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Jesus is so challenging. The stuff he says, like the stories he tells says, called parables, whatever, but we get used to hearing them.

They're not children's stories. I mean a child can understand of a certain level, like the merciful Samaritan story, the good Samaritan story.

It'd be like, that's why we should all be nice. Yeah, there's a lot more going on there. A lot more. And like, why did Jesus go out of his way in the story to make the religious leader what bad?

Yeah.

Why did he pick a Samaritan? It was kind of a second class citizen to the people he's talking to into the hero story.

Yeah.

If there were any Samaritan's listening, how would they take the idea that they're second class citizens and they're supposed to help somebody and show hospitality to somebody they may not like?

Right. And who doesn't like them? Yeah.

Yeah. There's all these subversive things going on. And I've heard it said that if you can read one of Jesus' stories and just walk away going, oh that's nice, you didn't totally get it.

If you're not really channelist, like, wait a second. What's going on?

Our friend, James Carey writes a newsletter. I really appreciate what he has to say, but the last couple have been about reading the Bible in church, which is kind of an interesting topic. Most people don't even think about it.

It's like, why do we do it so poorly?

Isn't it worth a little bit of effort? And the argument he lays out, I'm like, I've never really thought about that, but he's exactly right.

And he compared it to like an off, off, off Broadway play or some kind of like a fringy play.

He's like, somebody could put hundreds of hours into that, have 40 people a night for a couple of weeks, and they've memorized all this stuff and all that.

But you've got that many people listening to you for a couple of services or something. It depends on what your setting is.

You can't spend like the amount of time for a script. He did all the math on it. He's like, you should probably spend about five hours if you're reading like a half chapter, just in preparation, going back over it, making sure you're going to need like, what's more deserving of that?

He's like, and understand this is for reading out loud.

Like people didn't have 57 Bibles before they didn't have it on their phones into the synagogue to hear it read out loud.

Absolutely. Even after the invention of the printing press like paper is so expensive, you don't just get a Bible.

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