Word of Life Church Podcast

What is light? God’s love in the form of photons. What is water? A liquid expression of God’s love. What is a mountain? God’s love in granite, so much older than human sorrow. What is a tree? God’s love growing up from the ground. What is a bull moose? God’s love sporting spectacular antlers. What is a whale? Fifty tons of God’s love swimming in the ocean. Why is there light and oceans and trees and moose and whales and every grain of sand? Because God is love—love that seeks expression in self-giving creativity. Unless we understand this we will misunderstand everything, and in our misunderstanding we will harm creation, including our fellow image-bearing sisters and brothers. Existence only makes sense when it is seen through the lens of love. At the beginning of time there is love. At the bottom of the universe there is love. Admittedly freedom allows for other things too—from cancer cells to atomic bombs—but at the bottom of the universe it’s love all the way down. Cancer cells and atomic bombs will not have the final word. At the end of all things there is love. When the last star burns out, God’s love will be there for whatever comes after. In the end it all adds up to love. Love never ends.

Faith Life Weekend 2015 Session 4The earliest Christian communal meals (the center of church life) were patterned after the Roman banquet, and were thus familiar to everyone. But the Christian banquet differed from the Roman banquet in four very significant ways… 1. Who was honored. (Not Jupiter, not Caesar, but Jesus Christ.)2. What kingdom was celebrated. (Not the Roman Empire, but the Kingdom of Christ.)3. How participants were seated. (Men, women, slaves, landowners, all together, all equal.)4. Who was the host. (Though there was a sponsor, the true Host was Jesus—it was the “Lord’s Supper.”)

Faith Life Weekend Session 5Seven centuries before Christ the poet-prophet Isaiah spoke of a day when God will do something wonderful for all nations on Mount Zion. (Isaiah 25:6–7)God will turn the universal burial shroud into a universal table cloth—funerals will be turned into feasts.God will swallow up death forever—the end of that dark specter that threatens to make life meaningless.God will wipe away every tear. Can the terrible tears of every Good Friday catastrophe be redeemed? Yes!God will give the whole world a feast to celebrate the conquering of death.Jesus spoke of this as “eating and drinking in the kingdom of God.”God intends to save the world, not by ballots or bullets, but by a table.

Faith Life Weekend 2015 Session 3A Moveable Feast is best known as the memoir by Ernest Hemingway. But the term actually comes from the liturgical calendar. A moveable feast is a feast day without a fixed date, like Easter. In this sermon A Moveable Feast is used to describe the ministry of Jesus. In the Gospels Jesus moves from meal to meal, feast to feast, announcing and enacting the kingdom of God. Jesus ministry truly was and is a moveable feast!

Faith Life Weekend 2015 Session 2As a child Mephibosheth was let down by a loved one; as a result he was crippled for life. But the story finds beauty when Mephibosheth was called out of the wastelands and seated at the king's table. Have you ever been let down by a loved one and it left its mark on you? Have you ever been hurt by those who were supposed to help you? Did it crippled you? Do you limp through life, still suffering from old wounds? There is hope! This is the story Mephibosheth -- a broken man called to the king's table.

Session 1 of Faith Life Weekend 2015The Jewish Passover and Christian Communion are both feasts of liberation. The Jewish Passover and Christian Communion are both meals of memory. At both meals—Passover and Communion—a story is told. Exodus and Good Friday. We are the stories we tell. We are what we remember. Our feasts shape our identity. To be Jewish is to remember the Exodus. To be Christian is to remember Good Friday. Jesus establishes his liberating kingdom in the heart of domination systems and undoes them from the inside out.

In the New Testament we’re not given just one Gospel witness to Jesus, but four. Each of the four Gospels introduce Jesus’ public ministry in a different way and from a different location.Matthew: Reissuing the Torah as the Sermon on the Mount.Mark: Casting out a demon in the synagogue in Capernaum.Luke: Announcing the Lord’s favor in the synagogue in Nazareth.John: Turning water to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee.In each case this establishes a particular emphasis of that Gospel.Matthew: It's time for a New Torah.Mark: It's time for the overthrow of Satan's kingdom.Luke: It's time for God's favor upon the world.John: It's time for the everlasting feast to begin.

Jesus’ whole ministry consisted in announcing and enacting the kingdom of God. In his three year ministry Jesus never said or did anything that was not toward the end of announcing and enacting the kingdom of God. He did this by preaching, giving parables, healing the sick, casting out demons, forgiving sinners, and by performing a table practice of radical hospitality. During these three years Jesus was training twelve disciples to be the core of a new kind of community he was forming around himself; he called this community his church. The church is the community of baptized Jesus followers who seek to live the kingdom of God, by which we mean the reign and rule of God over the nations through Jesus Christ.

We are hurled into life without warning. First we are not...then suddenly we are! Waiting in the wings a script is thrust into our hands and we're shoved onto the stage of life. It's a script of family, nation, language, culture, and religion. We have no say in the matter. We are simply handed the script. In our fourscore sojourn we are expected to stick to the script...and then die.But there is a great secret. There is an alternative. There is a counter-script.