Ordinary Time 04: The Excluded Ones

1. Tim talked about Abraham’s story as the first draft of the Bible’s favorite story: the story of “a God who longs to lift up the brokenhearted.”

What surfaces as you think of this as God‘s favorite story? Where else do you see this story in the Bible? Where do you see this story beyond the confines of the scriptural canon? In history? In your family stories? In your own life?


2. Tim talked about the “peasant revolt model” of reading the stories of conquest in the book of Joshua, drawing attention to the sharp contrast this reading presents to the vision of divinely-sanctioned genocide which many of us grew up with. 

What do you think about the ideas of these different readings? What kind of exposure have you had to other ways of understanding this section of the Bible’s narrative? 

What surfaced for you as you listened, or surfaces for you now as you consider these various readings?  

How has the reading you have known up to this point impacted your faith? Would a new lens for these stories (if this is a new lens) make an impact? How so? How important does that feel?

3. Tim served up a question that he suggested we come back to throughout this summer‘s study of the Old Testament: what does it mean to serve the Lord? 

Share about your answer to that question at this present moment, and tell a bit about how it may have evolved over time.