Episodes

  • Abram, Sarai, and Hagar

    Abram, Sarai, and Hagar
    Jun 29 2026

    I’m curious what everyone made of the story of Abram, Sarai, and Hagar that we read this week. If I’d been thinking ahead a little more, I might have included a couple more passages about what happens to Ishmael later on, but we’ll read them aloud now. The important punchline of the story of Ishmael can be read in chapter twenty-five of Genesis, which we’ll read together now:

    This is the account of the family line of Abraham’s son Ishmael, whom Sarah’s slave, Hagar the Egyptian, bore to Abraham.

    These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, listed in the order of their birth: Nebaioth the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. These were the sons of Ishmael, and these are the names of the twelve tribal rulers according to their settlements and camps. Ishmael lived a hundred and thirty-seven years. He breathed his last and died, and he was gathered to his people. His descendants settled in the area from Havilah to Shur, near the eastern border of Egypt, as you go toward Ashur. And they lived in hostility toward all the tribes related to them.

    Don’t you love that little dig there at the end? Note that this is yet another story that’s an etiology, that would be something like saying, “And that is why the people who live there are in a land called Mary, or Maryland.”

    To me, one of the most interesting parts of this whole story of Abram, is that while he’s counted as a virtuous forefather of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the stories in the Bible actually don’t paint him in a very favorable light to modern sensibilities. I want to zero in on this part of the story where Hagar is found by an angel near a well. Note that this is a story in which the Lord is present, and there’s a bit there in the middle that seems almost like a throwaway line: “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.”

    We’re not going to read the whole middle part of Ishmael’s story, but after Sarah has a son born to her, there’s another story in which they send Hagar and Ishmael away. And in this story, we’re hearing about God instead of the Lord, and I almost wonder if it might be just a different version of the same story.

    Let’s pause for a moment and read that one:

    Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba.

    When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob.

    God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

    Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

    In Islamic tradition, this well is called Zamzam, and is located in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. The area in the Bible that Ishmael’s descendants are said to have occupied is in the northern part of Saudi Arabia where borders Jordan, which is right next to modern day Israel.

    I’m curious if there were any other parts of the story that struck you guys as especially important? In case you missed it in the footnotes of the story, Hagar names her son Ishmael, and this means The God Who Hears or God Hears.

    As the story progresses, Abraham and Sarah have a son together, and his name is Isaac. The very next story we’re going to read is about Isaac, and it’s in Genesis chapter 22, the first nineteen verses. I want to warn you guys that this story we’re going to read next is a difficult one, and I don’t think I really understand it, despite having read it over a hundred times and read lots of things about it. None of the explanations satisfy me very much.

    In today’s story, the thing that struck me the most, well, this version and the other version, but the thing that struck me the most was the finding of water when we’re thirsty. What a feeling of salvation that would be, and I’m not even in the desert!

    I love you all so very much. Let’s light our candles and reflect on it together, well, together and apart.



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notesformeeting.substack.com
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    6 mins
  • Father Abram, Ahem, Abraham

    Father Abram, Ahem, Abraham
    Jun 21 2026
    It’s Father’s Day, and we’re in the thick of studying through the book of Genesis together. Remember there was no reading assignment this week, we finished the first eleven chapters of Genesis last week, the sort of pre-history part of the story, and this week, we’re going to be introduced to Abram, whose name gets changed to Abraham.We didn’t have reading assignments, and we’re not going to read any passages today, either. We’re going to start with a recounting of some of the major events in the last thirty-nine chapters of the book of Genesis and the book of Exodus, and we’ll sort of gloss over some of the parts we’ve covered previously.You may recall that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This is another etiology, “where did we come from” sort of story. There’s a table of nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis, and it’s sort of a “hey, all the people we bothered to mention are descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth in this way.” When I was a kid, I used to wonder, where are the Chinese people in this story? But I digress. Shem has kids, and their kids have kids, and after ten or so generations, Abram is born in Ur of the Chaleans, and marries Sarai.Ur of the Chaldeans is in modern day Iraq, near the mouth of the Euphrates River, and there was a big ziggurat there too, maybe that was the Tower of Babel. Who knows!?We’re going to dive into a few stories of Abram, but not this week. This week, we’re going for character arcs. Abram calls on Yahweh, though according to the earlier stories he’s not the first, but he calls on Yahweh, and eventually Yahweh makes a covenant with him and changes his name to Abraham, and changes Sarai’s name to Sarah. Abraham is ninety nine years old when this all goes down, and we learned earlier in the story that Sarah isn’t able to conceive, but she does, and they have a son named Isaac.I will also note that Abraham has two sons, and God promises to bless both of them. One is his son with Hagar, and one is his son with Sarah. Notably, there are some differences in how Jews and Muslims tell this part of the story, but the canonical telling in the Bible is that God’s covenant is established with Isaac. Isaac marries Rebekah, and I will mention here that there’s quite a bit of the telling of this part of the story that involves this family being in Canaan, which is the land that their descendants will later take over, but not marrying Canaanites. Again, a bit of etiology going there.So Abraham and Sarah’s Son Isaac marries Rebekah. Rebekah and Isaac’s son is named Jacob, though he also gets a new name later, Israel, hmm, wonder where I’ve heard that name? Jacob slash Israel marries two sisters named Rachel and Leah, and he eventually has a bunch of kids with the two of them and with Bilhah and Zilpah, who are handmaidens to the two sisters.In some tellings of the stories, they’re half-sisters to the two wives, but that’s not in the Bible. Anyway, the five of them, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah, have twelve sons, and the second-youngest is a dreamer named Joseph.Pausing for a moment here, I just want to observe that what we’re talking about is really the living memory of one person. Meaning, the story describes characters that would have literally known each other. It’s much further zoomed in than the last eleven chapters we read, it’s thirty-nine chapters for just four generations.Okay, so who remembers what happens at the end of the story of Joseph?That’s right, the whole gang goes on down to Egypt. And they stay there until Moses is born, Moses is a direct descendant of Jacob slash Israel through his son Levi, but we’re not talking about living memory now. The story, as it goes in the book of Exodus, is that they were in Egypt for four hundred thirty years. Then we dive deep again.Moses leads the Children of Israel out of Egypt. This is the Exodus, which is famously depicted in the book of Exodus. So Genesis, the beginning, Exodus, the Exodus, and then on to Leviticus, which is where we get a real deep dive into the law they got during Exodus. We’re not going to spend a whole bunch of time in Leviticus, but it’s got some good, meaty bits in it.Moses is sort of present throughout the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, as a character. He’s got numerous sidekicks, but the important one who emerges at the end is Joshua, who leads the Children of Israel into the Promised Land. Since you all remember the Lyle Lovett album from 1992, Joshua Judges Ruth, does anyone care to guess about the period just after the Children of Israel enter the Land of Canaan?That’s right, Judges, the next part is the period of the Judges. We’re going to read parts of all of this, but after the Judges there are Kings, the Kings build the first temple, it’s eventually destroyed and the second temple is built, we’ve covered that part of the narrative, and on through the destruction of ...
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    8 mins
  • Old Testament: The Flood

    Old Testament: The Flood
    Jun 8 2026

    It was really fun to start our discussions on the Old Testament when everyone was home, and now we’re moving back to being spread abroad. I posted our last few weeks of meetings on Substack, and we’re going back to recordings at least while Tom is abroad.

    This week’s reading was a little bit longer, four chapters, but all concerning one story, the story of The Flood, capital-t-capital-f, The Flood. I’m so interested to hear everyone’s take on it. I’m going to turn on comments in case anyone decides they want to comment on the Internet, and to remind everyone who’s following along but not here in person, the reading for this week was Genesis chapters 6, 7, and 8, and chapter 9 through verse 17. I reminded people to take particular note of how many animals were taken onto the ark, and how many days the flood covered. Everyone was also keeping an eye out for which parts of the story are interactions with God-slash-Elohim, and which are interactions with The-Lord-slash-Yahweh.

    But before we dive into that, just a quick review of the story.

    Right there at the start, we have the Nephilim, who are pretty enigmatic characters in some ways, but if we take the whole thing at face value, God has sons, those sons take human wives, and their sons are heroes. But there in verse five things take a turn and the Lord decides to destroy all the humans, so it goes.

    Then for the rest of chapter 6, God tells Noah to build an ark and load the animals by twosies, twosies, elephants, and kanga-roosies, roosies, children of the lord. Oh, but it’s not children of the Lord at this point, they’re God’s people in chapter six, and then the Lord actually gives slightly different instructions in chapter 7, which Noah also follows, and then there’s a flood.

    The numbers of days of things kind of vary throughout the story, it’s something like forty days of rain, plus 150 days of flood, plus forty more days on the top of Mt Ararat, plus a couple more weeks of waiting, but it’s also interesting to note that what we appear to have here is a couple distinct stories that were woven together into a whole, and some parts of the original stories were left as they were when whoever was weaving them together found them. So there are a couple different times that forty days, or fourteen days, or a hundred and fifty days get mentioned, but regardless there’s a long flood, then the flood is over, and then one of two things happens.

    At the end of chapter 8, Noah has a barbecue and the Lord really loves the barbecue. Then at the end of chapter nine, there’s an alternate ending where God makes a covenant and ties it up nice with a bow. You all please don’t murder each other, and I will also never murder all of you again.

    Okay, so that’s the sketch of the story, now I’d be interested in hearing what you all think of the story, and about how the story is woven together.

    I’ve read at least one translation of the Book of Genesis where they actually pull the two stories back apart, and just present them as two different, but loosely related stories. It’s fun to think that maybe there were two flood myths that had been passed along, and then someone took the time and care to merge them back into a single story.

    But it’s also fun to think about the fact that there are lots and lots of fun flood stories from all over the world.

    For everyone who’s following along on the podcast or on substack, we’ve been spending more of our meeting time in discussion, which partly accounts for the shorter podcast this week. Next week, we’re only reading a very short section of chapter 11, verses one through eight. It’s the account of the Tower of Babel, which is a fun story.

    For this week, let’s light our candles together or in our hearts, and consider what the flood story has to tell us. I love you all so much.



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notesformeeting.substack.com
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    8 mins
  • Old Testament: Ruth

    Old Testament: Ruth
    May 4 2026
    Today we’re going to finish talking about the five scrolls, which are Esther, Ruth, Lamentations, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes. You’ll remember that Esther is about Esther, our Jewish Heroine who saves her people from Xerxes the jerksy and his awful advisor Haman. Lamentations is a book of laments, in the form of acrostic poetry. Song of Songs is the other scroll besides Esther that doesn’t mention God. Song of Songs is mostly about kisses and things related to kisses. And Ecclesiastes is the wisdom of someone named Kohelot. The five scrolls are short and beautiful, and in a minute we’re going to start talking about my favorite of the five, Ruth.But first, before we do, a word on organization of the Bible overall, and of these books In particular. Ruth, the eponymous hero of Ruth, is the great grandmother of King David. So when Christians were sorting books, instead of putting it with the other writings, it was kind of organized chronologically. That is to say, it’s sandwiched between the book of Judges, which chronicles the period before Israel had Kings, and the book of I Samuel, in which we meet the first and kings of Israel, Saul, and David, and learn of their interactions with Samuel, who anoints both of them.So in terms of overall organization, we have the Torah or the Law, which is the period from Adam and Eve through Moses. Moses brings everyone out of Egypt, but never enters Canaan, he hands off the reins to Joshua, who takes the Hebrews into Canaan, don’t worry we’ll learn more about this later, but after they enter the land, there’s a period where there are judges but no kings, described in the book of Judges. So the Torah or the Law are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Then Joshua, Judges, Ruth, like Lyle Lovett’s fourth album. That makes Ruth the eighth book in the Bible as we typically count it. Chronologically, it puts Ruth right on the edge between the period when Israel is governed by Judges, and when it’s governed by Kings. Samuel is the final Judge, and Ruth’s great grandson David is the second king, who’s just a boy when he begins his journey. The point there being that Ruth and Samuel are probably about the same vintage.Does that all make sense? Thematically this scroll is part of the writings, but we put it chronologically sandwiched in with the prophets between the judges and the kings. Hopefully the way we’ve approached this doesn’t cause confusion, but I think it’s more fun to encounter the scrolls somewhat together even though they’re all different in chronology and style.So what kind of a scroll is Ruth? Well for starters the story is set hundreds of years before Esther, but they were probably actually written pretty close to one another. in her story, Esther is a Jewish woman in Persia. Ruth is also a foreigner, but the opposite kind - a non-Jew in ancient Israel, and at the beginning of her story, instead of having just ascended to be queen, she’s just become destitute.In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelek, his wife’s name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion.They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.Now Elimelek, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died,and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.Strong start, right? I told Dan’l earlier that it would be a feminist story, certainly all the main characters are women and most of the men in the story die in those first two paragraphs But it’s also a feminist story set in a culture where women don’t have a great deal of autonomy. Which I suppose is why the author would have killed off all the men.The story has a few elements that are interesting to consider. It features the marriage of a Jew and a non-Jew, which might have been controversial when it was written. Same as Esther, actually. But Ruth is also a beautiful story of friendship. The other sister-in-law is named Orpah and here’s her brief but lovely story:Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.Ruth clung to her. Here’s one brief side note about the story of Orpah, her name is spelled O-R-P-A-H, just like Oprah, except with the p and the r reversed. The funny thing is that Oprah Winfrey’s birth ...
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    9 mins
  • Old Testament Tour: Poetry, Continued

    Old Testament Tour: Poetry, Continued
    Apr 20 2026
    My darlings, I’m so enjoying our whirlwind tour through the Bible. As a reminder, we’re currently talking about the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, which we divide into three chunks: the law, the prophets, and the writings. We started our tour in the very middle, with three of the writing books that are written in poetry, Job, Psalms, and Proverbs. And this week, you all read Job chapters 1, 2, and 42 in preparation for diving into the characters a little bit.We’re not doing a quiz or anything, but you should all remember by now that Job, Psalms, and Proverbs are smack in the middle of the sixty-six books of the Bible that most Christians consider canon. Psalms is filled with psalms, Proverbs is filled with proverbs, but Job is not filled with jobs, instead it’s filled with the character Job, along with other characters who fill very different roles. From your pre-reading, you’ll all recall that Satan is one of the main characters, and due to some conversations between Satan and the Lord, Job is rather badly smitten at the outset of our story.By the very end of chapter two, the five main characters are introduced: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, of course Job, and the Lord. What follows is a back-and-forth between these five characters, and you already know how it ends, because you read chapter 42, but let’s dig in to some of the meaty bits of the poetry.After the introduction in the first two chapters, Job opens the poetry with a lament. It’s the saddest of sad poems, and it’s beautifully constructed. Job’s lament ends with these lines:What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.”When I was in college, I took a class called Job and the Joban Tradition, it was taught by Peter Machinist, and one of the things we learned in that class is that Job is a theodicy. It grapples with the question of why do bad things happen to good people?This term, theodicy, incidentally, was coined by Gottfried von Leibniz, the inventor of calculus, who in addition to being interested in infinitesimals, was also interested in the problem of evil. How can there be evil if God is all powerful.The first response to Job is by Eliphaz the Temanite, whom I will remind you, sat on the ground without eating or speaking for a week, just to be with his friend Job. None of these characters are slouches as friends. The overall structure of Job is that Eliphaz speaks and then Job responds, then Bildad the Shuhite, then Job, then Zophar the Naamathite, then Job. This repeats three times, and for the most part the friends are pretty supportive, although Eliphaz does get a bit grumpy toward the end. Even though the whole plot is that Job never sins, Eliphaz feels the need to judge. Here’s a snippet of it:“Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored: If you remove wickedness far from your tentWe don’t have time to read all of the back and forth, but what we find is that everyone who starts out consoling Job eventually does the same thing as Eliphaz. Bildad and Zophar both get a bit accusatory, and then Job is forced to respond.“As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made my life bitter,as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils,my lips will not say anything wicked, and my tongue will not utter lies.I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity.I will maintain my innocence and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.You get the point here. Job is like, nah bro, it’s not like that. There’s a somewhat strange interlude in chapter 28, which almost feels like a standalone song or poem, but that is also beautiful. It’s not attributed to any of the characters, and it’s asking a question:Where then does wisdom come from? Where does understanding dwell?It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, concealed even from the birds in the sky.Following this is another long poem by Job, and then we get a surprise! A character who wasn’t introduced in the beginning steps out of the crowd, and he gives a rousing speech that begins like this:“I am young in years, and you are old;that is why I was fearful, not daring to tell you what I know.I thought, ‘Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom.’But it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding.It is not only the old who are wise, not only the aged who understand what is right.He makes a good point, but he also brings it home in a way that’s like ten times more judgmental than the three friends, which is looking pretty grim for Job. But don’t worry, the Lord arrives on stage now, and I’m going to switch to ...
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    10 mins
  • Tour of the Old Testament: Poetry Books

    Tour of the Old Testament: Poetry Books
    Apr 13 2026
    After some discussion with everyone during Lent, we’re going to start a tour of the Old Testament in Meeting today. There seemed to be some general agreement among all the Bruntons-east that having an overall sense of it could be fun and interesting. Today we’re going to do a quick orientation, and then we’re going to start exactly in the middle with the poetic books, mostly because I like them and I think they’re a fun starting place.So first it’s worth noting that when Jesus talked about scripture, and when he quoted from scripture, what he was quoting was what we call the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that it was all written in Hebrew, whereas the New Testament was written mostly in Greek.Remember that Jesus grew up in Second Temple Judaism, which we’ll come back to later, but one way you can think of the Christian religion is that it’s an offshoot of Second Temple Judaism, and the reason we say “Old Testament” and “New Testament” is that we inherited the Old Testament from our Jewish roots, and the New Testament was all written after the time of Jesus.There are some theological implications about calling the two parts of the Bible the Old Testament and New Testament, but it’s still a convenient way to group the books, and it’s been a grouping for a long time. In Judaism, the grouping is called the Miqra, or the Tanakh. The Tanakh is a convenient name because it’s actually an initialism of three words, Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim. The Torah is the first five books, the Nevi’im are the prophets, and the Ketuvim are the writings. We’re going to come back to the writings in a minute.But get that in your head for a minute. There are five books at the beginning that we group together called the Torah or the Pentateuch, or the Law. The story of the creation of the world is there, and the flood, and the story of Moses leading the Hebrew children out of Egypt. The story of Moses receiving the ten commandments on stone tablets is in there, and a lot of additional rules that weren’t on the tablets, but cropped up along the way.You might remember that Jesus says “Do not think that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets” - when he says “the law” there, he’s talking at least in part about the Torah, and when he says “the prophets” he’s talking about the next broad division of books. When you think about prophets, you might think about Jonah who got swallowed by a whale and barfed out in Ninevah, or Isaiah who unknowingly wrote most of Handel’s Messiah a few thousand years before Handel was born, or you might think about Elijah who fasted for forty days and who at the end of his life ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire.We’re going to talk about the prophets later, but that’s another broad division of the Old Testament, you’ve got the law and the prophets. When we talk about the prophets, we’re going to talk mostly about characters, because that’s how I think of them, but we’ll also talk a bit about what prophecy means.The third and final broad category is called the writings, or the Ketuvim, and this is eleven books that are all wonderful. The eleven books include many of my favorite parts of the Bible, in part because we sing them and recite them more than other parts. In particular, there are three books in the middle of the writings that are books of poetry and that’s where we’re going to look today.But first, one more quick recap. Law, that’s the first five books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The Torah and the Pentateuch are two other names for it. Prophets, that’s a big chunk of the Old Testament, and when we come back to talk about the prophets, we’re going to talk about a lot of individual characters like Jonah and Elijah. And the writings.In the Christian Bible, the poetry is exactly in the middle, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, those three books, and because of that they’re also easy to find. My recollection is that if you calculate the exact center of the Christian Bible that Protestants use, it’s in Psalm number 117.There are 150 psalms, and every single one is a beautiful poem or series of poems. In many Christian denominations, it’s traditional to have a psalm sung or spoken in every single service. You might remember that the very first book published in North America was the Bay Psalm Book, which you can think of as kind of a hymnal. Psalms have been set to music many thousands of times throughout the past several millenia, and many of my own favorite hymns are Psalms translated into English and set to music.Some Psalms are long, some are short, and they’re surprisingly varied as poetry, and they’re the part of the Hebrew scriptures that has most made me want to learn more Hebrew.Proverbs is the book right after Psalms. Since Psalms is full of psalms, you won’t be surprised to hear that Proverbs is full of proverbs. Aphorisms for living, and you have ...
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    9 mins
  • Palm Sunday

    Palm Sunday
    Mar 30 2026
    We’re going to keep reading about the final days of Jesus from the Gospel of John today. One of the reasons I like reading the Gospels is that they each have a different take on what happened that week, but the accounts of Palm Sunday and the events of that week are all reasonably well synched up - unlike the dinner we were reading about last week where three accounts are about the wine and the bread but the account in John is about dirty feet.The rough sketch of the story is that Jesus and his friends are in Bethany, which is a couple miles outside of Jerusalem. A side note, the Tomb of Lazarus in Bethany is still a place of pilgrimage for Christians and Muslims. There are at least two churches and a mosque there, and it’s the place where Jesus went from hometown hero to seriously famous miracle worker just before his crucifixion.We’ve talked about the story of Lazarus a few times. The story in the book of John assumes we know about it - “Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.” The premise of John’s story that this is what catapulted Jesus to fame, and to the attention of the authorities.If you’ve ever looked closely at a depiction of Jesus on the cross, there will sometimes be a sign above it that says I-N-R-I, which is an initialism for “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum” - Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. This is a reference from the Gospel of John:Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. Many read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.There’s a whole argument depicted there in the Gospel of John, where Pilate seemingly would rather not crucify Jesus, but the religious authorities insist on the crucifixion because Jesus claimed to be both the King and the Son of God. They tell him, “We have no king but Caesar.” Pilate didn’t have jurisdiction over their religious objections, but they kind of paint him into a corner over the political point.An interesting little side note that relates to a conversation Dan’l and I had earlier in the week - this is actually the only mention of Latin in the whole Bible. Lots of Aramaic, lots of Greek, but Latin occurs only in this notice.Okay, so back to the story of Palm SundayThe next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,“Hosanna!”“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”“Blessed is the king of Israel!”Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:“Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey’s colt.”At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.It’s worth noting at this point that Jesus doesn’t claim to be a king during his discussion with Pontius Pilate. The crowd had called him king of the Jews, and of course we have the much earlier record in the Gospel of Matthew where the Magi ask where they can find the King of the Jews, but during the discussion with Pilate Jesus doesn’t actually cop to it. When Pilate asks him about it, his response is ““Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”As depicted in the Gospel of John, it’s a bad week for Jesus, and it includes a lot of people wanting him dead for either claiming to be the Son of God or claiming to be the rightful king.But I like to think that the message Jesus preached was actually quite a bit more radical than the things they accused him of. And this way of reading it makes a lot of sense in the story.Saying “I’m the Son of God” or “I’m the rightful king” is one thing, but saying “Every one of you is the child of God and there is no such thing as a rightful King” is a whole nother thing.We have lots and lots of records of Jesus preaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, in fact the word kingdom occurs fifty-four times in Matthew alone, and not once does he say, “it’s mine.” Instead, he says over and over and over, “it’s for the poor” or “it’s for the persecuted.”He doesn’t usually answer when they ask him if he’s God, but when they ask him about the kingdom of heaven, oh, then he has words and words and words for them. Usually it’s parable beginning with “the kingdom of heaven is like…”But getting back to the story of Palm Sunday again, we’ve been skipping around a little bit, and I want to end with something that Jesus tells the disciples at the outset of this story of the bad week that we now call Holy Week:Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces ...
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    7 mins
  • Remembrance of Me

    Remembrance of Me
    Mar 23 2026
    It was so much fun hiking with you all yesterday! The weather couldn’t have been more perfect for it, which I suppose is why we couldn’t get a parking space at Patapsco. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who noticed the sun shining.The first daffodils are blooming, right next to the house by the fig tree. It’s a sheltered spot there, and they’re always the first of all the narcissus to bloom here, closely followed by the forsythia that are right across from them, and soon after, it’s everything all at once. Only two more weeks of Lent, next week is Palm Sunday, and the week after that’s Easter.This week we’re going to read an account of the Last Supper from the Gospel of John. It’s substantially different from the other three accounts in the New Testament. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus eats bread and wine with the disciples and delivers a handful of prophecies over dinner. In the Gospel of Luke in particular, he says the words that we Christians all over the world now hear when we celebrate communion in church: “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’”Celebrating communion in church is a way to remember what’s happening there through a ritual, but the ritual itself isn’t so much the point it is to remember Jesus. I like to take the instruction both a bit more literally and to interpret it a bit more broadly. I know those two approaches are in tension with one another, but bear with me. I like to think that every time we eat or drink, we should pause to remember, not just when we’re in church. When we sing our song before dinner, that’s what we’re doing, in remembrance.It’s also a part of why Christians fast. Withholding it from ourselves helps us to remember why we eat and drink. The obvious response to that is “because we’re hungry or thirsty.” But fasting reminds us that it’s not actually quite that straightforward. It helps us remember that we also eat and drink because we decide to. And that others, in the worst of circumstances, lack food or drink because they are denied it.Moving ahead to the story of the Last Supper from the Gospel of John, there is what first appears to be a completely different lesson for us here.Here’s the pertinent part of the story:Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”“No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”“Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.Notably, just before this scene, John wrote, “the evening meal was in progress” and that’s the whole tale of the meal for John. There’s nothing about the cup and the bread, no new covenant in the blood, just this thing about the dirty feet.There may be some esoteric meaning buried in it. “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me” sounds like it might be an oblique reference to ancient washing rituals from the book of Numbers, “To purify them, do this: Sprinkle the water of cleansing on them”, but there’s also the meaning that Jesus explains directly: if you can’t let me serve you, you’re not getting it.In one sense, this telling of the Last Supper is different than the other three Gospels, because instead of eating and drinking together, Jesus is serving the apostles, and commanding them to serve others in the way he served them.But in another sense, as we refer back to the accounts in the other three Gospels, Jesus is serving food to the disciples. I don’t know if that would have been the role of a host or of a servant in Jesus’ day, but that also brings up a good point: hosting and serving aren’t necessarily so different as I imagine them to be.One more little tidbit to focus on about...
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    7 mins