WestGate Church Teaching

This week starts the beginning of our five-week series called Wonderfully Made, which WestGate Church is doing in coordination with several other Bay Area churches. In this week’s episode of The AfterWord, Jay Kim (lead pastor of WestGate Church), Filipe Santos (lead pastor of Echo Church) and Phil Eubank (lead pastor of Menlo Church) talk about the genesis of the Wonderfully Made Sermon Series, why it’s important right now, and what each of them is hoping the series will do in each of their congregations.

There is a common misunderstanding today, even among Christians, that human beings are primarily souls who happen to have bodies. Or, go to any gym and you’ll see contradictory messages of both idolizing the body AND simultaneous hatred of the body. Sometimes in the same person! But the Biblical story makes clear that from the beginning, to be human is to be a body. And this is a good thing. Being humans means having a body. And - as the Bible shows - what we do with that body is our choice and really matters.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans told stories of ambrosia, the mythical food of the gods that granted immortality to all who ate it. And we modern folk are obsessed with bio-hacking our bodies and diets, for the sake of longevity. But while the ancients wanted to defy death, and we Bay Area folks want to delay it, the story of Jesus is how one person defeated death. And the implications of this show that the Resurrection isn’t just a historical event, but a present reality that can provide us hope and courage to face whatever comes our way.

SPEAKERS:

Jay Kim (Saratoga), David Tieche (South Hills)

Bible Passage(s):

Matthew 28:1-10

As Jesus is dying on the Cross, He yells out “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” This is one of the more famous sayings of Jesus, if only because of the anguish behind it. Is God forsaking Jesus? How can that be? This is no mere physical death: this death is also a separation from Himself - a tearing apart of Jesus’ eternal identity. But Jesus is not merely saying words of pain - that line “My God, My God” is actually a quote from a Psalm. Psalm 22 to be exact. And if you read that Psalm, you see so much more going on. Jesus is thinking about the WHOLE psalm, and its implications. And what that psalm says - coupled with what happens immediately after Jesus dies inside the temple - shows us more than Jesus in pain. It shows us Jesus at work, with the Father, to redeem every square inch of the whole world.

SPEAKERS:

Jay Kim (Saratoga), David Tieche (South Hills)

Bible Passage(s):

Matthew 27:45-51

After Jesus dies, Matthew writes that the curtain in the temple was torn, a detail he finds incredibly significant, but which might seem bizarre to us. What’s up with this curtain? Why is God ripping it up? Is God upset at His interior decoratingand design? What’s going on? Jay Kim stops by to chat about the implications of this moment in Matthew 27, not just theologically, but what it means for us personally.

Speakers: David Tieche + Jay Kim

Speakers: David Tieche + David Kim

Author and researcher Brené Brown defined shame as “the intensely painful feeling of being unworthy of love or belonging.” There are not *some* people who deal with feelings of shame and others who escape this. We *all* deal with this. David Kim stops by to form an-all-David podcast in which we talk about how shame shows up in our lives, how it’s the same and slightly different in men and in woman and how the Christian response to shame is unique and powerfully effective. DK also shares how shame almost caused him to pee his pants in public. Shame is real, y’all. God can help. Don’t pee your pants.

Speakers: David Tieche + David Kim

One of the most famous parts of the story of Jesus’ death is that His friends completely fail Him. Most famously, Jesus’ lead disciple, Peter, makes a valiant pledge that he would never deny Jesus, and then, mere hours later, does exactly that three times. There’s much to this story. Matthew is showing us that we all overestimate our own goodness. But Matthew is always showing us the steadfast and unmoveable love of Jesus, who despite Peter’s failure, still goes to the Cross for him. And in the end, as Peter stands outside bitterly weeping, crushed by his own shame and sense of unworthiness, we realize we all have to deal with shame. And that Jesus provides a unique (and uniquely powerful!) answer to this universal human issue. Not just for Peter. But for all of us.

SPEAKERS:

David Kim (Saratoga), David Tieche (South Hills)

Bible Passage(s):

Matthew 26:69-75

Matthew’s account of Jesus sweating blood in anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane is an exceptional detail and a stunning moment. Newly minted Pastor Emeritus Steve Clifford stops by to talk about this exceptional passage, what it reveals about Jesus’s interior life with God, how Jesus’s moment is different than ours, and how it’s the same, and what lessons about life, grief, and pain we can learn from it.

On the night before He was killed, Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane. There we find Jesus distraught and more anxious than He has ever been. He is experiencing deep, agonizing grief and anxiety. But facing a brutal death isn’t the only thing happening - Jesus is going to pay for and bear the weight of humanity’s sin. And yet, in the midst of anxiety and uncertainty, Jesus embodies faithfulness. And shows us the way forward though the pain and uncertainties of life, as well.

The Last Supper is one of the more important moments in the story of Jesus, memorialized not only in art but also in the life of the church (through the taking of communion). But familiarity sometimes is our enemy of seeing things clearly - and often, we don’t take the time to listen or reflect on not only what Jesus was saying to His disciples at the Last Supper, but how He was forming them. Jesus often used meals to not only make theological points about life with God, but to transform people. And this meal was not different for the disciples, and if we have eyes to see, can do the same things inside us.

SPEAKERS:

Mark Averill (Saratoga), David Tieche (South Hills)

Bible Passage(s):

Matthew 26:17-30