Word of Life Church Podcast

At his baptism the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus in the form of a dove...not an eagle. The eagle was the representative bird of the Roman Empire. As a symbol of power and might eagles were affixed atop Roman military standards. Hawks and doves, then as now, are symbolic of war and peace, violence and gentleness. Empires have long adopted eagles and lions as their emblems -- birds and beasts of prey....

We live in a secular age. Secularism as a way of ordering society (pioneered by Hume, Voltaire, Paine, and Jefferson) has prevailed in Europe and North America. Secularism carries the sense that nothing is truly sacred; heaven, if it exists, is far away; God, if God exists, should be restricted to the private realm; religion (or spirituality) should be an expression of private individualism. So ho...

"And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way." -Matthew 2:12 After the Magi found and worshiped Jesus, they returned to their own country by another way; not the way they came. A real encounter with Christ will not leave us unchallenged or unchanged. Once we see Jesus as the true King, we have to journey through life BY ANOTHER WAY. We cann...

As I sat in openness with the Spirit I felt three things about Word of Life Church in the coming year. A Coming together. A fresh sense of community. A move toward the contemplative. The final move away from consumer Christianity. A willingness to be radically other. Because accommodation to Babylon is no longer an option. To sum it up in three words, we're trying to be Cohesive, Contemplative, Al...

One of the boldest claims a Christian can make is that Jesus is the light of the world. Christians don't mean this as a cheap religious cliche or as a bit of bumper sticker evangelism. There's nothing tame or docile about asserting that Jesus is the light of the world. It's the audacious claim that all of history and all humanity are informed and interpreted by the light that comes from the life o...

"All the kitsch to be found in Christian life and Christian art arises from a failure to take the Incarnation seriously." -Hans Urs von Balthasar (kitsch: mass produced art in poor taste; often characterized by an excessive sentimentality) If we think of Christmas as God donning a human costume to playact as a person, we treat the Incarnation as kitsch. If we think of Jesus being born just so he c...

What C.S. Lewis told us about Aslan, is true about Jesus: He's not tame or safe, but he is very good. Once we find out that Jesus will be good to whoever he wants to be good to—regardless of race, religion, nationality, politics, or whatever—that’s when we discover that Jesus is neither tame nor safe…he’s just good. Very good! But we’ll never know these things if we stay in the cramped little conf...

If we learn the lesson of Mary's Song we make this revolutionary discovery: Jesus isn't going to meet us in the penthouse of our prosperity, but in the garbage dump of our pain and poverty.

The arrival of Messiah was announced as Isaiah's prophecy that God would come to his people on a highway in the desert. John the Baptist preached in the desert and Jesus first appeared publicly as Messiah in that desert. That's the way it was and that's the way it is. It's from your spiritual desert that God comes to you in a new way. Your spiritual desert isn't bad news, it's good news. This is t...

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,...

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...

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 dren...

"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 prerog...

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...

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...

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 mor...

As followers of Jesus who are also citizens of the nation with the world’s largest economy and most powerful military, we face the same kinds of challenges as the Jewish exiles and early Christians to whom the books of Daniel and Revelation were written. Their situation speaks to us. American Christians have to learn how to live like the Jewish exiles and early Christians who lived in the midst of...

Daniel held onto his Jewish identity in the midst of pagan empire through the practice of daily formative prayer. But prayer is no guarantee of success or safety. In fact, formative prayer, the kind of prayer that resists being conformed into the image of the empire, may lead us into the lion's den.

Perhaps the greatest need for the modern Western church is to turn away from the reactive and turn toward the contemplative. We are reactive when we respond out of fear to a perceived threat to our assumptions and self-interest. We are contemplative when we perceive the other through God's eyes of love and respond with compassion. But the only way to enter the contemplative is through the practice...

What if God does not use us despite our weaknesses and failures, but because of weaknesses and failures?

At the end of the Babylonian Empire, King Belshazzar had succeeded Nebuchadnezzar and he followed in the same arrogant ways of his predecessor. During a party where Belshazzar and his guest were toasting the gods of gold and silver, a mysterious hand appears and writes on the wall. The message has Belshazzar leaves stunned. Daniel is brought in to interpret this message and it is bad news: Babylon...

When things are hazy, one thing is clear: Jesus is the way. When things get crazy, one thing is certain: Jesus is the truth. When things begin to wither and die, one thing is consistent: Jesus is the life. As we reflect upon Jesus' declaration that he is the way and the truth and the life we find the life we were always looking for. To experience that life, the Jesus life, we have to be willing wa...