How can poetry teach us to read Scripture?

Everything within creation

Speaks of Jesus’ Incarnation.

Likewise too, his saving Passion

Is shown forth in all that’s fashioned.

The Word God spoke before all ages

Can be traced in Scripture’s pages.

The Bible tells one vast narration

from Genesis to Revelation.

So begins “Figural Graffiti,” a delightful instructional poem by theology professor Joe Mangina. “Figural Graffiti” is sincere and playful, and it’s a little ditty on the method and gift of reading scripture figurally. We discuss today this ancient and lively method of reading Scripture, what we lose when we lose the knack of figural reading, and what freedom figural reading gives us as disciples and Christian leaders.

Dr. Joseph Mangina is professor of theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto. His scholarly interests include ecclesiology, ecumenism, sacramental theology, and theological interpretation of Scripture. For several years in the 2000s he served on the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue commission for Canada. Among other books, he’s written two on Karl Barth, the Revelation commentary for the Brazos Theological Commentary series, and most recently, he’s co-edited a book called Figural Reading and the Fleshly God: The Theology of Ephraim Radner.

Read “Figural Graffiti” on the Living Church’s free online journal, Covenant.

Check out Joe’s new book.

Register for the Living Church’s upcoming conference.

Clergy couples: How do they work? Where are the tensions and the graces? Even highly functional, loving, clergy marriages can look so different. Knock, knock – can we come inside your marriage for a peek?

In this episode, host Amber Noel gets really nosy. Here are three couples willing to come on the podcast and talk honestly about their clergy couple marriages – what makes them tick, what ticks them off, and how they’ve learned to value differences, protect each other, and learn grace in community.

In this episode we’ll hear from:

• The Rev. Tish Harrison Warren and the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Warren Pagán. Tish is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep. She’s written for The New York Times and Christianity Today. Jonathan is planter and rector of Immanuel Anglican Church in Austin, Texas. Together they cowrote the book, Advent: The Season of Hope.
• The Rev. Dr. Lilian and the Rt. Rev. Given Gaula. Bishop Given has been Bishop of Kondoa, Tanzania, since 2012. Mother Lilian serves in various roles in the diocese of Kondoa, including teaching at the theological college and running a ministry for women’s empowerment.
• The Rev. Melissa and the Very Rev. Randy Hollerith. Melissa has 30 years of ordained ministry under her belt, much of it serving schools. For the past two years, she has been the upper school Chaplain and teacher at St. Albans School in Washington. Randy has served as the Dean of Washington National Cathedral since 2016, and was rector of St. James’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, for 16 years.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

What is Christian Communion? And who cares?

If you listen to this podcast, you probably do.

Today we’re not talking about the Lord’s Supper, but the longing for and practical work toward Christian unity. What does this have to do with the average Christian? Or the average pastor trying to focus on local ministry? How do Anglicans care about (and struggle with) Christian unity especially? What the heck is a Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral?

Joining us to discuss is Dr. Christopher Wells. Christopher is Director of Unity, Faith and Order for the Anglican Communion. He oversees the Communion’s ecumenical relations and serves as secretary of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO). For 13 years, Christopher was executive director and publisher of the Living Church Foundation.

Here are some key terms we’ll learn about today, answering some of our questions above:

The ecumenical movement or ecumenism
The Lambeth Conference
Lambeth Conference 1920
Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral
Vatican II
Primate

Today we’ll learn how any ecumenical work must serve the life of the average Christian, or it’s no good. We’ll find out why ecumenical work is putting Christopher more in touch with his evangelical side. And we’ll ponder why “Anglican” exists in the first place. Is it to tickle our “via media” fancies, or to become another religious option? Or might we learn to serve Christian unity so well that one day, maybe, Anglicans work themselves out of a job?

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Read the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.

A few other cool documents on Christian unity:

• http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/news/2024/2024-06-13-il-vescovo-di-roma-nuovo-documento-dpuc.html
• https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/06/13/bishop-rome-study-document-dicastery-promoting-christian-unity-248153
• https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2024-06/rethinking-the-primacy-in-an-ecumenical-sense.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2RbXk-L3mXpkT9WZKyqQF3HbsPaG-nKdSsWQosOMSe18VOSpCazmy3u1o_aem_p7a_pInr-MDXSnjpgtFhJA

Ever run out of preaching material for a major feast day? May today’s episode inspire you.

It’s funny how the gospel unveils and then veils itself to us in seasons of our ministry and preaching. There are so many times when there’s more than we can capture. And then other times it feels like the well runs dry on the same passage we’ve come to for years. But this “dryness” may just be an invitation to dig in a new direction or to a new depth.

Today we’ve got a fascinating dispatch from the Rev. Dr. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, a Lutheran pastor in Tokyo who got tired of trying to find something new to preach about the Transfiguration. Sarah trusted the abundance of God’s word to not return void, and kept digging, and that digging turned into a whole book about what she found: Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration.

Turns out, the Transfiguration is the center point of the Gospel of Mark. Turns out, St. Paul is very interested in the Transfiguration, and the Transfiguration is very interested in Jewish pilgrimage festivals and the end times. And the Gospel of John might keep the Transfiguration on the DL for a very good reason.

Today we’ll learn why we’ve got two of these feasts a year, where apples and grapes come in, and a little about ancient laundering practices — all just in time, maybe, to give you some inspiration for you own festal sermon.

Sarah is Associate Pastor at Tokyo Lutheran Church and the Founder of Thornbush Press. She has written, edited, and contributed to numerous books of both theology and fiction and has published hundreds of articles. She hosts the podcasts Queen of the Sciences, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories, and The Disentanglement Podcast, and writes the e-newsletter Theology & a Recipe.

They may not be “whiter than a fuller could bleach them,” but get ready for some brilliant insights nevertheless. We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Learn more about the Human Pilgrimage conference.