Let's talk about an item I find a lot of salvation in: the miracle of a perfect chocolate chip cookie. She goes through a lot of varieties: room temperature vs. chilled vs. frozen dough, bread flour or cake flour or toasted flour or buckwheat flour, adding milk powder or espresso powder or browned butter, how much you mix the dough, how chewy the cookie should be, chocolate chips or chunks, milk or dark.

Her findings for the perfect cookie: "Cream the butter and sugar forever, add multiple types and textures of chocolate and buckwheat, brown the butter with milk powder, and add a tangzhong for plush chew.”

It's a lot of work, so I will stick to my foolproof plan: see if Leslie Moore has made any recently (she makes the greatest chocolate chip cookie).

But here's what I love about this cookbook, and why I keep coming back to it: it refuses to assume the first way you learned to do something is the best way. It looks at all the possibilities, all the potential hiding inside a recipe you thought you already knew. It is a reminder that there are so many ways to do things, that variety is a gift, that getting stuck in routine is its own kind of loss, and that there is real brilliance in being willing to try buckwheat flour when all-purpose has always been fine.

I think our relationship with God works the same way.

We don't talk enough about spending time with God, giving time to God, and setting aside time for God. Part of that might be because we were taught that "quiet times" looked a certain way: you read the Bible, you prayed, and you sat in silence. It's a fine recipe. It works for a lot of people. But for others of us, it gets dull, and we quietly stop making the cookies altogether. (Is there anyone else in your life you only communicate with one specific way at one specific time of day?)

What if we approached our life with God the way Ella approaches a chocolate chip cookie? Willing to experiment, curious about what we might be missing, open to the possibility that the version we learned first is not the only version, and maybe not even the best one for us?

I think we need to embrace the variety of religious experiences (stealing a phrase from William James, who knew something about this) and see all the potential and possibilities: lectio divina, reading a whole book of the Bible from start to finish instead of skipping around, the daily lectionary readings which prepare us for Sunday, spiritual writings and books, poetry, silence, walking and praying, getting outside to pray, praying the Psalms, praying by drawing, spiritual journaling, using Rex Foster's Stations of the Heart cards, writing poetry... and that is just the start of the list.

What's your tangzhong? What's the thing that makes your prayer life plush and alive, that you maybe haven't tried yet or gave up on too quickly? I don't know what it is for you. But I think it's worth finding out.

The Helen and Jack Goodman Library has recently added a new book: Rev. Dr. Margaret Isutzu’s Making the World Safe for Sorrow (Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2026). This book builds on Rev. Isutzu's time in Japan as she guides the reader through Japanese memorial customs rooted in a commingling of Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions. Arguing that Americans have a fundamental lack of understanding about grief, she offers new ways to think about it by utilizing contemplative practices that help us have a fuller understanding of Christian precepts that focus on memorializing, building community, and cultivating relationships. Significantly she asserts, “If you have struggled with what to say to a grieving friend…or agonized over the feelings you yourself have in grief…or wondered if you’re going crazy…this book is for you” (p. 12). The rituals she discusses can help free “participants from stuck places that had hung them up in their attempt to fully grieve their losses” (p. 117).

Dr. Eileen Lundy adds: Readers are in for a rich and rewarding exploration of meditation, contemplation, enlightenment, becoming a living Buddha.  With Rev. Isutzu’s own humility in offering her path into understanding and practice of these ways, she leads the reader in. This is a valuable contribution to works on grief, but it is more. It is a valuable book on paths through which readers may follow a lead into more compassionate lives.

The Summer of Our Discontent

[This document comes from an oral manuscript.]

Our God, we ask that you take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing reality we can all together experience by the power of your Holy Spirit, who is here among us. Make us aware of that presence here in this space and in these words, God, for if we are aware of your being here, then nothing else will matter, but if we are not aware of you being here, then nothing else will matter. Amen and Amen.

The Story of Jesus:

I don’t know about you, but after hearing our Old Testament story read, I feel a little bit lost right now… Lost, not metaphorically and spiritually (like normal), but as in, I don’t know my place in this story, like starting in the wrong place and being confused as to what is going on; starting a book in the middle chapters. Lost as in, what’s going on here? Lost as in, watching a great TV series that everyone is talking about, but starting with the episode that answers the cliff hanger from last season, and you are so lost…. 

Shouldn’t a high school math teacher cooking meth be the villain? 
Why is a mob boss in therapy? 
I thought this show was about hockey?
Why is everyone at this hotel on their worst behavior in such a beautiful space? 
But Ross and Rachel were on a break?
Why is everyone stranded on an island, and why are there monsters on this island? 
Who shot JR?

That type of “lost” is how I feel in the text that Jo Ann just read. I have so many questions:

Who is Abram, and why is he suddenly in charge of everything?
Have the Lord and Abram been in regular conversation for some time now? Are they chummy like this? Is an afternoon tea time with the Lord a regular thing?
What did God sound like to Abram? What does God look like? 
Why did the Lord choose Abram? 
What exactly is wrong with things the way they are that makes Abram have to leave everything? And not in theological terms, honestly, I am looking for the gossip here.
Why would the Lord choose a new plan with a 75-year-old, someone who is what Anne Lamott calls “medium old?”
Why does Lot get to go? Actually, let’s take a step back: who is Lot? 
Did Abram try to get his whole family to go, and they all said no, because if so, I need more background on that dysfunction. 
Why all this talk about a future for a couple who have no kids, and she is way past menopause? Has something major changed about having babies?
Really, what’s going on here?

There are so many questions.

And then the biggest of all, we have just finished reading Genesis 1-11, which is a really big story (creation, flood, Tower of Babel). We have just finished reading a Stephen Spielberg-type action movie with God as the main character, and now suddenly we are in a small town with someone no one knows, and instead of God continuing to do it all by Godself, suddenly God needs a helper, and God is going to choose a person, a human being, to be a key part in all of this…. Why? 

I feel like the streaming service we are watching might have skipped from what should have been the next episode of that series to a whole new show. Our main character seems to have flipped, and it’s not even the same cast, not even the same lighting. I am not even sure I like this new show. I think I prefer when God has all the verbs, not when God trusts us with them. I know people, humans, and that seems like this plan could go sideways really quickly. 

And if God is insistent on trusting us with even some of the verbs… how about, well, not Abram… how about a young guy and gal with more life in front of them than in the rear view mirror? 

God’s ways are not our ways, a critical lesson in the entirety of Scripture that we better learn right away, or we are going to spend a lot of this story scratching our heads and asking “Why” and “Really, what’s going on here?” 

God’s ways are not our ways, which is exactly how we end up with Abram… who, trust me, go back and read Genesis 1-11, he is not there. There has been this whole grand big production that has taken up the entire stage, and now the spotlight is on this one guy who appears out of nowhere, and we have moved from a big summer blockbuster movie to what feels like an independent film. 

I have studied the story this week, looking for clues, looking for answers to at least one of my many questions, and all I have come up with is this: God needed someone who could see things were not okay as they were and someone who would be brave enough to try something new. 

It’s another lesson we need to get ready for over and over in our story… God needs people brave enough to see that the status quo is often lacking and brave enough to do something about it. God needs someone with better vision, someone who can see how things could be, and then someone with the courage to actually make it happen. 

Redemption requires good vision and a strong backbone. Redemption begins with a God who promises to do what is impossible. Redemption begins with someone brave enough to know that and to set out on a journey. Redemption begins with a life based on the story of God alone. 

Something is happening that has Abram feeling the discomfort of discontent, and instead of doing what I do when I am discontent – fried chicken tacos, Netflix, novels, running, yoga, mowing the grass, just numbing it to avoid it – Abram refuses to numb it or ignore it; he is brave enough to go into his discontent and see what he can do about it.

“This does not feel right. Something is off. I have to do something different.”

To hold the spirituality of listening to discontent as an invitation, things are not the way they are supposed to be or that you want things to be – well, change them. 

In her new book, Kate Bowler talks about a final counseling session with a therapist who was retiring. At her last session, she was lamenting the state of her life and trying to figure things out. Tired of just not saying it, Kate finally said: “I just wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing next.”

Her therapist replied, “Is there something you would like to stop doing first?” 

The call to something new and true often is first a call to stop what is not life-giving to you right now.

Which is a different type of feeling lost, this is that spiritual “lost”: the dark night of the soul, the eternal waiting room. It’s that space where we ask the questions that we can be really scared even to voice aloud. 

What if I don’t like my job anymore? I know I need the salary, but what happens to my soul if I give my life to a job I don’t like? 
What if things with God are not where I want them to be? How do I even say that I feel spiritually lonely and lost? 
What happens if I worked so hard for this life, and suddenly this life does not fit me? 
What if this is not everything I dreamed of? 
What if everything I dreamed of is not enough? 
Is this still love? Was it ever love?
Is this the right church for me? The right city? The right house? 
What happened to the person I used to be? 
What if I am not enough? 

And there are universal questions as well….

Is this how we want life to look?
Is this the world we want to pass on to our kids?
Does this feel like what God dreamed for us? 
What if it’s not enough? 

What if our discontent is the very voice of God calling us to more? We must be brave enough to realize that changing it is up to us because God is sharing the verbs with us now. Sometimes the “go” does not start with what is next, but with what must be stopped or changed; it’s noticing that which should be no more. 

As Abram and Sarai teach us, it’s never too late to start something new. 

Amen and Amen. 

The Story About Jesus:

I imagine Jesus heard about Abram often; Abram/Abraham makes up a lot of this first book, and he was probably one of the original Avengers for the kids in Jesus’ day. He’s a hero. I imagine this story of his calling was read in the synagogue, and I am certain it’s a story that Mary told Jesus at night, a bedtime story of sorts.

“Abram knew things were not as they should be and that God wanted to do something big and new and impossible, and Abram was brave enough to help lead it, to get us here.” 

Sure, it was a story, but more than that, Mary was giving Jesus an identity. This was part of his blueprint – to see that the way things were was not enough and to be brave enough to start something new. It’s what she always knew about her boy: this was his purpose. So she told him this story often and pointed out how brave Abram was, and then just as Jesus nodded off, I think she told him, “Jesus, you know we need more in our world, be brave… get us there.”

This story of being called out, sent out to new, entrusting yourself to a promise you can’t see, being and living a life of blessing for others, abiding in truth, living in freedom. 

This story certainly shaped Jesus. He knew it. 

Which is why he gets a bit defensive here in John 8…. 

31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

33 They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

34 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”

39 “Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. 

40 As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. 41 You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. 43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 

What I hear Jesus saying…. “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be part of this new thing… You would be so tired of how broken things are and how stuck we are and how nothing is how it should be, and you would be doing whatever brave thing it took to break the status quo and get us back to where God wants us to be.” 

This should wake us up… 

Are we descendants of Abraham and Jesus? Are we willing to be part of the new thing God is doing? Let’s sit with that for a minute this morning and let the Spirit lead us. 

*art: Living as a Pilgrim by Shai Azoulay

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a student at a nearby university who needed help on a project related to Revelation 13, in particular, the imagery of the ten-horned beast. Maybe this is not a normal work email for you? It is for me, and it happens every spring, which makes me think it's part of a class assignment. I can't imagine that many college students are too concerned with the ten-horned beast in the 13th chapter of Revelation.

What did it mean?

I went through my usual response to questions like this:

First Austin is a true Baptist church, so we don't hold a consistent hermeneutic (a fancy way of saying a way of reading Scripture), but we rely on the priesthood of the believer, so different folks at First Austin would interpret this differently.

Our consistency is reading Scripture "through the lens of Jesus Christ." We interpret all Scripture through Jesus' eyes, which (and this is important for our current sermon series) means we see them like Jesus saw them, so not reading Jesus into the Old Testament stories but letting them form us as they formed him.

When it comes to Revelation, I am really a non-literalist. I think it made way more sense to the original readers (I think all Scripture made sense to the first audience... we know the difference between a booty call and a butt dial, but folks in 100 years might not). I hold a realized eschatology (a fancy way of saying the end-times stuff is not a future thing we are waiting for, but a Kingdom Jesus started and wants us to finish building).

Usually, this is where my brief insight into how I read, interpret, and understand Scripture ends.

This year, I added a 4th point, one I had heard in a recent interview with North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, in which he talked about his issue with politics today and said, "I don't like using absolute words for complex things.”

It is certainly a valid political response today. Imagine if all our politicians followed that rule and spoke with that grace, complexity, and humility.

But there is a lesson for the church, too. We often use absolute words for complex things. Just think about how you answer faith questions. Who is God? What is Scripture? How do I pray? What is right or wrong?

I think we use more absolute words than we realize, and I am trying to watch it.

It reminds me of two of my favorite writers and their thoughts on theology and our language:

Frederick Buechner writes, "Theology is the study of God and God's ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study us and our ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.”

And Annie Dillard writes, "Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."

May we hold our faith with humility like that. Then it may continue to call us and make us curious.

A Better Approach
By Rev. Dr. Griff Martin
A Lesson for the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
May 31, 2026

[This document comes from an oral manuscript.]

Our God, we ask that you take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing reality we can all together experience by the power of your Holy Spirit, who is here among us. Make us aware of that presence here in this space and in these words, God, for if we are aware of your being here, then nothing else will matter, but if we are not aware of you being here, then nothing else will matter. Amen and Amen.

During his wilderness exam, Jesus quotes the Old Testament from memory 3 times to pass the tests. His first sermon is based on Isaiah 61, and he quotes that text extensively (“the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”). When asked for the greatest verse of all time, Jesus refers to the Shema, a verse he quoted daily as a spiritual practice. ("Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”). He debates the meaning of Torah texts with the priest and religious leaders. He frames a lot of conversations around the Old Testament using the refrain “you have heard it said, but I say.” One of his final words from the Cross is a Psalm (“My God, My God”). On the Road to Emmaus, Jesus converses with the folks, and it says, "Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” 

Jesus held the Old Testament as fully authoritative – the law, the prophets, and the writings were all deeply important in his theology and spiritual formation. The Old Testament was his spiritual formation, so why did we stop reading it like he did? 

What happens when we spend time in the book that formed Jesus? How would it form us? 

One of my favorite small groups I have ever taught was teaching the life of David with a friend of mine, Gerald Holtzman, who was a devout Jew. His wife was very active in the baptist church, and he came to support her and was very active with us, deeply intelligent, brilliant sense of humor, and a willingness to teach an Old Testament class with me, but he made one rule: “You can’t rely on the pocket part.” 

Gerald was a lawyer, so he explained this term, “pocket part." Lawyers have historically relied on heavy and expensive bound legal volumes – think of a law library. These books are expensive, so once you buy one, it’s an investment. To honor that, as laws are updated and reinterpreted, the publisher would send out this new information as pocket parts that you would put in the back of the book so as not to have to replace these volumes all that often. Gerald said that when it came to the Bible, I relied too heavily on the pocket part (the New Testament) and needed to focus on the original text.  

It’s a uniquely Christian problem and one we have had for a while. In the second century, the church father Marcion suggested we should get rid of the Old Testament to focus only on the life of Christ. He was declared a heretic, but the good heresies linger and stay with us. In practice, we have not gotten rid of the Old Testament, but we have made its lessons largely exclusive to children’s Sunday school classes, and then we outgrow them. I am guilty of this. Give me the 4 lectionary texts, and a huge percentage of the time, I go with the Gospel text. 

This summer, as we celebrate our Semiquincentennial (250 years as a country), we will hear a lot about the founding of this country and our founding documents (which all deserve a true reading and a more faithful following). In turn, I thought it made a lot of sense for us as a church to spend the summer following the Old Testament continuous lectionary cycle and study our founding document, the Torah, particularly Genesis and Exodus. They, too, deserve a truer reading and a more faithful following. 

Our story does not start with a young girl named Mary who says “yes” to Jesus… our story goes back further, “in the beginning,” and to Abram and Sarai who say “yes” to a new future. It’s the Old Testament: a title that can be problematic for some. I am okay with the term as long as we realize “old” does not mean “antiquated.” Think “first,” not “outdated.”  

When it comes to this sacred book, I think we have some major work to do in order to read it properly. Often, we read it looking for corrections or places to point out and make our faith look better (a good rule: if we have to make another faith look bad to make our faith look better, we are doing something wrong). There are some better approaches for us when it comes to reading the Old Testament faithfully; some views and ideas we need to let go of, and find a more faithful approach. So in a very un-me sermon, I want to suggest 6 ways we might read the Old Testament better – views we need to rethink:

1) The Old Testament is a very violent and scary book. 

God drowns everyone in a flood and drowns a lot of people at the Red Sea. The plagues are a horror movie. Too many times. God commands folks to slaughter people. The Old Testament is violent and awful. 

Really? Have you read the New Testament and the wars, famine, death, cosmic destruction, the slaughter of a huge segment of people by those who are power-drunk on the blood of the faithful, a wild beast from a nightmare, a lake of fire, and the Battle of Armageddon? Y’all, the most violent and the lengthiest episode of violence and fear comes from the New Testament, from the Book of Revelation. 

If the Old Testament is too violent and scary, well, don’t even try to read the final book. And that does not mention the Slaughter of the Innocent babes, the beheading of John, the Passion of Christ, the stoning of Stephen, and many martyrs that make up Acts. The New Testament is a very violent and scary book. The truth is, the entire Bible deserves a TV-M for mature rating because of its violent content.

A better approach for us: let’s not try to make one testament more violent than the other, and instead let’s wrestle with some really difficult texts and try to find truth and faith. 

Both testaments have violence we have to reckon with, meaning reading them carefully and better. We challenge any assertion that God is violent or commands violence (God is never violent or commands violence). We read looking for what is just evidence of our being human (at heart, a more violent creature). Some of the texts we are going to read this summer are awful and violent – and guess what they tell us? The honesty that sometimes bad things happen to good people; this is a reality in our world. So, where is God in that, and what do we do? 

2) The Old Testament God is wrathful and angry, whereas the New Testament God is a God of love. 

The Old Testament God is angry, and the New Testament God is loving, which translates to God getting nicer as God ages. Now, you might think this is just straight from Scripture and try to quote 1 John 4:8 and 4:16 at me, where the Epistles clearly say “God is love.” But where does John get that? I think likely from Exodus 34:6-7, a passage that is foundational for Jewish thought and theology, known as the 13 attributes of God: 

"And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, 'The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’” What a text, God saying “Y’all I am love” and saying that to Israel in the midst of one of their lowest and weakest points (they are in the midst of the whole golden calf thing here). This is a moment that would stick with people. 

Long before John writes it, God is identified as love.

It’s also really problematic to act as though the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament are so different; follow that path too fully and you either get too a dangerous place in terms of monotheism (the Old Testament God and New Testament God are not even close to the same), or God with a untreated personality disorder (some days God just does bad stuff; let’s hope God has more good days than bad days). 

A better approach for us: there is one God, the God of both the Old and the New Testament – the same God of today, and that God’s core attribute is love. It always has been, and it always will be. Some of the Old Testament is a journey for us to grasp this, to learn that truth, and it’s the story of how we did so.

A better approach for us: God is love, and love is the key hermeneutic to reading all of Scripture. 

3) The Old Testament is just a bunch of laws. 

I get why people say this. I mean, there is an entire category of law in the Old Testament (and I don’t know many people who claim Leviticus is their favorite book) but the Old Testament has it all: narratives (Abraham, Moses, Deborah, David, Esther, Ruth), wisdom writings (Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Proverbs), love poems (Song of Songs), prophets and social justice teachings (Jeremiah, Isaiah, Malachi), and then there are some books of law and rules, but even those are way more intriguing than the elementary reading we often give them. 

We also need to be really careful with this phrase, “a bunch of laws.” When we reduce the Old Testament to "a bunch of laws” (or the phrase “burden of the law”), we are accidentally repeating a caricature of Judaism that has done real damage. It makes our Jewish neighbors look like they are focused on earning their way to God, while we get grace for free. Which, besides being unfair, is also just wrong. Grace is not a Christian invention.

A better approach is to see the Old Testament as a book of spiritual formation in a beautiful variety of forms. 

The Old Testament is a deeply spiritual book and gives way to incredible spiritual practices…. To dance with God, to sing with and in community, mystical visions, poetry, and prayer.

And as for the law… the laws are about relationships. How we pray to God. How to worship God. How to handle business dealings as children of God (don’t rob one another blind). How to care for the land (don’t take advantage of creation). How to treat others, in particular the least of these: the widows, the orphans, the strangers. We could use some reminders about that these days. 

4) The Old Testament must be read literally. 

I think as a community we have spent significantly more time in the Gospels, and we feel a bit freer to play there. We are not as familiar with the stories of the Old Testament, and that discomfort paints how we approach it and see it. There seems to be a more rigid approach to reading these texts…. Probably because we read the stories as kids and then left them in the nursery. 

Take the very first story: the story of creation. We read it as kids, and then we had our first real science classes and realized this does not match what science reveals to us. Well, first, there are two creation stories, not one, so from the get-go, this is a different kind of story. Second, the aim of the two stories is not scientific; it’s poetry and theology. If we wrestle with them, we will find great meaning, but we have to be willing to do that. 

We don’t need to approach the Old Testament as a literal history book or as a science book. The book will not meet those standards because that is not its purpose; this is sacred spiritual literature. As sacred writing, this book excels. 

A better approach is to read this book well, to read it deeply, to read it in context, and let it be what it is – not force it to be something else.

As one of you said in a recent small group, quoting Marcus Borg: “Yes, the Bible is true, and some of it might have actually happened…” 

We don’t need to read literally; we need to read with our souls. Read it as metaphor, read it as story, read it as prayer. Don’t start with science or history; the Bible is theology at its core. 

5) The Old Testament is just a preview of God to come (or in other words, it all points to Jesus). 

When we read Scripture this way, which is a very Christian thing to do, it’s like going to the movies – the coming attractions/previews are secondary to the real show. This is a very dangerous way to approach the Old Testament.

This is “supersessionism” – also known as “replacement theory” – essentially saying the New Testament takes precedence over the Old and that all of God’s promises and covenants are null and void after the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The church inherits the good stuff from Israel, and the rest goes in the basement. 

This is not only a bad reading of Scripture, but it’s a dangerous idea. Follow this thought, that the New Testament replaces the Old, and you end up with ideas like it makes the Old Testament a prologue with no true inherent value, it changes God’s character and has God break God’s own promises, and it can make it seem like God rejects God’s own people. (Later today, read Romans 9-11 where Paul himself argues against this – it’s a big deal we don’t read Scripture like this, according to the New Testament itself).

Most problematically, this view has enabled a great deal of anti-semitism. In fact, after the Holocaust, most churches, denominations, and theologians argue this line of thinking is not only theologically wrong, but it is morally catastrophic. 

A better approach here… what if we tried to read it like they did? What if we let this book form us like it formed them? What do we learn of our faith and our God here? The Old Testament has so much to teach us if we are brave enough to read it right. 

And last 6) The Old Testament is not our story.

Now, to be fair, this is a bit of a “both, and.” We need to honor that this is the central teaching and sacred literature of Judaism (also Islam, Rastafari, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Mandaeism). This is a book we share with other faith groups, and we need to be really respectful of that, and also better educated. I think we often think that at the end of the Old Testament, we go this way and others go that way, but up until that point, we all read it the same – which is not true. Ask your Jewish friends what the Old Testament says about the Messiah, and you will quickly realize why they are still looking for the Messiah (according to Judaism, the messiah will restore Jerusalem, rebuild the temple, and usher in a new age of peace unlike any we have ever seen… their concept of Messiah and ours is radically different). 

A better approach to the Old Testament is the understanding that this is a shared book and we get to claim it, but we don’t get to own it, and that with that comes a lot of hospitality. All while reading it to be formed by it. 

And more than anything, the approach I am taking to this entire series… this is the book Jesus read that formed Jesus. The Old Testament plays a critical, if not key role in the life and development of Jesus Christ. These are the stories, poetry, prayers, songs, and social justice teachings that formed him, so let’s allow them to form us as well. We share these stories with Jesus, which is an incredible concept we too often forget. 

Don’t forget that Jesus was an Old Testament Jew… despite what you may have heard, Jesus was not a Christian, Jesus was fully Jewish. He worshipped in the Synagogue where he heard the Old Testament taught and read aloud. I am sure that many of these stories are the ones Mary and Joseph told him at night as he fell asleep. Jesus practiced reciting the Shema every day. The Psalms were his prayer book. 

The Old Testament deeply formed him. He quotes one of the violent Psalms during the Passion. The Shema and the Exodus passage about love fit into his interpretation of the Greatest Commandment. He sees the law as vital – relational but not transactional. He reads here and understands deeply. 

These are the stories Jesus read and heard and knew, the stories that formed him. 

So let me tell you how I am approaching this series…. “Without Jesus,” but then the staff warned me that I was going too far with that subtitle. So we are going with: Stories of Jesus, Stories About Jesus.

My approach is going to be to read the Old Testament story first and try my hardest to read it like Jesus did, to see what in this story captivated him and formed him into who he was. That will be the sermon each week, and then, in a moment of contemplation, a prayer, a question that we make space for at the end of worship, we will read a story about Jesus and see how the stories of Jesus shaped him, and we read those now in the stories about Jesus. 

I want us to immerse ourselves in that this summer. 

Y’all, when I moved to Louisiana, everyone started telling me about how much I was going to love Mardi Gras, that I was in for the time of my life – the food and drinks, the parties and parades, that they just knew I was going to love it all and get a ton of beads. Which was somewhat surprising to me, I didn’t know much about Mardi Gras beyond the stuff everyone knew, which made me question – why do they think I am going to be so good at getting beads, am I that bad of a pastor?

And then Mardi Gras season started…. The Mardi Gras trees (essentially, you redecorate your Christmas tree with purple and gold garland and beads, or if you are serious about it, you buy a gold tinsel tree… I tried that, and Abby said: “Return that, we are not those people.”). The King Cake (we never returned a King Cake). And then the weeks building up to Mardi Gras celebration, when you would go to parties to untangle beads and decorate high heels and find good prizes to throw. You would think about the parade and what costume you would wear. You would organize your entire schedule of what parade and party you would be attending and where you would be on the route, what Krewe you were in…. 

It’s incredible and so fun. And it did end up being a highlight of my time there, and yes, I was very good at getting beads.

But it was also unlike what I expected. Sure, some of what you have heard is true, but most Mardi Gras parades are family events, community thrives there, everyone behaves and watches out for one another (unless there are really good prizes being thrown from the floats and then people get competitive, but even then those floats with the good prizes always have people at the end passing out stuffed animals in case a kid misses a prize or is upset). What I miss most about Louisiana is its deep hospitality and sense of community, and it displayed that best at Mardi Gras.

I think some of us avoid the first few hundred pages of the Bible because we expect we know it; we know what happens in those stories, and it’s probably not for us. 

This summer, I hope we can experience the Old Testament together in a new way. I hope we might be so open that we let it form us like it formed Christ. Great things could come from that. 

Amen and Amen. 

If some of today’s sermon sparked curiosity, Griff suggests the following resources:

Rabbi Shai Held, Judaism is About Love 
John Dominic Crossan, How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian
Rachel Held Evans, Inspired 
Amy Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus

*art: Deep Waters of Wisdom by Mark Lawrence