Word of Life Church Podcast

By far the most common way we're formed in faith is we receive it from our parents. There are Christian conversions from other religions and non-religious backgrounds, but these are more rare. Many of us are Christians because are parents were also Christians. We are all formed by tradition with choices made by parents, in our language, in our culture, etc. But we don't just give our kids a Bible and expect them to be Christian. They need the understanding and experience of Christian tradition!

The greatest challenge that we face in passing on our Christian faith to our children and our grandchildren is the growing tide of secularism in America. Secularism is the idea that stemmed from the Enlightenment that God must be restricted to the private realm. But the private spirituality of the solitary, self-styled Christian will not withstand secularism. To live as a Christian in the 21st century West will require the organized faith community of the Church with its sacred traditions. The Enlightenment that introduced the modern age taught us to think individually. But the Biblical way of thinking is corporately and generationally. Christian tradition is how Christian faith is passed on from generation to generation. It is true that tradition must be kept alive by the Spirit. But rejection tradition wholesale leads to the evaporation of faith. This is why at Word of Life Church we are recovering and rehabilitating the word "tradition." Our grandchildren will not be Christians because of an emotional experience. They will be Christian by the process of formation through the traditions of prayer, scripture, sacrament, worship, creed, and calendar.

In life, it's easy for us to assign labels to people. It's how we identify ourselves inside a group. But often, even without realizing it, we put label on other people in order to negate them. We reduce them to a category. We put labels on ourselves that we have to live up to (or down to). Once you adopt a "pressure group label" you have to live up to the expectations of the group. Self-adopting a pressure group label is pledging allegiance to group-think hostility. When we, as Christians, label people and view them as a category rather than a person, we misjudge them. Our self-righteousness can require us to categorically exclude a sinful person from our presence. When viewed as a person however, our righteousness compels us to receive and forgive sinners.

The degree to which the Sermon on the Mount has been ignored by Christians is scandalous. We want Jesus to die for us, but leave our world alone, especially if we are on top of the world. But Jesus has no intention of leaving our world alone- he fully intends to change it! What Jesus preached in his sermons and what Jesus did on his cross are one in the same! In the Sermon on the Mount and on the cross Jesus re-oriented the world from an axis of power enforced by violence to an axis of love expressed in forgiveness. To critique the enforcement of violence in our culture will draw the ire of many. And often, it's hard to be truly compelling about loving and forgiving our enemies when we don't have real and deadly enemies. But Martin Luther King, Jr DID have real, deadly enemies. But he taught, and practiced, the Jesus way of loving and forgiving your enemies. It was a message that would ultimately bring his death, but he changed the world!

Jesus is forming a movement of people who will join him in announcing and enacting the Kingdom of God. An important understanding about Jesus is the way in which he selects his followers. Jesus does not seem to be very concerned about our categories of "good people" and "bad people". Instead, he divides people into the proud and the humble. The shocking thing is who joins Jesus' new movement. It's not the insiders, but the outsiders. It's not the righteous, but sinners. The moment Simon self-identified as a sinner, he qualified to become a disciple. Jesus spent very little time condemning moral transgressions. The emphasis of Jesus' ministry was to be with people, to share a table with them. Teaching people how to encounter Jesus Christ and live in his presence will do far more to produce real transformation than trying to apply the law. Christianity is not a Bible study or a moral code, it's an encounter with Jesus Christ!

After Jesus completed his 40 days of prayer and fasting in the wilderness, he soon returned to his hometown of Nazareth. Initially, Jesus was well received by his own people. They were brimming with excitement and great anticipation that their hometown kid might really be the long foretold messiah. But Jesus quickly realizes that the people in his hometown really just want to see him do miracles. They want Jesus to be a spectacle and do tricks for them. Jesus also knows that it is virtually impossible to be a prophet in your hometown. The prophet always challenges the idea of "us vs. them". When the hometown crowd hears one of their own challenge the idea that God is not on their side, they quickly turn on him.

John the Baptist called on Israel to repent in preparation for the Messiah. When people began asking what it was they should do, everything John said had to do with money. When you are willing to rethink what you do with your money... you've repented! John doesn't mention any other sins, but he continually stresses economic repentance. Why? Because he is trying to prepare a people who will follow Messiah into a new kingdom. The greatest obstacle to entering the kingdom of God is the tyranny of economic self-interest.

God did not suddenly appear on the earth in human form one day. He came just as every other human did: He was born to a mother as an infant, and grew through childhood and into an adult. But the Bible tells us very little about Jesus' childhood life. The only account of his life between infancy and age thirty is found in the book of Luke, in which a 12-year-old Jesus is "lost" at the Temple in Jerusalem. And when Mary and Joseph finally find Jesus safe in the Temple, it is there that we hear the first recorded words of Jesus, when he says "Why are you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" Although Jesus was speaking to his parents, he could very well be speaking to each one of us, "Why are you looking for me?" We seek after God in church buildings on Sundays, not because Jesus is lost, but because WE are lost. And we believe that Jesus knows the way!

When God became Man and came to the earth, he experienced the fullness of humanity. He didn't merely just appear as a man. He was born as a helpless baby, lived a life as a man in the Roman occupied territory of Israel, and died. Jesus became Immanual, God with us, so that he might give us a new way of being human. He came that he might lead us beyond the ways of death into life and resurrection. As humans, we are indeed a violent species. From Cain killing Abel, to Auschwitz, to Hiroshima, to Sandy Hook Elementary School, we have been born into violence. Born on the first Christmas, the Prince of Peace offers us a better way.

What kind of news would make you literally leap for joy, jump up and down, and throw your hat in the air? The end of a long war? The fall of the Berlin Wall? Winning the lottery jackpot? Being cured of cancer? When war ends and tyranny topples, when prosperity comes and sickness goes, that is good news! And this is the kind of good news that Mary and Elizabeth celebrate together. These two poor and oppressed Jewish women, living in an occupied land, are both pregnant with children that angels have prophesied great things over. They are overflowing with joy because they believe something is about to happen. They believe God is about to act and launch a revolution through their two sons. The coming revolution is the kingdom of God: God's way of running the world.