Additionally, as we approach Advent, I’d remind you that my book, Advent Can Still Change the World: Bringing Christmas Past into Christmas Present, just released, and might be helpful during the upcoming season. Each book has a QR code that grants you access to a discussion guide, and video content designed to focus on each chapter.

Alright, commercials are over. Let’s dive in.

The Gospel text for the first Sunday of Advent comes from Mark 13. In the three year, A-B-C cycle, of the Lectionary we find ourselves in Year B, the year of Mark. This, my friends, brings me so much joy because the Gospel of Mark is not only the first Gospel to be written (that we know of), but it is also the best Gospel. Matthew, Luke, and perhaps even John in some cases, use Mark as a springboard for their own narratives. In fact, Matthew incorporates more than 90% of Mark, and Luke more than 60%. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Mark is constantly blushing.

The text for this week is Mark 13:24-37. This passage is often referred to as the “Little Apocalypse,” because it 1) has apocalyptic literature vibes, and 2) it’s shorter than the book of Revelation. It’s important to remember that apocalyptic literature is a kind of Jewish writing that seeks to pull back the curtain and show readers what’s really going on behind the scenes—how God is still at work—even during times of suffering. This was the exact situation in which Mark’s readers found themselves.

Think about the context: Mark is likely writing in the immediate aftermath of the failed Jewish revolt against Roman occupation. Jerusalem was defeated and the Temple lay in ruins. The world as they knew it had come to an abrupt and tragic end. In the Gospel of Mark we see the author sifting through the rubble of a defeated people and a destroyed city, looking for something hopeful to offer in the aftermath of the end of their world moment.

Before we talk about this text and Advent, we should first talk about how this passage has been (mis)used and (mis)understood eschatologically, meaning how this text has been interpreted to be about the “End Times.”

This is not how Mark intended this passage to be understood. Writing sometime near the year 70 CE, Mark has Jesus warn his listeners about the possible fate that awaited them. This means the events depicted in Mark 13 likely belonged to the author's and his audience's recent past, rather than to our future. The earliest followers of Jesus interpreted the fall of Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple to be a vindication of Jesus and his message. For Mark, if the people had followed the non-violent vision of Jesus, instead of the path of violent revolt against Rome, the events of 70 CE would never have happened. Hindsight is always 20/20. In that way, Mark is a kind of “I told you so.”

For some followers of Jesus, when he didn’t literally appear and Jerusalem fell, they had to deal with their unmet expectations. If Jesus didn’t return and establish the Kingdom then, it must be happening later. Jesus must be returning in the future, they decided. At some point, when all the necessary events of prophetic fulfillment had occurred, Jesus would literally return to earth. I don’t think that is what Mark had in mind, but to say that this understanding has affected Christianity (not to mention, at times, American foreign policy) for the worse would be an understatement. It has led to so much hysteria and fear-mongering, bad exegesis of Scripture, and, too often, to an abdication of our responsibility to partner with God right here and now to bring the Kingdom—God’s New Society—on earth as it is in heaven.1 Further, the brand we know as dispensationalism in Evangelical theology is a fairly recent invention. The whole “Left Behind” notion didn’t emerge until the 19th century.

In short, Mark 13 (and its Synoptic siblings) is not about our future but about the context of Mark and his audience. It wasn’t about the end of the world, it was the end of an age—it was the end of the world as they knew it. In this sense Mark 13 still has something important to say to every generation of interpreters, as we, too, must decide whether we will heed both the warning and the call of Jesus.

This leads me to ask a question: Why do the Gospels, in each year of the Lectionary, all begin with an apocalyptic text? I mean, Christmas is about nostalgia, joy, and hope. Not “the sun darkened, the moon lightless, and the stars falling from the sky,” as in Mark 13. Why start the most wonderful time of the year on such a non-festive note?

Several years ago I was giving a sermon on fear, so I began by asking people of what they were afraid. You can imagine the usual suspects: spiders, heights, enclosed spaces…and those were just mine! However, one person raised a hand and said “Dying alone.”

It was a real downer in the moment—the technical, theological term is “buzzkill,” I believe, but it was also honest, and spoke to something many of us probably wanted to ignore or avoid. Our own mortality is not a comfortable subject, after all.

Beginning Advent with an apocalyptic passage feels similarly jarring, yet it’s also brilliant.

Every year, right about this time, I start seeing pictures and posts on my social media timeline that are unexpected. My green-thumbed friends are all posting about their excitement, because their seed catalogues are starting to arrive. As we move toward winter, and creation enters the death part of the life cycle, they are confidently planning their Spring gardens, looking toward a new season in which life will thrive and creation will be renewed.

That’s the power of beginning Advent with an apocalyptic text like Mark 13. It reminds us that Advent is a season of hope, and that it begins in this age, this moment, but looks forward to a new age, a new kind of world.

Advent is about the end of one world and the birth of another, and it’s about the decisions we make that shape what that new world will be like. Will it be similar to this age, full of vengeance and violence, or will it be a new age of justice and peace? That is ultimately up to us.

For God’s new world to be born it will surely require our participation. We are invited to volunteer as midwives, scrubbing in to help make God’s New Society our reality. In the words often attributed to Meister Eckhart, a medieval German Dominican priest, theologian, philosopher, and mystic: “We are all meant to be mothers of God…for God is always needing to be born.”

We are always potentially living at the end of the age. The world as it is, marred with injustice, suffering, and oppression, is not the way the world has to be. A new world, a world of justice, peace, and possibility, is waiting to be born. It is possible, but not guaranteed. That’s why God is looking for collaborators. In Mark 13 Jesus warns his listeners about a worst case scenario—about what happens when humans choose violence, vengeance, and retribution. Throughout his ministry he also presented an alternative possibility, one in which we love God, neighbor, self, and enemy, which brings that new world into being.

Advent beckons us to take seriously our role, our calling, to bring this world of our best dreams and imaginations into reality.

May we heed Jesus’s challenge, to “keep awake” in these critical days in which we live. It is no time for sleeping, after all! There is good work—the work of love—that desperately needs our attention.

May we conspire with God, and one another, to bring that new world of possibility into our reality.

May it be so.
Amen.

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Since this is the first post under this new branding, I wanted to offer something special, and my goodness do I have something special to share! A couple weeks ago I recorded a conversation with my friend Trey Ferguson about his new book Love is Good Religion: A 30-Day Journey to Compassion, Contemplation, and Connection. You can listen to our conversation below!

Giveaway: If you’d like a chance to win a copy of one of Trey’s books, I will be giving away a copy of Love is Good Religion, and his first book, Theologizin’ Bigger.

Here’s how to enter:

1. Be a subscriber to The Bible Nerd substack.

2. Leave a comment below telling me: What’s a passage or story from the Bible that you’d like for me to write about here?

3. For an extra chance to win, share this post and tag me on social media.

Two winners will be selected at random and announced on November 9th.

Here’s a bit more about the book and Trey:

In Love Is Good Religion: A 30-Day Journey to Compassion, Contemplation, and Connection, pastor and public theologian Trey Ferguson invites us beyond familiar readings of scripture to encounter its persistent call to liberation, community, and our shared humanity.

Across thirty readings of his New Living Treyslation and personal commentary, Trey invites us to slow down, sit with familiar scriptures, and encounter them anew. He argues that the first thing God calls “not good” is for humans to be alone. He explores John 3:16 not as a message about saving the unworthy but as a declaration of our inherent value. He reads Hagar from the underside of power, finding hope in an enslaved woman who first names “the God who sees me.”

What emerges is a bigger way of understanding love itself. Love is more than sentiment or personal virtue: it is a commitment to wholeness—our own, our neighbors’, and all of creation. And it’s not a zero-sum game where we must give up our wholeness for others to be whole. In a culture often shaped by hierarchy, dominance, and fragmentation, Trey offers a vision of compassion, contemplation, and connection.

Personal, affecting, and grounded, Love Is Good Religion is an invitation to discover a faith that draws us more deeply toward God, each other, and a more whole world.

Trey Ferguson is a pastor, podcaster, and public theologian who likes playing with words. Whether it be with tweets, videos, essays, sermonic presentations, Bible studies, podcasts, or speaking engagements, he’s always trying to provoke an image in a seeker with some combination of words.

When he’s not playing with words, he’s usually apologizing to his wife Jessica for playing too much, teaching his children to play too much, or letting some sports team disappoint him again.

His hope is to help our diverse world learn how to think bigger about God.

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“Since the providence that has divinely ordered our existence... has brought to life the most perfect good in Augustus... the birthday of the god first brought to the world the good tidings...”
— The Priene Calendar Inscription, 9 BCE1

Dating Jesus

When it comes to the historical Jesus we don’t have specific dates for the events of his life, just windows of probable or possible times. For example, we don’t know when Jesus was born, although it most likely wasn’t on December 25th. The actual dates suggested for his birth are sometime in the range of 6-4 BCE, based on the Gospel of Matthew’s location of Jesus’s nativity during the reign of Herod the Great, who we know died in 4 BCE.2 While there are some issues with this dating of his birth, the range of possible dates for his death are more historically solid. According to all four canonical Gospels, early tradition, and the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, Jesus was executed under the Roman governorship of Pontius Pilate. This is helpful because we know the time frame during which Pilate was stationed in Judea — between 26 and 36 CE. This means that it was sometime in that decade of Pilate’s tenure that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.

I bring this up because, while it’s hard to nail down specific dates for the life of Jesus, there is a specific date that we know, decades before Jesus was on the scene, that would change not only his life, but the history of the entire world.

That date was September 23, 63 BCE.

A Child was Born

On that day a baby was born and he was given the name Gaius Octavius, though most of us know him as the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. The assassination of Julius Caesar (his uncle) in 44 BCE eventually led to a power struggle that exploded into a civil war between Octavian, who had been adopted as Caesar’s heir in his will, and Mark Antony, one of Caesar’s supporters and generals. The decisive battle in the conflict happened at sea off the coast of Actium, Greece on September 2, 31 BCE, and when the dust settled it was Octavian who was victorious. Under the guise of “restoring the republic” Octavian was granted lifetime power by the Roman senate, who also bestowed upon him the title Augustus, meaning “great, majestic, magnificent,” and carried with it the idea of veneration. Augustus, they declared, was to be worshipped. The ascension of Augustus marked the end of Rome as a constitutional republic, and the advent of the Rome as an empire.

It might surprise you to know that Augustus was known by several titles that are familiar to readers of the Bible—and he had them first. He was Lord, savior, son of god, and the bringer of peace on earth.3 This last one, that Augustus brought peace on earth—the Pax Romana or Augusta—was particularly important.4 The Romans had experienced multiple civil wars that had threatened their stability, and were in near constant military engagement prior to Augustus. So, you can imagine how significant peacetime would be in shaping Roman opinion about Augustus as a leader. It further cemented his god-like status. We should note that this Roman Peace was not the product of just policies or fair negotiation. It was made possible by Roman military domination. In his work The Agricola the Roman historian Tacitus quoted a vanquished Roman enemy as saying,

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

That is not peace, friends.

Time Bends to Caesar

Which brings me back to this date, September 23. To honor and celebrate the Pax Augusta one Roman province, in what is today Turkey, decided that the entire calendar should revolve around the day Augustus was born. September 23 would begin the New Year, because everything had begun anew in Augustus. Time itself would bend to Caesar. This is recorded for us in an inscription from 9 BCE called The Priene Calendar Inscription. It reads as follows (and pay close attention to the language that is used to describe Augustus):

Since the providence that has divinely ordered our existence has applied her energy and zeal and has brought to life the most perfect good in Augustus, whom she filled with virtues for the benefit of mankind, bestowing him upon us and our descendants as a savior—he who put an end to war and will order peace, Caesar, who by his epiphany exceeded the hopes of those who prophesied good tidings [i.e. good news, gospel], not only outdoing benefactors of the past, but also allowing no hope of greater benefactions in the future; and since the birthday of the god first brought to the world the good tidings residing in him…For that reason, with good fortune and safety, the Greeks of Asia have decided that the New Year in all the cities should begin on 23rd September, the birthday of Augustus…and that the letter of the proconsul and the decree of Asia should be inscribed on a pillar of white marble, which is to be placed in the sacred precinct of Rome and Augustus.5

Augustus was the savior who ordered peace, and his epiphany brought good news for the whole world. Does any of that sound…familiar? The early followers of Jesus were not reinventing the wheel when they talked about him as Lord, savior, or the bringer of peace on earth. Far from it! They were adopting and co-opting the language of Roman Imperial theology, and by doing so they were also challenging the validity of the regime that ran their world.

Jesus or Caesar?

September 23, 63 BCE and the birth of Augustus had a direct impact on how the earliest followers of Jesus both understood and talked about the meaning of his life, death, and resurrection. By interpreting Jesus through the language and metaphors of Roman Imperial theology they were making bold and dangerous claims about Jesus and the Kingdom of God over and against Caesar and the Empire of Rome.

If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar isn’t.

If Jesus is savior, then Caesar can’t be.

If Jesus brings “good news,” then Caesar doesn’t.

If Jesus brought peace on earth, then Caesar’s peace is a sham.

The genius of this co-opting of language is that it exposes the key conflict between the Kingdom of God and the Empire of Rome.

Rome used violence to make and enforce peace—and a violent peace is no peace at all. Jesus embodied non-violence and enacted justice—a real peacemaking.

Caesar killed his way to peace; Jesus fed, healed, and feasted his way to peace.

Caesar killed his enemies; Jesus died as a nonviolent emissary of God’s Kingdom while forgiving his enemies.

The contrast between the two visions was clear then, and it is still clear now. The unfortunate, tragic irony is that far too often Jesus’s followers have been more attracted to the approach of Caesar than that of Jesus. That struggle continues today as we watch shocking numbers of Christians embrace the message and values of White Christian Nationalism and the MAGA movement, while rejecting the message and values embodied in the life, teaching, and death of Jesus.

For example, President Donald Trump, just this week, at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk said publicly and proudly:

“I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”

How can so many Christians look at Trump as some Christian hero, when he rejects the very teaching and example of Jesus that calls us to the difficult task of loving our enemies?

How can so many Christians support such unChristlike ideologies and agendas, such as those that are shaping our policy and practice as a country in this moment?

The sad truth is that many Christians prefer the vision of the Caesar born on September 23rd to that of the Christ whose birth is remembered on December 25th.

Dear friends, the path of Caesar cannot bring about a better world. It has been tried and it has failed again and again throughout our blood-soaked history as a species.

It is also possible that the Way of Jesus has never been tried—not really, anyway.

May we resist the urge toward empire, violence, and all it represents.

And, may we embrace the Kingdom vision of Jesus that makes for peace.

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By cherry-picking I am referring to the process by which we privilege and embrace certain texts over others. The typical Protestant Bible has 31,102 verses spread across 1,189 chapters in 66 books. Further, even though many Christians resist this idea, it’s a fact that some of those 31,102 do not all agree or say the same thing. Nor should they! The Bible isn’t univocal, meaning it doesn’t speak with one voice, but many. Scripture is a collection of texts that were written over roughly 1,000-1,200 years, composed by many authors (including several books that were the product of multiple writers), and produced in different historical contexts. Those different voices are often in tension and conversation with one another, which means the Bible is also complicated and it defies the desire many people have to have an outside authority tell them what to think and what to do. The Bible doesn’t do that. It comes with a responsibility that is incumbent on interpreters to make decisions—to cherry-pick—what passages and ideas will be normative and which won’t.

For example, some of the voices in Scripture imagined a future in which God would violently deal with their enemies, while others, in texts right alongside them, envisioned a future in which God would eventually renew, restore, and repair everything and everyone, regardless of their label.

How do we decide which passages to privilege and embrace, and which to reject and leave out of our theological understanding? Those are decisions we have to make. When people tell me they embrace all of Scripture, every jot and tittle, I understand that they are usually being sincere—they believe they can and do hold on to everything in Scripture. The problem is, you just can’t. The faith produced by such an idea would be so severely contradictory that it would collapse in on itself.

For example, are children responsible for the sins of their parents? According to the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, children are absolutely on the hook for their parents’ actions, for several generations. But later in Deuteronomy 24, Ezekiel 18, and Jeremiah 31 the authors of those texts say the opposite. In fact, Ezekiel and Jeremiah both say, and this is a paraphrase, “Y’all gotta stop saying ‘The parents eat sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge…everyone is responsible for their own sins.”

Both ideas are present in the Bible, but both can’t be normative for how we see the world. We have to decide, which means we have to cherry-pick. In truth cherry-picking is the ethical thing to do, because some things condoned and supported by Scripture, we now know, are just flat wrong. It’s wrong to own other human beings. It’s wrong to commit genocide, even if you’ve convinced yourself that it’s God’s will. It’s wrong to dash the children of your enemies on rocks. If my decades of wrestling with Scripture have taught me anything it’s this:

Just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t make it good theology.

Some parts of the Bible are actually working out bad theology. Some texts reflect a time and culture that we have thankfully left behind. Some passages, if we embrace and implement them, would put us at odds with the very character of God. That’s why the Bible is not just something we passively receive; it’s a responsibility we must steward seriously and well.

With all that in mind, the question becomes “How?” If we are all going to do it, liberals, conservatives, and everyone in between alike (and we are), then we must give attention to the way we practice our cherry-picking. How do we cherry-pick in a way that is faithful, ethical, healthy, and that creates a better world? I have a few thoughts from my own experience.

First, healthy cherry-picking means owning it up front. We don’t need to pretend that we are somehow able to hold every command, idea, text, or story in the Bible all at once. Let’s just name it and be honest: Everyone who engages Scripture cherry-picks.

Second, healthy cherry-picking acknowledges that the parts we don’t see as authoritative or normative are actually in the Bible. Years ago I was in a small group, and the conversation turned to the passage in 1 Timothy where the author (who claimed to be Paul, but almost certainly wasn’t. I like to call him ‘Faux Paul’) says that women should be silent in church. Someone asked what I thought about that, and I responded, “I know it’s in there, I just disagree.” Needless to say, that response elicited some surprised gasps in the room! However, my disagreement with Faux Paul in 1 Timothy is precisely because I agree with the real Paul in his authentic letters, in which he places women on equal footing with men in the Jesus community. In doing so I don’t ignore or pretend the 1 Timothy passage doesn’t exist. The fact of it’s existence is a reminder that the Bible is a library, books in a conversation, and we shouldn’t be surprised by disagreement between texts and authors.

Third, since we are going to cherry-pick, we should do so in context. The kind of cherry-picking many of us are familiar with often sees random verses of Scripture lifted out of context, and used to prove whatever point the cherry-picker wants to make. I am not advocating for that kind of practice at all, because it doesn’t take Scripture seriously enough. That approach can become a template for all sorts of terrible and terrifying beliefs and actions. When cherry-picking, context is always key. It’s not about finding a verse that supports what we want to say, after all. It’s about responsibly making decisions about how we interpret and apply Scripture. When we cherry-pick that includes doing our homework on the context, which helps ensure we aren’t just using the Bible to create a theological Frankenstein’s Monster that harms people. Instead, we can contextually make the case for why we choose one passage as normative, say Paul’s claim that men and women are equal in Galatians 3, instead of another, like 1 Timothy.

Finally, since we are going to cherry-pick, we should so so compassionately. The truth is the Bible often becomes a Rorschach test—you know, those ink blots that, when we say what we see in them, reveal something about us. The Bible is filled with texts that are universalist, compassionate, and restorative. There are also many texts that are exclusivist, harsh, and vindictive. Some Christians are drawn to the latter like a moth to the flame, and that is quite revealing. My aim, when cherry-picking, is to move toward compassion, because, according to Jesus, that is always a move toward God.

“Be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.” (Luke 6:36)

The good news is we can’t out-compassion God. So, when we encounter texts that call us away from compassion, whether toward others or ourselves, we have a responsibility to choose compassion. That is always a move toward God.

These posts are not exhaustive, but I hope they spark your thinking around these important issues of authority, interpretation, and how we responsibly interact with the Bible. Let me know in the comments what’d you’d add or on what you’d push back. If you find these posts helpful, please consider sharing them and subscribing so you don’t miss them in the future.

Thanks for reading!

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Last week we began this conversation by exploring the idea of biblical authority that is present among many Christians. As a reminder, that view sees the Bible as the inerrant and infallible Word of God which, as a result, is the full and final authority on all matters of faith and practice.

The TLDR: The Bible, because of where and Who it comes from (God), does our thinking and deciding for us.

The problems with this are myriad, but let me highlight three specific issues.

Even a cursory glance at the Bible reveals it do be, not the inerrant and infallible work of one source, but a complex library of many voices, perspectives, and ideas. Some would say that the Bible is filled with contradictions, but I don’t like that language because it assumes the perspective on inerrancy. No one walks into a public library and declares it to be useless because there are books that disagree with one another in the card catalogue. We expect different authors in different contexts and times to offer different perspectives, don’t we? I prefer to see the incongruencies of Scripture as conversations between our spiritual ancestors who wrote these texts. They are there, and they are important for us to recognize and wrestle with.

Further, as I mentioned in the previous installment of this series, the Bible must be interpreted. It is unavoidable. Just the other day I happened upon a social media post that read as follows: “The Bible is not up for interpretation.” This is wildly misinformed. It’s naive at best, and duplicitous at worst. The very moment we read a text and start talking about what it means, we are interpreting the Bible. So, whose interpretation is the right one? The inerrant, infallible one? Which of the more than 40,000 denominations has it correct? Usually, it’s the perspective of the person claiming such things that is privileged.

Finally, consigning all of our decision-making to the Bible is an abdication of responsibility.1 The Bible doesn’t offer a single vision, but differing ones, and that requires our participation and deciding. Is it better to beat swords into plowshares or plowshares into swords? Both visions are biblical, in that they are found in Scripture.2 We must play our own role, in company with the Spirit and community, to make decisions about what Scripture means and how we apply, or even reject, it’s visions for the world.

All this being considered, can the Bible still be authoritative for someone who doesn’t view it as the inerrant, infallible Word of God? I think so, but the source of the authority does shift.

If Scripture has authority it is not because it is inherent to Scripture itself, but because people give the Bible authority in their lives.

The authority of Scripture, the role of the Bible, is in the eye of the beholder. Here’s what I mean, practically. If a person or community decides that the Bible is a source of authority for how they think and show up in the world, then the Bible plays that role. For others, if Scripture is not viewed as an authority, then it isn’t. This is why Christians quoting Scripture at people who disagree with their interpretation is such a frustrating adventure in missing the point. You can quote verses at someone all day long, but if they don’t share your view and understanding of Scripture, then it makes no real meaningful difference, except for one that is potentially negative.

This is also true for intra-Christian dialogue. When someone quotes a passage that they’ve interpreted as being against women in pastoral ministry or that condemns the LGBTQ+ community, those references do not change my perspective one bit. I am well aware of those texts, and I’ve spent considerable time and effort to understand them in their context. But, as someone who rejects inerrancy and univocality (the idea that the Bible speaks with “one voice” on issues), I am comfortable with looking at a text and saying, “Yes, this does seem to say women should be silent in the church, but I disagree.” That is not only permissible, it’s part of our responsibility.

By the way, if someone chooses to make passages like 1 Timothy 2:11-12 that commands the silence of women in the church normative for their faith and practice, they are also rejecting other texts that affirm the calling and empowering of women to lead. Texts like Galatians 3:28, and many other references in both the authentic letters of Paul and the Gospels, dismantle the old hierarchies that gave power to certain groups over others.

I love the Bible. It looms large in my life. A friend of mine once said to me that she thinks “in Bible,” and I immediately resonated with that idea. In that way, the Bible is authoritative for me, in both my life and my ministry. But that also means I have a responsibility to engage the text in context, and to be honest about why I am privileging certain passages over others. We all do that. We all cherry-pick, and it’s important for us to name that and be honest about what leads us to give certain passages more of an influence and voice over our thinking and lives.

Next week we will wrap up by talking about this “Sacred Art of Cherry-Picking.”

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The Bible loomed large in my life during my formative years, and it still does. Perhaps even more so today than in the past. I have given my life to learning about, studying, and teaching the Bible. It’s not just a profession, it’s a passion. The ways in which Scripture has been warped and weaponized to harm others has further deepened my sense of urgency to help people read and interpret the Bible better. I also love taking the insights and discoveries of biblical scholarship and translating them into accessible language so that everyday Christians and congregations can engage with them more deeply.

Some of that work is creating content online that addresses doctrines and interpretations that I have come to believe distort and misunderstand what Scripture is and means. As you might imagine that work of reframing, reinterpreting, and reimagining what the Bible is and how it is understood inevitably elicits a lot of questions and even some very strong responses. One such question, or maybe even accusation, revolves around the idea of biblical authority. Specifically, some commenters will ask, “Do you believe the Bible is authoritative?” Or, in the form of accusation, “It’s clear that you don’t believe in the authority of Scripture!”

What does that mean, “the authority of Scripture?” From where does the Bible get its authority? That’s what I want to explore here, because I don’t think there are only two options available in response to the authority question.

For many Christians to say the Bible is authoritative means at least the following (and these are ideas and statements that I would have affirmed twenty-five years ago):

Scripture is the full and final authority on all matters of faith and practice.

• Scripture, because God is the ultimate author, is inerrant and infallible, without error and incapable of being wrong.

• That being the case, everything Scripture teaches is authoritative because it is “God’s Word.” Christians are called to submit to all of Scripture, not just the parts they find appealing.

• When Scripture conflicts with other authorities—such as church tradition, personal experience, culture, science, or human reason—Scripture has the last word.

• Scripture contains everything necessary for knowing God, salvation, and faithful Christian living. It doesn’t answer every possible question (e.g., how to perform heart surgery or build a computer), but it is sufficient for its intended purpose.

Essentially, the idea of the “authority of Scripture” from this perspective means that Scripture decides for us. It tells us what to think, how to behave, what to embrace, and what to reject. It doesn’t matter how our understanding has changed or evolved since these texts were written; what matters is what the words, inspired or dictated (depending on who you’re talking to) by God, say.

I’m sure it is clear that I reject that claim of biblical authority, for several reasons. Let me briefly share two of them.

First, the Bible is not inerrant. Sometimes it gets things wrong: historically, geographically, scientifically, you get the picture. It just does. Readers who hold to inerrancy have to do untold gymnastics to make it all line up and say the same thing, which is why stretching before reading the Bible will help you not pull a muscle.

Here’s the thing, though; I don’t think a Bible with errors is a problem. Rather than reflecting some objectively Divine perspective, the Bible offers us glimpses into our spiritual ancestors and how they learned, grew, and changed their minds on their journeys with God. We get to see them, warts and all, as they tried to do exactly what we are doing today in our own time: Seeking to know God and be transformed by that relationship.

While I reject inerrancy, I don’t tend to call those incongruencies we find in Scripture “contradictions,” because that assumes the Bible should be inerrant. I like to call them conversations, because that’s what they really are. In the Bible, over time, we find authors in conversation with one another, and we become part of that process as readers and interpreters. For example, the Book of Ruth is a direct, parabolic response to the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. Those reforms were about keeping the community separate from outsiders, while the story of Ruth warns that doing that could have disastrous consequences.1

Calling those disagreements “contradictions” is playing by the rules of inerrancy, and it ultimately causes us to miss how complex, interesting, and challenging Scripture really is.

Second, even if you allow for the idea of inerrancy, the Bible still must be interpreted. No one, not me, you, our pastors or our grandparents can talk about what the Bible means without engaging in the act of interpretation. When we discern meaning and seek to apply it, we are firmly in the realm of interpretation. Another word for that is opinion. No matter how much we want to say, “I’m not giving you my opinion, I’m just telling you what the Bible says,” that just isn’t reality. To put it more succinctly, the Bible doesn’t SAY anything. The Bible READS, and we make it say the moment we begin to speak of meaning.

Since this is the case, the argument being made for the authority of Scripture is really not about the authority of Scripture as much as it is about someone’s interpretation of Scripture being their authority. It’s not the text itself, it’s their understanding of the text that guides them. And, to be sure, that fact doesn’t make us disingenuous or deceptive by default. Objectivity, after all, is not available to subjective creatures. What is disingenuous and deceptive is claiming the opposite—that we are just presenting the objective facts, the unvarnished truth. We don’t tell anything as it is, as much as we tell it as we are and how we see it.

The question all of this raises for me is this:
Is Scriptural authority an all or nothing proposition?2

Does rejecting this specific idea of Scriptural authority mean that the only other option is setting the Bible aside, seeing it as a bunch of Iron Age myths and superstitions? If the Bible isn’t inerrant and infallible, does that mean it’s useless and not worth our time? If God isn’t the author, can the Bible still be called “inspired”? Can one reject the ideas about authority presented above and STILL see Scripture as having an authority of some kind?

We’ll explore that in next week’s post!

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The Bible is not univocal; it does not speak with only one voice, but many. Within Scripture we find differing visions for the world, often existing in tension with one another. Our responsibility is not to ignore or gloss over those tensions, but to wrestle with them honestly in an attempt to discern which vision most clearly reflects the heart of God and leads toward justice, compassion, and human flourishing for all people.

For more on this, check out this short video.

If you found this post helpful or interesting, please interact with it in some way—comment, like, and/or share.

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Thanks for your patience in waiting for regular content here. I’ve been writing away on my next book, and I’m so excited to share that it is now available for preorder!

The title of this release is Advent Can Still Change the World: Bringing Christmas Past into Christmas Present. Here’s the description from the publisher:

Christmas is a global celebration wrapped in nostalgia and tradition. The movies we return to each year, the carols we know by heart, and the rituals we repeat connect us to Christmases past and to one another. Yet beneath these familiar layers lies a story rooted in real life, unfolding in a specific time and place. To experience the enduring power of the Christmas story today, we must first understand what it meant then before we can discern what this sacred story offers our own moment. Guided by Josh Scott, you’ll discover how reading these texts in their original context opens fresh meaning for contemporary faith, illuminating the gifts and challenges of Christmas for our lives today.

I’m also excited to share that each book comes with a code that will give readers access to the videos and leader guide content we’re creating to support the book, too.

Preorders are one of the best ways to support a book as it comes to launch, so if you’re interested in reserving your copy, you can visit one of the links below. Thanks so much for the support and encouragement you share with me! It means the world to get to do this work!

Amazon
Cokesbury

I’m working on a post for later this week that focuses on what I like to call, The Sacred Art of Cherry-Picking. Until then, have a great week!

JS

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Last Sunday at GracePointe Church I offered a sermon that introduces Ash Wednesday and Lent—when they began, how they have been understood, etc.—and that seeks to reimagine them in a way that embraces their gifts but also employs a pro-human lens.

If you struggle with this day and this season, if you’ve wondered if there’s still any meaning to be found in it, and/or if you’d like to find a way to reimagine them so that they are not anti-human, then you just might find this sermon helpful. You will find the links to the sermon, as well as a previous Ash Wednesday post I shared here on Substack, below. I hope it’s helpful!

Sermon: An Introduction to Lent and Ash Wednesday

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Article: Some Good News for Ash Wednesday

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Text: Luke 2:1-20

One of the lessons you learn very quickly as a parent is that the birth of a child isn’t the end of the work. In fact, it’s only the beginning.

The same is true of Advent and Christmas.

Christmas isn’t a conclusion, but a new chapter in an unfolding story that we are still living out today. As we revisit these familiar stories each year we are not only watching the characters in the story as they play their part, but we are also trying to find our role in the story. How are we being invited to continue the spirit and work of this story in new and fresh ways today?

Let’s conclude our time by listening to the words of a poem by theologian and civil rights activist Howard Thurman that beautifully sums up this idea. The poem is called The Work of Christmas, and I hope it might be a reminder of the task that is in front of us after this season is over.

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.

Reflection:
How will you participate in the continued work of Christmas after this season is over?

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Happy Christmas Eve, friends!

Many of us have been taught that the goal of the Christian faith is to help us overcome—to save us from—our humanity. After all, isn’t that our problem? We even use our humanity as an explanation for the moments we fall short, don’t we? When we mess up, we often say, “I’m only human,” and we all know what it means: Don’t expect too much. Put the bar low, and we humans will find a way to slither under it. The picture painted in our Scriptures couldn’t be farther from that understanding.

The story of the Bible begins with God making humans to bear Their image to the rest of creation. We are a combination of soil and spirit, and God called that mingling of earth and divinity “good.” Nothing has ever changed that. The truth is, in our worst and weakest moments it is not our humanity that is the problem. Our biggest challenge is that we, far too often, live beneath our good humanity. When we live together in subhuman ways we end up with the violence, greed, and bigotry that have so marred God’s good world. To put it succinctly, being human is so good that God joined in on the party. That is part of the meaning of the Incarnation, and it didn’t just begin with Jesus. God has always partnered and collaborated with humans to move creation forward. Yes, we are the source of our problems, but we are also the source of the solutions to our problems.

That is essentially the argument Paul is making in Romans 5. He argues that through Adam, a human, sin and death entered the story, but it is also through a human, Jesus, that sin and death are defeated.¹ We have big human-created challenges, and God has decided that we will also be the remedy to those challenges.

Advent calls us to that responsibility, to taking seriously our role in the healing and repair of creation. May we embrace this invitation, this calling, to join God and one another in the work of bringing much needed justice and renewal to creation.

Reflection:
How does the idea that we are the human solution to our human problems strike you?
What does it mean for our understanding of the Jesus story?
What does it mean for our understanding of the human story?

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Text: Galatians 4:4-5

Paul is the first written witness we have to the life of Jesus. That is a fact that often surprises many readers of Scripture. The assumption is that, since the Gospels are first in the order of the New Testament and they also narrate some of the events/sayings/actions of Jesus, the four Gospels must have been written first. That is not the reality of our sources. Mark was the first Gospel to be written, sometime around the year 70 CE, or roughly four decades after the life of Jesus. Paul wrote his authentic letters that we have between the late 40s and early 60s CE, or roughly twenty to thirty years after Jesus’s life.

I bring all this up because our earliest source, Paul, doesn’t seem to focus on the birth of Jesus as a miraculous event, like the Gospels of Matthew and Luke several decades later. Instead, Paul says only a few things about Jesus’s origins:

1. Jesus was born of a woman. (Galatians 4:4)

2. Jesus was born under the Law (Galatians 4:4)

3. Jesus was a descendant of David (Romans 1:3)

Nothing spectacular, really. If you boil it down, the totality of Paul’s claims about Jesus’s birth are that he was born like all humans are born, that he was Jewish, and that he descended from David’s family tree.

These are the earliest claims about Jesus’s origins…and I absolutely love it!

Jesus was not a superman invading earth from somewhere else, on a mission from God.

Jesus was one of us—human like us, born like us.

That means what he did, what he taught, and how he lived are not beyond our reach. The vision of the world that energized his work can also energize ours. The love that he embodied is also the same love we can embody.

If it means anything, the Incarnation means that God can best be known and experienced in the flesh, blood, bone, joy, grief, hope, and possibility of humanity. We truly bear God’s image.

The earliest “Christmas” message seems to have been that Jesus was one of us, and that we can be like him. Now that, my friends, is some good news!

Reflection:
If our earliest witness (Paul) emphasized Jesus’s shared humanity more than his miraculous origins, how does that reshape what it means to follow him—not just believe in him?

Where in your own flesh-and-blood life (your work, relationships, limits, griefs, or hopes) might God be known and experienced right now?

What changes if the “good news” of the Incarnation is less about Jesus being unlike us and more about how deeply he was connected to us and our experience?

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We are now in the final days of Advent, and the theme we reflect on as we approach Christmas is love. As we begin this week I can’t help but think about a photo I took several years ago. It was around Christmas, and I was leaving a store in a mad rush when I happened to look down. At the spot where the concrete store entrance met the pavement of the parking lot, I saw a pothole, but it looked as if someone had created this divot almost intentionally.

The mini-crater was in the shape of a heart.

Since it was the appropriate season, I immediately thought about the opening monologue of one of my annual must-watch Christmas movies, Love Actually. This voiceover, with scenes of airport reunions playing on screen, is done in-character by Hugh Grant, who played the British Prime Minister, David:

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling love, actually … is all around.”

He’s got a point. While hate and greed, and all sorts of other unfortunate things, seem to exist in abundance these days, I really believe that love does, too. Perhaps it goes unnoticed at times, lost in the cacophony of hatefulness that gets most of the attention, but love is, actually, all around us.

My hope for all of us, in this season and beyond, is that we can become attuned to the love that is all around us, all the time, and do our part to make it grow and flourish.

Reflection:
Where have you noticed love unexpectedly or surprisingly?
How can you participate in making love more visible?

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Text: Isaiah 9:2

Today is the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest day of the year. Since June 20th this year each passing day has progressively gotten shorter. After today, all that changes. Tomorrow the light begins to grow again. The days lengthen. Even as winter seeks to tighten its icy grip on us, creation begins to fight back.

That is the very heartbeat of Advent and Christmas. In the midst of the darkness of despair, violence, fear, and oppression of this moment Advent insists that the light of hope, peace, joy, and love is still burning, even if it seems faint and flickering. Our work, together, is to fan that flame so that it grows and illuminates our way to a more just and generous world.

Reflection:
How do you see the light of hope, peace, joy, and love flickering in this moment?
How can we help that light burn more brightly?

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As the “Joy week” of Advent comes to a close, take some time today to intentionally look for joy around you. When you notice it, perhaps take a moment to respond to it by writing a reflection, offering a prayer of gratitude, or even just by taking a few deep breaths and allowing this reminder to help carry you through the remainder of this busy, hectic season:

Joy is all around us waiting to be noticed, appreciated, and shared.

Reflection:
How/Where are you finding joy in this season?

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Read: Isaiah 11:1-9

The memory of David haunted Judah. That was especially, acutely felt after they returned home from the Exile in Babylon and were passed around from one empire to another for most of the next five hundred years. When would God fulfill Their promise to David, that there would always be one of his descendants on the throne of Judah?

Some two hundred years before the Exile happened the prophet Isaiah offered a gloomy picture of Jerusalem’s fate, but he also cast a hopeful vision of a people not forgotten.¹ The image of doom was that of Judah, depicted as a majestic, tall tree, being chopped down by God in judgement. The following hope was that of new growth—a shoot emerging from the lopped off stump. God would reignite the Davidic line, but where David and his descendants had largely failed to uphold justice, this future David would act righteously on behalf of the poor. He would finally usher in the peace they so desperately longed for, both internally and externally.

In the Gospels, Jesus is associated with this image of a new, but different, David. In both Paul and the Gospels Jesus is called “son of David,” meaning he was both descended from the line of David, and that he was the rightful Davidic heir. Jesus would not, however, use David’s methods. Instead, his way of being the rightful Davidic king would be to pursue justice through nonviolent peacemaking. It’s no wonder that his followers read texts like Isaiah 11 and applied them to their growing understanding of Jesus. For them experiencing Jesus made texts like this one come alive in new and transformative ways.

Christians, especially in America at this moment, are being asked to choose which image of Jesus we will embrace as normative and true. Will we follow the path of Christian Nationalism that prefers violent, forceful images of Jesus? That Jesus has little compassion for the poor, oppressed, or marginalized. Or will we embrace the Jesus who makes peace through justice? The one so filled with compassion that he fed the multitudes, healed the sick, and pulled the excluded and lonely close. This is one of the critical choices that we must make, one that will shape the future of Christianity (and perhaps the world) for better or worse.

Reflection:
What image or vision of Jesus do you find most compelling?

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Text: Luke 2:19

When you think about joy what comes to mind? I’d venture to guess that our default ideas about joy involve laughter, high energy, and, to use a technical term, a happy-clappy vibe.

That is one way to experience joy, but it’s not the only way. Sometimes joy is expressed in a quiet, reflective gratitude. That’s what we see in Mary’s response to the shepherd’s visit. Unlike the angels that filled the night sky with celebration and high volume, Mary’s joy is the kind a parent knows when someone sees and acknowledges the gift that is their child.

There is a kind of joy that isn’t loud and exuberant, but is, instead, thoughtful and grateful. Both can exist at the same time, and both are gifts. The joy that comes from gratitude and reflection can offer us a groundedness that empowers us to keep moving forward. May we all take moments, as frequent or rare as they may be, to embrace this kind of grateful joy during this season.

Reflection:
What are some of the grounded and grateful opportunities to experience joy in your life during this season of Advent?
How does paying attention to them shape our experience?
How are gratitude and joy connected for you?

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Text: Luke 2:8-20

Do you ever feel guilty about feeling joy? Especially in light of the suffering and pain of the world, how can we possibly feel good about experiencing joy when the everything is, well, a mess?

Enter the brilliance of the poet Mary Oliver. In her poem Don’t Hesitate she both names this pervasive sense of guilt we can feel over experiencing joy, and calls us to embrace the gift of joy when it comes to us. She writes,

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be…

But wait, isn’t that why we should suppress our joy? Not so fast. Later in the poem she connects the experience of joy to a kind of resistance.

…Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world…

This idea of joy as a kind of resistance can be found right in the middle of the Christmas stories. The angels appear to some shepherds and announce good news of great joy—complete with an enthusiastic, celebratory song—in the middle of the night, and more importantly, in the context of the Roman oppression of the people of Judea. The angels nor the shepherds hedged or muted their joy. The angels filled the night sky with song, and the shepherds returned from visiting the Holy Family joyfully praising God for the experience.

Joy is a way of resisting the cynicism, despair, and resignation that the powers that be count on to limit our capacity to push back against their plans to carve up the world unjustly. And, according to Mary Oliver, joy is not to be feared or avoided, but taken in and embraced with both arms:

“…whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

Reflection:
When is the last time you felt joy?
Have you ever felt guilty about feeling joy?
How can experiencing joy be an act of faithful resistance in your life?

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