Episode 37: Weird Bible Stories Part 1--A Very Long List of Names

?After having to say Godspeed to Drew, new conversations continue on Crazy Faith Talk with Pastor Erica joining with Steve to wrestle with some of the stranger, lesser-known, and weirder stories from the Bible. Why did they get remembered and written down in the first place?  What is going on in the parts we want to skip over?  And how might God have something to say to us from passages we have either never read or never paid attention to?

In this first of a series, Erica and Steve dig into the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel--the long list of names who are given as Jesus' ancestors.  For us in an era and culture that might have very little interest in tracing our roots or knowing our ancestors' stories, it can seem odd to even care about the long list of names we have a hard time even pronouncing that makes up Jesus' geneaology in Matthew.  And on top of that--Matthew's geneaology is different from the way Luke's Gospel gives it!  What's that all about?  In today's episode we'll find that Matthew the gospel writer is more subversive and surprising than we give him credit for, dropping hints about the ways God intentionally includes people who had been deemed "unacceptable" or "unworthy" to be a part of the divine story.