Word of Life Church Podcast

Brad Jersak is an author and teacher based in Abbotsford, BC, where he attends Fresh Wind Christian Fellowship and serves as Reader at All Saints of North America Monastery. His heart is to share the good news that God is Love and that God’s love was shown to us perfectly in Jesus of Nazareth. Through his books and seminers, Brad teaches that anyone can learn to hear God’s voice through the simple practice of ”listening prayer.” Those who practice listening prayer find that God’s love heals wounded hearts and empowers them to heal this broken world.Brad Jersak’s foundational book, “Can You Hear Me? Tuning in to the God who speaks” trains readers in the ways of “Listening Prayer.” This book provides biblical teaching and 33 practical exercises for tuning in to God’s voice.Brad self-identifies as a follower of Christ. His spiritual journey includes his confession of faith and trinitarian baptism in the Baptist General Conference; followed by membership and ordination in the the Conference of Mennonites in BC. Then after planting and serving in a “small-c” charismatic church plant, he was chrismated and ordained as a Reader in the Orthodox Church (OCA). He is comfortable ministering with Orthodox, evangelicals and charismatics across the spectrum.

Jesus was put to death by the Roman Empire (skillfully manipulated by the Sanhedrin). What the Roman Empire did (and every empire does) is shape the world according to its will. Empires makes disciples of all nations. They do this by using the power and fear of death. But on Easter a new empire arrived -- an empire from God appointed for the toppling of all the old empires of death. On Easter Jesus turned death inside out and gave the world a new alternative -- the empire of love, the empire of peace, the empire of eternal life!

"God is dead." Friedrich Nietzsche made the saying famous. But Nietzsche borrowed it from Hegel. And Hegel took it from a line in an old Lutheran hymn for Holy Saturday. O Great Desolation, God, yes God, is dead! The hymn doesn't mean that the God who is Father in the Trinity suffered death. But it does saying something very bold: Whatever it means for a human being to suffer and die, God in Christ has fully experienced. On Good Friday the crucified God becomes the God who dies, the God who is dead.

When Jesus and Pilate meet, it is one of the most epic moments in history. As it turns out, it’s not the trial of Jesus in the court of the Roman governor; it’s the trial of the Roman Empire itself (and all systems of violent power) in the court of God. But the enduring scandal of the cross is this: Though we believe in Jesus, we also have sympathy for Pilate’s ideas about how to run the world. As Miroslav Volf has said, “Pilate deserves our sympathies, not because he was a good, though tragically mistaken man, but because we are not much better. We may believe in Jesus, but we do not believe in his ideas, at least not his ideas about violence, truth, and justice.”

Success is an idol—the great American idol. Which emphasizes the scandal that Jesus died as a failure. Jesus died as an apparent failure in the eyes of everyone. Yes, we know that Easter changed that perspective, but slow down. We can't rush from Christmas to Easter. We have to take Good Friday on its own terms. If we use Easter to obliterate Good Friday, rather than illuminate Good Friday, we end up a "theology of success," instead of the true theology that comes from the Crucified God.

The Cross isn't just one thing with a single meaning. Rather the Cross is where all that is wrong with humankind and the world we've built is dragged into the light, and God's redemptive alternative is offered. Christ crucified is the Lamb of God (the last scapegoat) who takes away the foundational sin of scapegoating.

How did Jesus understand his own death? What purpose did he see in it? Did Jesus have a "theology of cross"? In fact, he did. A few days before Good Friday Jesus said his crucifixion and death would accomplish three things: 1. Judge the world. 2. Drive out Satan. 3. Reorganize the world.

Understanding that God is like Jesus is essential to our understanding of salvation. We must not think that salvation comes about because Jesus appeases a vengeful God, angry at the actions of sinful man. Salvation comes about because Jesus reveals the Father and does the Father's work. If we believe God killed Jesus for the sake of justice, we have dramatically distorted our understanding of salvation.God is like Jesus.God has always been like Jesus.There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.We have not always known what God is like—But now we do.

The universe has a flow and a telos, a purpose and an aim, a goal and a grain. And the grain of the universe is love. From the heart of God there is an endless flow of love. What wisdom knows is that to flow— and not fight— your way through life, you need to go with the grain. To flourish as a human being you must go with the grain of love. Our capacity to love comes from knowing that we are loved by God. Love of God demands love for the other— be they lover, neighbor, or enemy. The only way to love the other, especially an enemy is to practice the art of contemplation. Contemplation makes the Golden Rule possible.

When we look at the death of Jesus on the cross in the light of the resurrection, we are looking at our salvation. But, what do we really see when we look at the cross? Are we looking at the appeasement of a monster god through barbaric child sacrifice? Or are we seeing something else? Is the cross vengeance or love? When Jesus says, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," he is not asking God to act contrary to his nature. He is, in fact, revealing the very heart of God! The cross is not about the satisfaction of a vengeful monster god, the cross is the full revelation of a supremely merciful God! In Christ we discover a God who would rather die than kill his enemies. Once we know that God is revealed in Christ, we know what we are seeing when we look at the cross: The cross is where God in Christ absorbs sin and recycles it into forgiveness. The crucifixion is not what God inflicts upon Christ in order to forgive, but what God endures in Christ as he forgives.