Readings: 📜Isaiah 49:1-7; 🎶Psalm 40:1-11; ✉️1 Corinthians 1:1-9; 🦅John 1:29-42. For full, free access, go to PewPewHQ.com/tfw/a-e02.

Also, check out uswithoutThem, a podcast exploring the discography of mewithoutYou!

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Readings: 📜Isaiah 42 :1-9; 🎶Psalm 29; 📜Acts 10 :34-43; 😇Matthew 3 :13-17

From the TRNG Room:

• How to Read Scripture Like You’re Still in the Field

• Bapti-piphany Sunday

• What is Epiphany

Central Thesis/Theme:

In this first episode of the Epiphany season, I explore what "epiphany" really means in the Greek imagination—a divine appearance when all seems lost—and why the lectionary's focus on Jesus's baptism matters for understanding how we begin our Christian life. I'm particularly interested in how baptism functions as a threshold moment, a vigil where we die to ourselves and are raised in community. This episode is also about my ongoing project to democratize biblical interpretation, taking it away from institutional gatekeepers and making it accessible to rank-and-file believers like us.

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Readings: 📜Jeremiah 31:7-14 ; 🎶Psalm 147:12-20; 📜Ephesians 1:3-14; 📜John 1:1-18. For full access, go to pewpewhq.com/tfw/a-x02.

In this episode, I wrestle with the growing tension I feel between Pauline Christianity and the Jesus I encounter in the Gospels. The Christmas readings this week force me to confront my discomfort with Paul's privileged position and philosophical approach versus Christ's radical accessibility to the poor and marginalized. I'm arguing that if we must choose between Paul's epistles and the Hebrew scriptures, I'd choose the latter—not to reject Paul entirely, but to prioritize the Christ of the Gospels and the story he fulfills over the institutional church-building project I see in Paul's letters.

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Readings: 📜Isaiah 63 :7-9; 🎶Psalm 148; ✉️Hebrews 2 :10-18 😇Matthew 2 :13-23. Full, free access at PewPewHQ.com/tfw/a-x01

I'm launching a three-year project called Fighting Words, which transitions from my previous First Formation podcast into a broader exegetical work I call "the fighting word"—a military-centered paraphrase of the Bible for rank and file believers. This isn't just rebranding; it's federating biblical interpretation away from institutional gatekeepers and placing it in the hands of ordinary people who've lived real experiences. After six or seven years of daily lectionary work, I've identified simpler, more direct ways of reading Scripture that honor both the text's depth and the reader's intelligence, rejecting both Victorian-era conservative inerrancy and watered-down modern paraphrases that dull the Bible's sharp edges.

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⁠📜Isaiah 7⁠:10-16; ⁠🎶Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; ⁠✉️Romans 1⁠:1-7; ⁠😇Matthew 1⁠:18-25. 

A distinctive six-part Hebraic formula—"You shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name X"—appears only twice in Scripture when spoken by a divine messenger: to Hagar about Ishmael and to Mary about Jesus. This pattern reveals how Matthew and Luke connect Jesus not just to Isaiah's prophecy but to the very first child born according to God's promise.

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Readings: Isaiah 35, Psalm 146, James 5, Matthew 11:2-11. *Full, free access at ⁠PewPewHQ.com/tfw/a-a3⁠.

John the Baptist's doubt from prison reveals a fundamental debate about confronting systemic oppression. John sees Rome as the primary enemy requiring direct anti-imperial resistance, while Jesus targets something deeper—the ideology of entitlement that creates in-group/out-group categories. Jesus refuses to alienate those trapped in corrupt systems (like military families) even while condemning the systems themselves, modeling a "sharper razor" that separates the bathwater of oppression from the baby of human dignity.

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Readings: Isaiah 11;Psalm 72; Romans 15; Matthew 3. *Full, free access at PewPewHQ.com/tfw/a-a02.

The Divine Warrior motif reveals God's power as fundamentally creative rather than combative. Where Babylonian cosmology imagines creation emerging from divine conflict, the Hebrew imagination presents a God who speaks reality into existence—conquering not through violence but through divine intent and breath. This contrast between conflict-based and creativity-based cosmologies defines the difference between worldly power systems and the kingdom that emerges through ordinary humanity.

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Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44. Full, free access at PewPewHQ.com/tfw/a-a01.

The Advent season inaugurates a new way of seeing humanity itself—the "son of man" as both ordinary human and harbinger of radical transformation. This first Sunday reintroduces the lectionary cycle not as institutional prescription but as framework for discovering what Scripture says when freed from calcified interpretation and enforcement of meaning.

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Readings: Isaiah 12; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19.

Central Theme: Jesus's prophecy against Herod's ornate temple reflects a consistent biblical pattern of God rejecting centralized religious power and wealth accumulation in favor of decentralized, agrarian faithfulness.

Key Insights:

• Luke writes post-70 CE with knowledge of the temple's destruction, but this doesn't negate Jesus's prophetic vision

• The name "Jesus" (Yeshua = "salvation") connects Christ to Joshua the builder of the plain-Jane Second Temple

• Septuagint (LXX) Exodus 15:3 reads "The Lord brings wars to nothing" vs. Masoretic "The Lord is a warrior" - a crucial difference for understanding God's relationship to violence

• Hebrew root LHM carries both "laham" (fighter) and "elohim" (gods), pointing toward a God who undoes physical violence through spiritual battle.

Theological Argument: Salvation is cooperative work between humans and God, not passive reception of predetermined grace. The biblical witness consistently undermines those who claim entitlement without labor (Pharaoh, Herod, Solomon) and instead elevates agrarian mutuality and decentralized interpretation.

Contemporary Challenge: We must "federate our faith" and resist religious institutions that enforce monopolies on meaning. The oldest manuscripts we possess are Hellenized texts that already represent a tension between imperial power and prophetic decentralization - we should embrace this pluralism rather than seek singular authority.

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Readings: Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38.

Learn More:

- "What Was Jesus' Real Name?"

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Readings: Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22;Psalm 84:1-7; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14.

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