Welcome to the Surviving the Bible podcast. This is a lectionary podcast not just for pastors or preachers, but for Bible nerds everywhere. Each week Christian and Amy Piatt (from the Homebrewed CultureCast) and Tripp Fuller (from the Homebrewed Christianity podcast) explore the bible readings for the week. You’ll get three different perspectives on three different texts to help you survive reading the Bible.

This week is the fifth Sunday of Easter.

Tripp takes a look at Acts 8:26-40 – the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. This is the first salvation story of a Gentile and demonstrates to us that the very heart of the gospel reorganizes our relationship to organized religion and tradition and pushes us into a more life-affirming stance. Tripp also offers some context for this story in the larger biblical narrative, the ways we justify excluding people, what this encounter is demonstrating, and how we sometimes serve the text before we serve the spirit.

Christian addresses 1 John 4:7-21. Love, life, Jesus, and God are all intertwined in this passage. Christian draws out some connections between this text and the gospel text, the symbols of the grape vine and branches, and the vulnerability of God and God’s dependence on us, the importance of not just saying we love, but living it out, and helps us understand what perfect love might really mean (and a brief lesson in Greek).

Last week Amy talked about sheep, and this week she’s talking about grapes and wine in John 15:1-8. Amy tells us about the importance of pruning for good fruit, how new vines are planted, and why that is important for reading this passage. Plus, she shares about times in her life when she’s been pruned, what happens when we focus on just one grape instead of the whole vine, and what it means to abide in God.