sin itself […]

No symbol is more associated with Christianity than the cross.  And for good reason.  As we will see, the cross is indeed where God’s salvation is accomplished.  But too often the cross has been interpreted mainly in terms of Jesus’s physical suffering – as though the means of salvation is the physical torture of the Messiah. […]

One of the most troubling images in Jesus’s teaching is the sorting of the sheep and the goats (the “sheep” being the “righteous” who are rewarded with eternal life, the goats the “unrighteous” condemned to punishment).  At first glance the stakes appear to be “heaven” and “hell,” with our human actions the determining factor in […]

While Jesus certainly gave some famous speeches, most of Jesus’s public teaching was done by means of parables.  These short, fictional stories were intended as both calls to action and as a means of offering a vision of an alternative reality- the kingdom of God.  Yet they are more than illustrations, stories to be distilled down to their […]

This episode is guaranteed to make you SMILE!  And, if you’ll let it, it might just change your life.  Because today we hear the story of one, self-described “ordinary guy” who decided it was time to make the world a better place.  That guy is Todd Miller, co-founder (along with his lovely wife) of Global […]

“Who do you say that I am?”  This questions forms a turning point in the Gospel narratives and remains a central question for students of the Bible in every generation.  Precisely who is this Jesus of Nazareth?   As we’ve discussed before,  those who encountered Jesus would have understood him as a prophet (one sent […]

Is there such at thing as Evil?  Not just as an adjective – describing the character of an act or even a person – but as a thing in and of itself; evil with a capital “E”?   From the biblical perspective, the answer is:  yes.  There is a force, a drive within creation that […]

While the biblical story centers on God’s rescue of humanity, Gen. 3 (the Garden of Eden story) makes is clear that the entire cosmos has been affected by the curse of sin. Nature itself is broken, and thus the project of salvation must include the restoration the entire created order.  In this episode we take […]

An elemental consequence of sin is alienation – alienation between people, between  humanity and creation, and, most profoundly, alienation between humanity and God (see part 2 of this series for more detail).  And thus central to the project of salvation is reconciliation – bringing creation back to healthy, loving relationship, beginning with the relationship between God […]

The miracles of Jesus were only slightly less of an intellectual challenge to citizens of the 1st century than they are to us.  Raising a dead girl to life, for example, was no more common in ancient Israel than it is now!  And thus it was Jesus’s ability to perform such “signs and wonders” that […]

How to interpret the Sermon on the Mount has been one of the most debated questions in all of church history.  The content and tone shift so dramatically – from the comforting assurance that “your Father in heaven gives good things to those who ask him,” to the simple faith of the Lord’s prayer, to […]

The Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots are central characters in the New Testament, and there is no understanding Jesus without understanding the larger conversation into which he entered.  In this episode we examine each of these four major sects of first century, Palestinian Judaism and their answers to the central question of the day:  What […]

What exactly is a gospel? And is there a right way to read them? In this episode, we examine the gospel as a genre of biblical literature and discuss: their content, the events that occasioned their writing, and the manner of their composition.  And we begin with fact that “gospel” (the Greek word is εὐαγγέλιον) did […]

A sermon from Canvas:  05 January 2014 The story of the magi is foundational to Matthew’s Gospel both historically and symbolically.  Historically it places Jesus’s early life in the larger context of the reign of Herod the Great, and sets the stage for a confrontation between three kingdoms:  Rome, Jerusalem, and the “kingdom of God” […]

In our modern translations of the Bible, all one has to do to move from the Hebrew scriptures to the story of Jesus is turn a page – a action so simple it suggests the connection between the two “testaments” is obvious.  Of course the story of Jesus is connected to the story of Abraham, […]

There is no understanding the Bible without recognizing love at the center – or so I have been arguing from the first installment of this series.  The whole project of salvation is rooted in the love of God for his people and indeed all creation. And I imagine that this is not so hard to […]

The period after the return from exile was one of deep confusion for Israel.  For while she had indeed been set free from captivity, the deliverance was partial at best.  The Persians remained the sovereign political and military power in the region (later replaced by a series of empires beginning with Alexander the Great and […]