Word of Life Church Podcast

Some Galilean Passover pilgrims had been executed when they rioted against Roman occupation and eighteen people had perished in a Jerusalem building collapse. Jesus commented on these tragedies by saying, unless your rethink everything, you will all perish in the same way. Jesus is not talking about afterlife issues, but warning Jerusalem against embracing the way of war. Jesus is saying to them,...

Salvation is this: to live in the kingdom of God—the kingdom that comes from heaven bringing peace, justice, and human flourishing to the earth, and where King Jesus bestows forgiveness upon all, and finally, at the end of the age, raises the dead.

In the wilderness the devil tempted Jesus with three good ideas: 1. Feed everyone. 2. Liberate everyone. 3. Persuade everyone. And who would disagree that these are good ideas? But Jesus discerned the devil lurking in those good ideas. The devil's good ideas were really these not so good ideas... 1. Feed everyone and forget God. 2. Liberate everyone and kill the bad guys. 3. Persuade everyone and...

Jesus is the perfect epiphany of who God is. Reading the Bible without the spirit of Jesus is a veiled and death-dealing reading of Scripture. This why Augustine said, "It is not the Old Testament that is done away with in Christ, but the concealing veil, so that it may be understood through Christ."

Loving is a kind of knowing. We know God not only by collecting information about God. We know God by loving the way God loves. We love our enemies because God loves them. God loves the people we hate. When we love those who judge us, make fun of us, insult us, dismiss us, or judge us we see who God is and who we are supposed to be. Hate is a destructive force. When we respond to enemies with hate...

In Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus opens his sermon with the Beatitudes -- eight blessings. In Luke's account of the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus also opens his sermon with the Beatitudes -- this time four blessings. But in the Sermon on the Plain Jesus also pronounces four woes. Luke's Gospel reminds us that the Kingdom of Christ brings both blessing and woe.

You may feel like a sinner; you may feel guilty; you may feel like a failure; but none of that matters. Keep believing in the boundless mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ and you will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.

The Bible is a dangerous book — especially if you emphasize the parts people would rather overlook. In his hometown the people of Nazareth tried to throw Jesus off a cliff. Why? Because Jesus told the stories prophets tell — and no prophet is accepted in his hometown.

Throughout history the Bible has been misused to justify wars of conquest, genocide, the institution of slavery, women held as property, and any number of other egregious abuses. But to do this we have to ignore the greatest truth the Bible gives us: Jesus Christ is Lord of All! As Christians we are not allowed to use the Bible to disobey Jesus! All Scripture is fulfilled in and by Jesus Christ. S...

Every baptism is a new Exodus from the bondage of Egypt and a new entrance into the Promised Land of freedom and forgiveness in Christ. Every baptism is a spiritual incorporation into a new Israel — an Israel no longer defined by ethnicity, circumcision, and Torah observance, but defined by faith, baptism, and loyalty to Jesus. This new Israel is what the Apostle Paul calls the Body of Christ or t...

On January 6 we commemorate the epiphany granted to the magi from the east—Persian astronomers, astrologers, magicians who discerned an auspicious sign in the stars and made a thousand mile journey to worship the Christ child in Bethlehem. These magi were the first Gentile worshipers of the King of the Jews and with their famous gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, they foretold that Mary’s chil...

When we think of Jesus we mostly think of the man of his ministry years. At Christmastime we also think of the baby Jesus lying in the manger of Bethlehem. But there’s one episode in the Gospels that takes place between infancy and ministry. It’s the episode of the boy Jesus when he was in Jerusalem at the age of twelve

In the eighth century BC the Hebrew prophet Micah of Morasheth said that Bethlehem would be the place where a new king of the Jews would be born. Bethlehem was a small village five miles south of Jerusalem, but it was also the place where three hundred years earlier King David had been born. In other words, Micah was prophesying that in Bethlehem a new kingdom of Israel would begin. But we who kno...

When God lives among us salvation will swallow up our sorrows, sweep away our troubles, and we will fear no more. When God lives among us our salvation will have come. Salvation is not a program or a plan, salvation is not three steps or four laws—salvation is what happens when God lives among us.

During Advent we prepare the way for a “second coming" of Christ into our lives. Yes, Jesus Christ shall come again to judge the living and the dead. Amen. But the living Christ also comes to us again and again in fresh new ways, and we must prepare the way for these new comings of Christ. We prepare the way by cultivating a willingness to change. Dietrich Bonhoeffer put more bluntly: "When a huma...

Advent is for waiting. And our Advent hope is rooted in sacred memory — the memory of the story of salvation that we tell through the Christian calendar. We begin the year-long telling of the salvation story, not by celebrating, but by waiting — waiting for God to act. But that’s the problem, we don’t really like waiting, because waiting is not having. Waiting assumes a kind of poverty, we wait be...

I know I’m speaking idealistically, but I’m a dreamer (and I’m not the only one), so let me just say it. There’s no place on earth like the church. A place where Matthew 25 is just a normal day — a place where the poor are fed and clothed, the sick are helped and healed (who do you think invented hospitals?), a place where the immigrant is welcomed, and the prisoner is given dignity. A place where...

The Babylonian exile was a time of theological deconstruction for Israel. The literal destruction of Jerusalem and the temple gave the Hebrew prophets space to rethink things. And they did. They dreamed of a new Israel, a new Jerusalem, a new temple, and a new covenant.

If we’re schooled in denial we don’t know what to do with suffering when it comes. But the Hebrew people—formed in the crucible of suffering—know what to do. You write a poem, sing a song, create a lament that gives full expression to the pain you feel. You make art out of your pain so that you can give it away to God.

Jeremiah was a prophet for the end times; and we need such prophets because things are always coming to an end. It’s hubris and idolatry to think that anything other than God and his kingdom lasts forever. Nations and empires, institutions and economies, moments, movements, and even our lives all come to an end. But prophets like Jeremiah help us accept these inevitable endings and see the purpose...

This road we are on following Jesus isn’t pretty or neat and tidy. It’s hard to follow Jesus. Whoever told you otherwise is selling Jesus short. Following Jesus is thrilling and rewarding, but it isn't easy. We have to accept hardship as the pathway to the peace that Jesus talks about. The psalms have been given to us as very real, very honest language to be used to reach out to God through the ha...

This beautiful pilgrim psalm is a meditation on the mercy of God. The psalmist sings about how God does not mark iniquities, about God’s plenteous forgiveness, about God’s steadfast love, about God’s great power to redeem. It’s also a song about waiting with hope. The soul of the pilgrim waits for the mercy of God...more than the watchman for the morning. Yes, we wait for the mercy of God—mercy as...

"Sometimes when I stand in some corner of Auschwitz, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. And I want to be there right in the thick of what people call “horror” and still be able to say: life is beautiful. And now I lie here in a corner, dizzy and feverish and unable to do a thing. But I am also wit...

Pilgrimage (a journey of a spiritual nature) has always been a practice among spiritual seekers. The ancient Jews were to make three pilgrimages a year to the holy city of Jerusalem. This is the context for Psalm 84 — it’s a meditation on the pilgrim journey to Zion. As such it's a profound reflection upon the all-important journey of the heart — an inner pilgrimage toward a mature revelation of G...