The Social Jesus Podcast

Luke 4:1-13 The current political environment in the U.S. has given us a different lens to read Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness through as this text, once again, rolls by in the lectionary. Presently we are witnessing the rise of authoritarianism, nationalism, and the weakening of and some feel the fall of democracy in our own society. The politics of the gospel call us to

Luke 9:28-36 We are living in a time when systemic protections for the vulnerable among us are being dismantled. Collective sustaining aid is being slashed or terminated every day. All of this channels more money away from the common wealth of the people into the pockets of privileged, propertied, and powerful wealthy billionaires. What does it mean for us as we leave the Christia

Luke 6:27-38 “Pam McAllister expressed the tension well as she explain the teachings of Barbara Deming: ‘Barbara wrote about the two hands of nonviolence . . . With one hand we say to one who is angry, or to an oppressor, or to an unjust system, ‘Stop what you are doing. I refuse to honor the role you are choosing to play. I refuse to obey you. I refuse to cooperate with you

Luke 6:17-26 “Rather than the gospel being universal good news, the first shall be last and the last shall be first sounds quite the opposite. The equity that the sermon on the plain envisions is a world where there are no more losers and survival comes through our working together. Luke's gospel is for the underprivileged, longing for things to be put right, those present power

Luke 5:1-11 “Fishing never works out well for the fish! and fishing for people instead doesn’t fix that. The examples in Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezekiel, give Jesus’ call to the disciples a very different social and political context of justice. In this story, Jesus is inviting these working class folk take up the justice work spoken of by the Hebrew prophets, to take up fishing

Luke 4:22-30 “Today we need to pay close attention to responses that answer justice and reparations movements with rage and responses that define these movements as good news. This week’s story reminds me that if at times I feel like throwing the Jesus of the synoptic gospels off a cliff, I’m in the right story! I’m being confronted with the discomforting truth of why we t

Luke 4:14-21 “Poverty is an indictment of the system it exists in, because that system creates and allows for poverty. A system of winners and losers will always have those who lose. But in Jesus’ new social order, everyone has enough to thrive. In our reading, Jesus’ gospel doesn’t just end with the poor. It also includes freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, libera

John 2:1-11 “I like the image of turning water into wine. It reminds me of the saying in the womanist tradition of making a way out of no way. The story asks us to focus on the present, to do all we can in the moments we have before us. What had transpired in the story was a crisis: running out of wine at a wedding feast. And what ended up happening was better: wine being drank

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 “Establishing justice on Earth is the result of the Spirit. In our reading, that Spirit descends in the bodily form of a dove, which many today take as the symbol of peace arrived at because universal distributive justice has been established. At the core of Jesus’ message, the heart of Christianity, is the call to love our neighbor. And loving one’s neig

Luke 2:41-52 “Any Christian teaching, action, or movement that disparages, discourages or prevents adherents from caring about social justice rejects Jesus’ central wisdom and teachings on loving one’s neighbors. Any form of Christianity that inhibits your pursuit and practice of social justice denies the central tenet of the gospel that the Jesus of the stories taught, for