Rev. Nancy S. Taylor

Transcript

The auditorium is filled to capacity. The school orchestra is engaged in a lively and loud rendition of Pomp and Circumstance. The academic procession begins. It wends its way in, down the aisle, onto the stage. Faculty and Deans, Trustees and Visiting professors, Presidents from other universities, distinguished guests … all in academic regalia … robes and hoods and caps, velvet and silk in an array of colors.

Transcript

The Christian congregation in Corinth is an experiment … a laboratory. The question under investigation is this: what happens when you put unlike elements, indeed, natural enemies—say, lions and tigers and bears—into one room and close the door?

In this test, in this experiment of the Christian congregation in Corinth, Jesus has attracted together into one room natural enemies: Jews and Gentiles, slaves and slave owners, women and men. Volatile, combustible combinations.

Transcript

By most calculations this sanctuary isn’t actually good for much. We, who come and go through its doors don’t produce any sort of marketable merchandise. We don’t provide services reckoned to be commercially viable.

Instead, we preside over this great expanse because it is here that we come to encounter the living God.

Transcript

There is something fishy about Jesus.

He recruits his first followers by calling fishermen from fishing for fish to become fishers of people.

There is something fishy about Jesus.

Transcript

At seminary, students of divinity are introduced to the mysteries. Ranked high among the mysteries to which aspiring ministers are introduced, are the miracles of Jesus.

Theological students study the miracles of Jesus the same way medical students study the miracles of the human body: they dissect them, sort them and categorize them. They endeavor to understand how and why each of the miracles functions within the entire system of the Jesus narrative.

The miracles of Jesus are typically sorted into three distinct groups.

Transcript

The Book of Numbers—one of the five books of Moses … of the Torah—tells a critical, if unassuming story. It tells the story of how the Israelites organized themselves to undertake the next great chapter in their history.