Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel

This podcast takes a journey through the Gospel of Matthew, unpacking its story of Jesus as a peasant leader of a nonviolent movement for a new society that he calls “The Kingdom of Heaven.” Each episode explores literary, cultural and historical context, passage by passage.

Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel is a religion podcast hosted by Bert Newton, with 99 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Bert Newton hosts Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel, a religion show with 99 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

• 

  Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel

  Special Episode: A Message For Our Apocalyptic Times; A Reflection on Matthew 24 and 25

  May 1, 202624 min

  Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I review the work that I did in episodes 59-61 on chapters 24-25 of Matthew, often referred to as "The Little Apocalypse." I reflect on this sermon by Jesus in these chapters during a time when the world as we know it may be coming to an end, i.e. the world in which the U.S. is the dominant hegemon. What is the message for us from these chapters? What was the message for its original audience in the late first century when Israel had been almost completely destroyed by Rome? I hope this review both clarifies the work the I did in episodes 59-61 and also helps us apply it to today's situation.

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel

  Special Episode: Interview with Ched Myers, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy; Luke's Jesus and Sabbath Economics

  Jun 13, 20251h 22m

  Send us Fan Mail In this special episode, I interview Ched Myers about his new book, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy; Luke's Jesus and Sabbath Economics . To order the book, go to Bookshop.org and search for Ched Myers. Through the end of July 2025, the promo code SOJO20 will reduce the price by 20%. You can also use this link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=Ched+Myers Description from Bookshop.org: Myers brings a well-honed interpretive eye to a thematic study of Luke's Gospel. He reads synoptically the crisis of socioeconomic disparity in Jesus's world and ours, and proposes powerful analogies that can build social imagination and animate personal and political practices for systemic change and justiceamong communities of faith today. There has been a revival of interest over the last half century in the Third Gospel's focus on issues of poverty and wealth. However, most exegetical or homiletic work by scholars and preachers of the Global North has been constrained by middle-class social assumptions, which inevitably domesticate Jesus's radical teaching and practice. To counter this, Myers argues that Luke's literary arc and individual representations are best interpreted through the lens of ""Sabbath Economics"" in the Hebrew Bible. He then brings socio-literary analysis and engaged commentary to bear on Luke's wise oldstories, correlating his narrative structures and symbols to systemic political and economic issues then and now. Luke's unique material, and how he redacts Mark and Q, reveals his unequivocal critique of socioeconomic disparity. Myers closely examines footprints and ""demonstration projects"" of Sabbath Economics in the first half of Luke, then considers archetypal characters, somatic representations, and socially contrasting scenarios of rich and poor in the second half. His approach deploys sociological exegesis, literary analysis, and liberation hermeneutics to recover Luke's story of Jesus in its historical context and its relevance to ours.

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel

  Special Episode: Genocide in Gaza, The Crucifixion, and Psalm 22

  May 11, 202536 min

  Send us Fan Mail This is a sermon that I preached with a friend who is from Gaza. The text that was read before the sermon is Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?..."

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel

  Parable of the 7 Demons Redux (Donald Trump and 7 More Demons)

  Apr 13, 202529 min

  Send us Fan Mail This is a replay of Episode 31 with a brief new intro. Jesus tells a parable about a demon exorcism which results in a situation worse than the original demon possession. Those who read the Bible at surface level (and somehow don't seem to notice all the problems that presents) tend to read this passage literally, but Jesus is clearly speaking parabolically. This parable can be applied to any situation in which a problem has been dealt with in a way that does not deal with the root cause and only kicks the can down the road. I didn't change anything in the original episode; I'm just suggesting that it is worth another hearing because it can be applied to our current situation.

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel

  Special Episode: Miracles

  Feb 19, 202525 min

  Send us Fan Mail For many modern Christians, especially in the West, the miracles of the Bible are such an uncomfortable subject that we often pretend that they are not even there in the text. We ignore them. But they are key to understanding the message of the Gospel.

  ListenShow Notes

Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:

Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.