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Comedians with Pastors Talking Bible: two Lutheran pastors, two comedians, and one lectionary reading per week. Short Take edition.

The king throws a wedding banquet, the invited guests blow him off, and the party ends up filled with whoever the servants can find on the street. Then one guest gets thrown out for the wrong clothes. Pastors Bob Schaefer and Eric Damon sit down in the old Parlor with comedians Abby Evans and Erick Williams to ask what a parable about the kingdom of heaven has to do with barking at strangers to come to your comedy show. It also asks why grace for everyone doesn't mean anything goes.

In this episode:

• The old set gets a last farewell
• Why the Parlor is closing
• A comedy show where the barking-in-the-street method brought in exactly the wrong guest
• Why people who ruin the night for everyone else (hecklers, Broadway sing-alongers) might be the best way into this parable
• The wedding garment question that nobody at the table can answer
• Reading the burned city as an explanation for the Gospel's first audience, not a threat
• Slave, servant, or intern: how to handle the translation problem
• Erick finds his name in a truck decal

"Even after the grace has extended to everybody, I'm not going to let the experience be ruined for everyone that I invited." (Pastor Eric Damon)

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Matthew 22:1–14 (NRSVue)

[1] Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: [2] “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. [3] He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. [4] Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ [5] But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, [6] while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. [7] The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. [8] Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. [9] Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ [10] Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad, so the wedding hall was filled with guests. [11] “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, [12] and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. [13] Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ [14] For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Hosted by Pastor Eric Damon and Pastor Bob Schaefer.

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Music: Trickster by Phat Sounds
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10864-trickster
Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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On this Short Take episode of Comedians with Pastors Talking Bible, Jesus tells a parable about tenants who kill everyone the landowner sends, right down to his son. And the chief priests listening realize, one by one, that he's talking about them.

Are we the baddies?

It's one of the hardest texts in the lectionary to preach well, and one of the easiest to misuse. So we take it slowly: who the parable is actually aimed at, what kind of landlord keeps sending people to their deaths, and whether there's any good news in here at all. Turns out there is, and a comedian finds it.

Join Pastor Bob Schaefer, Pastor Eric Damon, and resident comic theologians Abby Evans (@itsabbye) and Erick Williams (@comicaledubs).

Expect:

• Why this parable isn't a verdict on "the Jews," and why supersessionism is a heresy
• Matthew as an argument inside a family, and what happens when insider material reaches outside ears (with an assist from Chris Rock)
• A landlord who responds to murder by sending more people, then his son. Has God lost touch with reality, or is that just what persistence looks like?
• The tenants' inheritance plan, and why "kill everyone and take their stuff" is an awfully familiar strategy
• A reading of the parable that pushes back on penal substitutionary atonement
• Good news that sounds like bad news, depending on which ears you have to hear it

Also featuring: Hey-Zeus, Yellowjackets season two, the 1900s as a single year, a glittery finger keepsake, and Jesus as the kid in Pet Sematary.

"Even the powerful will fear the crowd."
— Erick Williams, finding the good news

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Matthew 21:33–46 (NRSVue)

[33] “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. [34] When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. [35] But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. [36] Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. [37] Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ [38] But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ [39] So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. [40] Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” [41] They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” [42] Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? [43] “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. [44] The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” [45] When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. [46] They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

Hosted by Pastor Eric Damon and Pastor Bob Schaefer.

Join the community!
Email us at cptbpod@gmail.com.
Find us at @cptbpod on most social media platforms.
More at linktr.ee/cptbpod

Music: Trickster by Phat Sounds
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10864-trickster
Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Vinny Palatucci and Paulie Stags are back, and this time they're bringing their whole Catholic-school baggage with them. What starts as a bit about purgatory ("David Lynch meets jury duty") turns into one of the more theologically honest conversations we've had all season — about fear-based faith, the freedom to actually use your brain, and what it means when someone changes their mind after saying no.

Expect:

• Vinny and Paulie's Catholic upbringing, purgatory dread, and the slow migration toward Aquinas, the Franciscans, and "big brain" theology
• A genuine detour into the Book of Job and why theology goes sideways when it tells people their own lived experience isn't real
• A CPTB first: Vinny reads the Gospel text cold, live, on mic
• Bob's C.S. Lewis/Narnia riff on judgment as self-judgment, not divine punishment
• A hard look at who Jesus is actually eating with — tax collectors, prostitutes, and why that got him killed
• A seminary flashback to two professors publicly disagreeing about universal salvation ("we all got drunk")

It is not in any way, shape or form, doctrinally correct." — Eric, immediately after landing his own best theological point of the episode

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Matthew 21:23–32 (NRSVue)

[23] When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” [24] Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. [25] Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why, then, did you not believe him?’ [26] But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet.” [27] So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. [28] “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ [29] He answered, ‘I will not,’ but later he changed his mind and went. [30] The father went to the second and said the same, and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. [31] Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. [32] For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him, and even after you saw it you did not change your minds and believe him.

Hosted by Pastor Eric Damon and Pastor Bob Schaefer.

Join the community!
Email us at cptbpod@gmail.com.
Find us at @cptbpod on most social media platforms.
More at linktr.ee/cptbpod

Music: Trickster by Phat Sounds
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/10864-trickster
Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.