Word of Life Church Podcast

God is not the cozy cabin of a Thomas Kinkade painting. To get involved with God is to invite great risk -- it's to risk the fiery furnace and the lions' den. Think of the most notable characters in Scripture: Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Mary, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and most of all, Jesus. Which one of them played it safe? Not a one! To get involved with God is to risk misunderstanding, rejection, failure, suffering, and even death. Christendom was an attempt to invent a risk-free Christianity. But removing all risk makes Christianity incomprehensible. To risk too little, is to risk too much.

During the season of Advent we address the past, the present, and the future all at once. Looking to the past we recall the yearning of ancient Israel for the coming of their long awaited Messiah. Looking to the future we confess that Christ shall come again to judge the living and the dead. But living in the present we look for the appearing of Christ in our everyday lives. To do this we have to wake up. We have to shake off the sedation of certitude, civil religion, and consumerism and awake to the reality of Christ!

The final eschatological vision in the Book of Revelation is the answer to our constant prayer, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” In the final two chapters of Revelation we are shown a vision of the arrival on earth of the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, the city of the Lamb.

The gospel is the story of Jesus. It's not a plan for going to heaven or a formula for forgiveness; it's not a set of spiritual laws for life or God's principles for success. The gospel is the story of Jesus. To climb into the story of Jesus is to encounter salvation. This is what Zacchaeus did. This is what we need to do.

The final triumph of Christ over beastly empire and its ways and means of death is described in the Book of Revelation as the war of the Lamb. Jesus doesn't become a righteous beast to conquer evil beasts -- Jesus conquers the beasts of empire as a slain and risen Lamb. This is the kind of war that is depicted in Revelation 19 with the white horse rider called the Word of God who wears a robe drenched in his own blood and wages a righteous war with a sword in his mouth. This is the way of the Lamb. This is the war of the Lamb.

"One thing have I desired...to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord." -Psalm 27:4

"It is the prerogative and charm of beauty to win hearts." -Don Quixote

In the modern age Christian apologetic and ethics -- defending truth and defining good -- have been very prominent. Christan aesthetics, on the other hand, has been largely ignored. But we may have reached the point where it is now chiefly the prerogative of beauty to win hearts. When arguing about the truth and shouting about what is good have failed, it is beauty that has enough charm to draw people to Jesus Christ.

The mysterious book of Revelation is a bit like Don McLean's 1972 song "American Pie" -- if you get the allusions and cryptic references it's cool and makes sense; but if not it's just confusing. The book of Revelation is best understood as a first century prophetic critique of the Roman Empire. As such it serves as a Christian critique of all beastly empires. In Revelation we discover that God's kingdom does not come by the violent means of the beast, but by the self-sacrificing way of the Lamb.

Jesus is the savior -- the savior of all that is saved...including the Old Testament. Jesus is the one who saves us from a harmful misreading of the Old Testament. Both Jesus and Paul show us how to read the Old Testament in a redemptive way. To read the Bible in the light of Christ is to discover a Biblical trajectory. A trajectory away from violence and vengeance, and toward mercy and inclusion.

When the Jewish exiles arrived in Babylon their hope was for an immediate return to Jerusalem. But the prophet Jeremiah told them the exile would last for 70 years. So the Jews went about the business of learning how to live as exiles in Babylon. After 65 years of exile, Daniel began to pray and remind God that the 70 year sentence of exile was nearly served. That's when the angel Gabriel came and explained to Daniel that the exile was going to be more like seventy times seven years! This calls for patience with God.

All Hallows Eve (Halloween) and All Saints Day are further examples of Christians re-appropriating pagan holidays for Christian purposes. Like was done with Christmas and Easter -- though Halloween has proved more difficult to unmoor for its pagan past. In its Christian origin All Hallows Eve was a time to remember the departed saints. (You can see how this could lend itself to less sacred and more ghoulish themes.) The idea was to remember the departed saints because they still belong to the communion of saints. Because we believe in resurrection (and being with the Lord in the interim), we understand the body of Christ, the communion of saints, to be comprised of both the quick and dead, the living and those who sleep in Christ.