Word of Life Church Podcast

We all know we live in a broken world. From Fallujah to Ferguson, Beirut to Baltimore, there’s too much hate, too much war, too much poverty, too much sorrow. Some religious folk just want to post a “condemned” sign and abandon the world. Their escapist fantasy is to fly off to some other world. But this is not the blessed hope. God still loves our beautiful and broken world, and the Carpenter of Nazareth came to restore it, not condemn it. The Hebrew prophets dreamed of a day when all things would be restored. Their poems speak of lions lying down with lambs, swords turning into plowshares, barren wastelands being healed, and every bitter tear wiped away. After Pentecost the apostles preached that Jesus is the hero of the poet’s dream. So this is our gospel: The world is broken because we are broken…but Jesus restores all things!
That God may send Jesus
The Christ appointed for you
Whom heaven must receive
Until the time
For the restoration
Of all things
-The Apostle Peter (Acts 3:20-21)

The Apostle Paul says that he received his revelation directly from Christ. Paul never knew the historical Jesus of Nazareth, but he did know the risen and ascended Christ of the Cosmos. Paul also says that it is this "Christ of the Cosmos" who has been given all authority in heaven and on earth.

If we don’t perceive the importance of Pentecost, it’s because we don’t perceive how the gospel culminates with the creation of the Church. The catholicity of the Church is not about speaking one language. (That's Babylon.) It's about one gospel spoken in many tongues. We must not shrink Pentecost to an individual spiritual experience. Pentecost isn't about individualism; it's about our unity in the Holy Spirit.

Armageddon. It's word that only appears once in the Bible, but few words have captured popular imagination more than Armageddon. As such it's much used and and abused by the popular misinterpreters of Revelation. To hear them tell it, the world is being drawn inevitably toward an unpreventable war. But this is a horrible misinterpretation. Our looming Armageddons are always a possibility, but never an inevitability. Armageddon is inevitable only if that's what we want. Armageddon is inevitable only if we refuse to follow the Lamb. Armageddon is inevitable only if we follow dragons, beasts, and false prophets.

The only thing Jesus ever talked about was the Kingdom of God. Think of it as the Government of God; God's politics of grace; God's alternative to anti-human empire.

Jesus announced the Government of God in disorienting parables about a curious grace and a new kind of justice that upends the established order. Jesus said that with the coming of God's Government, "many who are first will be last and the last will first."

Jesus enacted the Government of God by miracles of healing and provision, the "unauthorized" forgiveness of sinners, and a table practice of radical hospitality.

The Government of God that Jesus announced and enacted isn't about dying and going to heaven. The Government of God is about heaven's politics of grace and justice coming to earth—as Jesus taught us to pray, "Thy Government come, Thy Politics be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

We certainly need fresh encounters with the Holy Spirit, but we also need the wisdom of the historic church. We need the Holy Spirit and we need the creeds. We need the power of the Spirit and we need the writings of the church fathers. We need the gifts of the Spirit and we need the traditions of the church. We need an openness to the surprising work of the Holy Spirit and we need serious, theological study of Scripture.

One of the ways to bridge the gap between these kinds of needs is to reflect upon the Holy Spirit using "Come, Creator Spirit," a 9th century hymn to the Holy Spirit. What we see among other things in considering this hymn is the Holy Spirit is not only the breath of God, but the touch of God; the place where God touches humanity.