Take Care Isaiah 58:9-14

Published: Aug. 25, 2019, 10:55 a.m.

b'When our need to help the poor, feed the hungry, and uphold the oppressed is strong, we sometimes forget that it\\u2019s okay to slow down a bit. To rest. To take care of one\\u2019s self. And this passage from Isaiah reminds us of that.\\nEpisode TranscriptBrian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast!\\nFr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week\\u2019s lectionary readings. We\\u2019re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I\\u2019m Father Shay Kearns\\nB: And I\\u2019m Brian G. Murphy.\\nB: Hello, hello, hello. Today is Sunday, August 25th, 2019 or at least that is the day that it is when this episode comes out. Actually, Shay is with me here in Los Angeles for a week so we\\u2019re recording a little bit ahead of schedule. It\\u2019s really been exciting and fun to have you here for the past week, Shay.\\nFS: It\\u2019s been super fun to be here.\\nB: A few days ago, we got together with some podcast listeners, some subscribers of the mailing list, some members of Sanctuary Collective for some park theology instead of pub theology. For an evening of getting to know each other, talking about everything from therapy, to veggie-tales, to Hebrew translations of the Bible, and all points in between. It\\u2019s been really a lot of fun. What have been some highlights for you Shay?\\nFS: Yeah, I just love it when we get to meet with people face-to-face and hear more of their stories and find out how they found out about the website and podcast. But really, just to be in community with people and that\\u2019s been super fun. It\\u2019s been great to think a little bit about what\\u2019s next for Queer Theology. To think about how we\\u2019re doing things and what we can do better and what we want to do more of that\\u2019s been really exciting, too.\\nB: Yeah, we got lots of exciting plans that we\\u2019ve been working on. One of them has already come to fruition. We are in the middle of registration for a course on How to Read the Bible. I think this is so important, I know that for me, I grew up reading the Bible, constantly talking with the Bible in church all the time. Really feeling like I knew the ins and outs of the Bible and then when I realize I was queer, having the Bible turn around on me and it becoming like a weapon used against me. Then, spending so many years having to fend myself against the Bible. And then, so feeling like I really knew the Bible, I remember as a closeted teenager and opening the Bible trying to figure out what the passages about homosexuality meant and did it condemn me. What about bisexuality, what about this transgender that I heard of? And then, fast forward years in the future and realizing that being a gay or a bi-sexual Christian wasn\\u2019t quite enough as much as I thought I knew the Bible in and out, there was just so much more to learn and reading a lot of books by serious academics has been helpful. Working alongside folks that had seminary education has been very helpful. One of our goals at QueerTheology.com has always been to sort of make all of this juicy stuff that happens in Academia available to everyone so that you don\\u2019t have to go hundred thousand dollars into debt and go to spend 3 years in seminary to learn how to read the Bible. Because I think there\\u2019s something more to just picking it up and reading like it\\u2019s the book in order to get the most out of it. So I\\u2019m super excited about this class if you\\u2019re interested in learning more, you can go to queertheology.com/biblecourse, with or without a hyphen, it will take you there. Shay, what can we look forward to in this course?\\nFS: Yeah. We\\u2019re going to look at a ton of different stuff, we\\u2019re gonna a lot about how to read the Bible in context meaning both in what kind of literature it is, but also the historical context and really unpacking that and how knowing that context impacts how we read scripture. We\\u2019re gonna look at tools for you to do this work on your own, so that you don\\u2019t have to be necessarily beholden to going to seminary. We are just gonna give a hint and a tease of starting to re'