Word of Life Church Podcast

Christianity is a sacramental faith. It is not a faith of mere theological ideas, but of sacraments. Sacrament is an interface between the spiritual and the material, between heaven and earth. Jesus Christ as the Incarnation of the Word of God is the ultimate Sacrament. Because of the Incarnation and Resurrection Christianity is a sacramental faith. To be properly practiced, Christianity requires not just prayer and scripture, but water, bread, and wine. These are the necessary elements for the sacraments of baptism and communion. These sacraments are portals for interaction with Christ, who is the ultimate Sacrament.

Mankind was created for more than what we're living for. Created in God's likeness to bear his image, we strayed far from the life of God. It is Jesus who calls us, as he did Nicodemus, out of the "Circus of Systems" and into the life of the age to come, the life we are created for. Will we have the faith of Nicodemus and enter this new life?

Secularism is a philosophy that says nothing is truly sacred. At best there are only ideas we call sacred. But there are no real sacred objects or places or times or things. The secular West has generally accepted this premise; but we feel it as a great loss. The modern premise that there are no sacred things is simply untrue. Christians insist that the sacred is more than a mere idea; there are sacred realities. Christian insistence upon the reality of the sacred is based upon one confession: The Word became flesh. Words are symbols signifying something beyond themselves. Words are not the thing themselves, but they are how we describe and communicate the idea of a thing. The Word of God, however, is God. The Word of God is Life and Light, and that Word became flesh! The Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, perfectly reveals God because he is God made flesh. The Incarnation settles the question of whether or not there are sacred things: Jesus is sacred flesh and blood!

The role of art is to remind us of this beauty, to help us see what we've overlooked. Those who labor in the visual arts help us see what we have lost sight of. The poets and writers remind us of what we too easily forget: Life is beautiful. Even when life is tragic and painful, there is still beauty in it. We can say similar things about the artists working in music, theater, film, dance. They don’t just create beauty, they call attention to the beauty that already belongs to life. Life is beautiful. And ultimately life is beautiful because God is an artist. God doesn't mass produce anything. Not mountains, not snowflakes. He doesn't manufacture cheap clones. We share a common faith; the faith that confesses Jesus Christ is Lord. But each of us also has a unique story. We need to allow more latitude for diverse stories of saving grace. And not just diversity in how people encounter Christ, but diversity for how the life in Christ is lived out. Don't compare your story with others. We don't need an enforced conformity. We are each a unique poem of God.

21st century Western culture no longer has the sense of a God-saturated world. Modern people are not very religious at all. Today most people, though not atheists, feel God is somehow absent or far away. Instead we feel that we live in a secular world with God a long way off. Collectively we feel this as a kind of loss. The Western world in modernity is like a person haunted by a nagging feeling that something has been lost. That something is the Sacred. The sacred has been lost; but it can be recovered. However, this is NOT done by taking up arms in the culture wars. The culture wars are mostly a debate about the nature of civil religion in America. We cannot try to enforce the sacred on a secular culture. Instead, we need to help the church recover the beauty of the sacred. It is sacred beauty, not angry protest, that can make Christianity alluring again.

To have a sense of the kind of time in which you are living is part of being prophetic. Malachi was a prophet. He had a sense of the time in which he lived. Malachi knew he lived in a dark time. But as a prophet, Malachi believed the day would come, that there would be a dawn. This dawn (as all the prophets said) would be the coming of Messiah. God's anointed king would bring the day of God's glorious reign upon earth. The canon of the Hebrew scripture closes with a final prophetic picture of Messiah: The picture of a glorious sunrise where sun rays are seen as wings. With prophetic imagination Malachi sees healing conveyed in those radiant beams. This is Malachi's poetic prophesy of The Healing Sunrise.

The Gospel of John tells us that "no one has ever seen God until they see Jesus." The revelation of God is given to us in Jesus Christ. And so we must ask ourselves: Does the view of an angry sadistic monster God look like Jesus? Do we see examples of Jesus pouring out vengeful wrath upon people? Of course we don't! And so, we must reject the view of a monster God. Yet people still struggle with the vision of an angry, vindictive God. God's attitude towards you is one of unwavering fatherly love. God knows you and God loves you. God as your father is responsible for you. He is not a neglectful parent. Our Father is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. God doesn't view you as an enemy, but even if he did, he would love you. God is kind!

Christ is the new day. If we think only in terms of Christ bringing a new day then we sit by passively and wait for Jesus to forcibly bring the new day. This is the way most of us have been misled to think about the kingdom of Christ. But if we think a bit more creatively, deeply, and scripturally, we discover Christ is the new day and that to be in Christ is to enter the day now! This was in the Bible all along, but somehow we managed to miss it. To believe in Christ is to be baptized into Christ and his kingdom, which is to enter into the new day that is Christ!

Explore the profound joy surrounding the birth of Christ, as the true Savior-King emerges to free us from darkness and fear. Reflect on the significance of Bethlehem and the biblical narrative, connecting it to the quest for light and joy. Discover a new kind of politics centered on love and peace, inviting goodwill towards all humanity. Embrace the transformative message of Jesus, reminding us that peace is not just a destination but the very path we walk.

A long time ago, the church made the cross mostly about private and individual sin. From there the cross eventually became largely sentimental. What was left out was its prophetic critique and divine condemnation of the religion and politics of the world. Religion has been largely about using blame to make ourselves feel better. Politics has been mostly about using power to get what we want. The crucifixion is where God exposes and shames our religion of blame and our politics of power. The cross is where love triumphs over blame through forgiveness. The cross is where love triumphs over violent power through suffering. The cross is the triumph of God's LOVE over the world!