Word of Life Church Podcast

Most of our problems in church life are rooted in worship problems driven by theology problems. This phenomenon is why the Apostle Paul addressed problems in the ancient church with answers in what we think and what we say about God. The god we believe in is the god we will worship. Worship the wrong god and experience the road to destruction and heartache. Christians worship the one God, the creator God, the God of Israel. We worship one God, but whatever it meant for God to be one was radically rethought by Paul by Jesus and the Spirit. The one God we worship is a holy community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The branches of our life that are incapable of transmitting the life of Jesus will eventually be burned. The branches of our life that are capable of transmitting the life of Jesus will eventually be cut back. But if we keep abiding in the mystery of Jesus, the pruned places of pain and loss will become the source of great grace to help heal others.

We're told that the Ethiopian Eunuch went to Jerusalem to worship. But this treasurer in the royal court of Queen Candace would not have been allowed to worship in the Temple. The Torah prohibited eunuchs from the entering the Temple. But Isaiah held forth a vision of a new kind of Temple where eunuchs would be welcome. When Philip preached the good news of Jesus, the eunuch discovered that he was welcome in the new Temple that is the kingdom of God.

Jesus said he was was the good shepherd who came to bring abundant life. He also said that those who came before him were thieves and robbers who came only to steal, kill, and destroy. Who were these bad shepherds? Jesus then said the sheep hear his voice, but they did not listen to the bad shepherds. Who are these sheep?

The kingdom of God is not heaven. It is not the church. The kingdom of God is the present rule of God in Christ on the earth through the church. It is where God is in charge and running the show. For those who enter into this kingdom and become kingdom-people God desires for them to live together in unity. In Romans 14, the Apostle Paul dealt with a growing division in the church between meat-eaters and vegetarians. In the end, Paul encourages them to stop judging and despising one another and instead work for the things that make for peace and mutual up-building, to be one as God himself is one.

The Emmaus Road disciples encountered Jesus on the road and he was made known to them in the breaking of bread. It's the same with us. We encounter Jesus on the road of our own surprising story. And we encounter Jesus in the bread of our shared sacrament. Story and Sacrament. We need both.

It’s high time that a morbid fascination with a supposed unalterable script of God–sanctioned–end-time–hyperviolence be once and for all left behind. A secret (or not-so-secret) longing for the world’s violent destruction is grossly unbecoming to the followers of the Lamb. We are not hoping for Armageddon; we are helping build New Jerusalem. We will not complete it without the return of the King, but we will move in that direction all the same. We refuse to conspire with the beasts of empire who keep the world confined to the death culture of Babylon. There’s always another Armageddon looming on the horizon, threatening to perpetuate the bloody ways of Cain and throw more Abels in a mass grave. But we are not to cooperate with that vision. We are to resist it. We are to anticipate a future created by the Prince of Peace through the very lives we live. We are to work in concert with Jesus Christ as he labors to repair the world.

Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, wanted to see the wounds of Christ. What he discovered was the flesh of the wounded God. He was not so much "Thomas the Doubter" as "Thomas the Revelator." The very wounds of Christ, the wounds Thomas touched, were wounds opening up a window into the glory of God.

Perhaps the most misunderstood and misused teaching of Jesus is his Olivet Discourse -- the teaching Jesus gave to his to his disciples on the Mount of Olives regarding the signs of "the end." The end of which Jesus is speaking is not the end of the world, but the the end of the Temple age. While the Temple establishment was plotting the end of Jesus, Jesus was prophesying the end of the Temple, the Temple establishment, and the Temple age. Jesus connected the demise of the Temple with the dawn of the Kingdom of God.