Word of Life Church Podcast

Think of the Delta Blues sung by black plantation workers on Saturday nights in the 1930s. Think of Gospel music sung in black churches by those same people on Sunday mornings. This is the Psalms—a collection of songs and prayers that combine groans of sorrow with shouts of joy. This is the Psalms—Gospel & Blues.

In keeping with a healthy dose of rebellion, I unabashedly call myself religious. Self-identifying as a religious person may be the last act of rebellion possible in our libertine era! In the secular West the religious person may be the last rebel. So let me say it deliberately and with a hint of defiance: I’m not just spiritual, I’m religious! Anyone can be spiritual. Atheists are spiritual these days! So of course I’m spiritual—we all are!—but I am also intentionally religious. I accept the rigors and disciplines of a religious tradition. I do so because I refuse to leave my spiritual formation to the fads of amorphous “spirituality.” As Martin Luther King taught us, we all exist within an inescapable web of mutuality. I don’t get to make up Christianity, it’s a received faith. It’s a gift from God.

St. Francis of Assisi was a living embodiment of the Beatitudes—his life demonstrates that it is possible to live what Jesus taught. Francis was the blessed poor, the comforted mourner, who in his meekness inherited the earth. Francis hungered for justice, but gave mercy, made peace, and in his purity of heart perceived God in all things. And even though Francis was persecuted by his family and hometown, his life was indeed the kingdom of heaven on earth.

“Into this dark night souls begin to enter when God draws them forth from the state of beginners on the spiritual road, and sets them in the state of those who make progress, which is that of those who are contemplatives, to the end that, after passing through the dark night, they may arrive at the state of the perfect, which is that of the Divine union of the soul with God.” —John of the Cross. The Dark Night of the Soul

The great mystics found in the Bible and throughout church history all have a common experience; no matter how different the stories of their own spiritual journeys are, they all eventually arrive at a place of deep friendship with God.

God has existed from before time and space and matter and creation, existing as a community of love, he Father, Son, and Holy Spirit loving one another in a perfect dance of self-giving love. We all the God as Trinity. God has opened himself and he has sent his Son and sent his Spirit to invite us to come. Jesus says come. The Spirit says come. All we have to do is turn and come and be welcomed in. God is love and the uncommon Trinity is how we define love. God is love not in theory or abstraction. God is love in relationship. The God we worship is a steady stream of love. How you experience that love depends on how you respond to the love of God.

The promise of God to Abraham and David was that through their seed and sons the world would be rescued from the deep distortion of sin. But millennia later Israel was also entangled in sin. The rescuers themselves were imperiled. Israel had failed in their mission and vocation. Or so it seemed. In the fullness of time Jesus was born -- the true Seed of Abraham and Son of David -- and Jesus took Israel's mission on his shoulders and carried it through to victory.

Our trust is not in the golden calf of The Economy—But in the Maker of Heaven and Earth.Our trust is not in who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—But in the One who sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven.Our trust is not in a trillion dollar Defense Budget—But in the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.Our trust is not in Wall Street, the White House, or the Pentagon—But in the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ.

Because we’ve not understood the Ascension of Christ, we’ve also not understood the Book of Revelation. We’ve thought Revelation is primarily a prediction about future events, when it’s primarily a prophetic description of the ascended Christ.

If Jesus Christ is Lord over the principalities (the power structures of this age), then don’t put any faith in the political, economic, and military powers of this age. Pledge your allegiance to Christ alone and put all your faith for salvation in him. It’s not Wall Street or the White House or the Pentagon who is going to save us, but Jesus Christ — the one who conquered Sin and Satan, Death and Hell, and who now fills all things everywhere with himself.