Word of Life Church Podcast

<p>The Transfiguration is the high point of the narrative arc in the synoptic gospels. Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus on the mountain where he was praying. This is the moment It is when the divinity of Jesus was revealed to Peter, James, John. The Transfiguration moment is where the Old Testament hands the project over to Jesus, where Moses and Elijah find their great successor, and where the old witness of the Hebrew scriptures truly becomes the new witness of the New Testament.</p>

<p>Special Guest Terry Wildman is a Native American and the head of Rain Song Ministries, a Christian organization ministering to the indigenous people of North America. In this special sermon, Terry Wildman describes the current plight of Native Americans and offers a perspective of an appropriate Christian response.</p>

<p>Pastor Brian Zahnd recently made a blog post that received considerable attention, entitled, "My Problem With The Bible". It has been shared over 17,000 times on Facebook, 700+ tweets on Twitter, and been reposted on numerous blogs across the internet. Obviously, he has hit on something that a lot of people resonate with. In this sermon, Pastor Brian shares that he is serious about the Bible, and wants to read it for all it's worth, but he has a problem with it. Discover what his problem is (and perhaps your problem too) in this sermon.</p>

<p>When we look to Scripture we discover God is the God of time who created time along with everything else in his creation. God existed before time. He is not bound by time, but rules over time. He entered into time through Jesus Christ. Time, as a part of God’s good creation, is sacred. One of the ways we can recover the sacredness of time is to organize it around Jesus himself. We mark the years by Jesus. This year is 2014 AD, with “AD” meaning the year of our Lord. We follow the church calendar in order to mark the months of the years around Jesus. We honor the sacredness of Sabbath because of the resurrection of Jesus and if we open ourselves, we find every moment to be sacred. Every moment opens up before us as an opportunity to acknowledge Jesus and make the moment-by-moment choice to obey him and not waste the time we have been given.</p>

<p>Jesus is presently building his church. We are called to walk in such a way as to build up the church, because we are one body, one church, one body of Christ. We work with Jesus to build up the church by consciously doing life together. God has made us in his image, in the image of the one God revealed in the distinct persons. We were created as distinct, unique individuals who are interconnected with other people. In the New Testament we find the recurring phrase "one another". This phrase tips us off to our responsibilities, the things we can do for one another as we live together, working to build a healthy, unified church.</p>

<p>The Bible opens with the story of God's work of creation. At the end of the first account of creation in Genesis the point is made emphatically: "<a href="http://...and" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">...and</a> behold, it was very good." Genesis 2 gives a second account of creation—this time the emphasis is on the human vocation. Creation was good, but it was incomplete. Adam was to work with God as a gardener, tending God’s good earth, cultivating it, caring for it, protecting it, and expanding it. The original human vocation was to work with God in the cultivation and care of God’s good earth. God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the earth in order to deputize them for the care and cultivation of the earth. But then sin happened, with catastrophic effects upon human identity and vocation. Not only did human beings begin to suffer, creation itself began to suffer. God's children commissioned with the care of God's good earth had turned bad.</p>

<p>Why is there light and water and trees and whales and life and Valentine's Day? Because God is love. Creation is God’s infinite love expressed as matter and energy. God is love that seeks expression in the beauty of self-giving creativity. This is the basic revelation needed to understand the phenomenal gift of life. At the bottom of the universe, and at the end of all things, there is love. The meaning of life adds up to love. And unless you love, you will live life wrong.</p>

<p>When we feel hurt, threatened, angered by a person, an incident, or some situation, we instinctively view it through a perspective of self-defense. If you are a non-contemplative person you will think your perspective is the total truth. We must have a change in perspective, or we will forever look at the world the same way. There are breakthroughs in perspective that occur through the practice of contemplative prayer that can happen no other way. Contemplative prayer is prayer without agenda and largely without words. In contemplative prayer, you sit with your problems and issues in the presence of Jesus. Jesus can give us an entirely new perspective outside of ourselves.</p>

<p>One of the primary goals of spiritual formation is to become your true self. This is why the primary purpose of prayer is not to get God to do what you want, but to become properly formed. If you spend all your time praying out of your agitated, grasping, foolish, fearful self, it does very little good. We have been distorted by sin, both our sin and the sins of the fallen world. We must lift up our soul to God. We lift up our soul to God that we might recover the proper image and that we might escape our false self and find our true self. Your true self is one that is calm, content, wise, and unafraid. Deep inside, this is who you really are.</p>

<p>Part of maintaining a healthy soul is learning who you really are, knowing yourself. In this message, <a href="http://wolc.com/staff/peri-zahnd/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Peri Zahnd</a> presents a description of the Enneagram personality system, including the basics that you will need to understand how the Enneagram works. As you will see, only a few simple concepts are needed to begin your journey of self-discovery.</p>

<p>In order to experience natural, open conversation with Jesus, an openness is required. The initiation is on Jesus' part, but our response requires an opening. There is a gentle knock, which leads to either an opening, or nothing. All conversion results from a moment of spiritual openness. But too often we restrict spiritual openness to a single moment of conversion. An over-emphasis on a single "got saved" moment ruins us for future spiritual growth. People often have their one moment of spiritual openness, then slam the door forever! Christianity is an ongoing conversation with Jesus. This is true both for the individual believer and for the corporate body. Jesus Christ is the Living Word with whom we must constantly engage. We need to cultivate spiritual openness. This is the path to more conversions and deeper salvation.</p>

<p>The Living God is both the father and home of the human soul. When a soul tries to live on its own apart from God is in a wrong state, it has "lost" its way. This is why "lost" is so often the metaphor used to describe what is wrong with us. The lost soul tries to live apart from its true father and away from its real home. The opposite of the lost soul is the soul that lives by faith. Living by faith is the proper way to go about the task of being human. Your soul is a precious gift from God. But the fallen world with its system of power politics, greedy economics, and scapegoating religion, is an enemy to your soul. The world will leave your soul in tatters, distorted by pride, fear, and greed. This is why we need to discover the way in Christ to restore our soul.</p>

<p>Every person is sacred. If we are going to talk about recovering the sacred in a secular world, we have to talk about the unique sacredness of the human being. There is a sacredness that belongs to all of God’s creation, the oceans and forests, the mountains and plains, the planets and stars, the plants and animals. But there is a unique human sacredness. It’s called the Imago Dei, the Image of God.</p>

<p>For most of the last half of Christian history we've made the gospel mostly juridical. We have made our salvation a study of how to be acquitted for our crimes and be declared innocent before the court of divine justice. But our problem is not just that we’ve run afoul of the law and stand guilty before God. Our deeper problem is that we are ill. We need a gospel that is therapeutic and healing. We need a physician to heal us from our harms. We are ill because of our addiction to mimesis and violence. We’re sick because we look at each other through the distorted lens of competitive fear. We harm ourselves because of our irrational obsession with wealth and power. The kingdom of God is enacted when the sick, both bodily sick and spiritually sick, are being healed!</p>

<p>The Bible is the word of God that bears witness to the Word of God: Jesus Christ. The Bible did not create the Heavens and Earth. The Bible did not become flesh. The divine Word of God did these things. Jesus is God. The Bible is not. We worship Jesus; we do not worship the Bible. We worship the God revealed in Scripture. The Bible is not perfect. Christ is the perfection of God as a human being. What the Bible does infallibly is point us to Jesus Christ. The Bible is the inspired witness to the true Word of God who is Jesus Christ. The Church must always be in conversation with our sacred text, but to the end that we might submit to the rule of the living Christ.</p>

<p>When it comes to being chosen in a favorable sense, we all want to be picked. Whether it's chosen for the baseball team, as a cheerleader, for the prom, or for the job, we all want to be special. To find yourself not among the chosen can be a very painful experience. We want to be among the chosen people, we want to be a chosen person. Within our own stories that we tell we are the chosen. Every nation and ethnicity have stories that affirm they are special and chosen: the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Native Americans, modern Americans, and of course, the Hebrew people. Within our own stories, we relate ourselves as the ones that are great and blessed, bringing wisdom and bringing liberty. We need the sense of chosenness to produce the necessary sense of community. But as we engage with other people, other tribes, other nations, and other ethnicities, we need a more contemplative view. This is exactly what the prophets do! They help us see life from a contemplative perspective.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>The good news of great joy is that the world's true king has been born! This Savior-King is going to free us from our chains and lead us out of the dark. Christmas is the time of year when Christians are called to repeat the sounding joy. The world’s true King didn't come to reign over the old politics of fear. Christ the King came to lead us out of fear and into the politics of love. Jesus invites us into a new kind of politics. It is the way of peace. There is no way to peace, peace is the way. Jesus is peace. Instead of predatory, our stance is benevolent. We don't have to hate. We don't have to fight. We don't have to fear. We can have goodwill toward our sisters and brothers, and toward all of our fellow humans!</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>In the early first century, declaring a new religion wouldn't cause much trouble. The world was awash in varied religion, but it had one political scheme: the Roman Empire. For the early Christians to declare a new political king was a very dangerous proclamation. The early Christians dramatically and radically re-imagined the world with a new king, a new Caesar. This is precisely what the gospel is a declaration that the world now has a new emperor: Jesus Christ of Nazareth! The early Christians were accused of being "people who are turning the world upside down" because they were part of a strange movement that worshiped a crucified Galilean Jew whom they claimed had been raised from the dead and was now the world's true emperor. This new king would reorganize humanity, based on a system of reconciling love, not avenging power. This new world is the Kingdom of God.</p>

<p>The book of Daniel sets forth a vision of a king who is not like warrior-conqueror kings of world history. The dominating rulers throughout history were warriors, known for their rage and mercilessness in conquering the kingdoms of the world. But Daniel reveals a king who will rule humanely and not beastly, who's reign is known for its peace and everlasting shalom. We worship a different kind of king: King Jesus!</p>

<p>When Jesus left his quiet life as a carpenter to launch his career as a prophet and preacher, he first had to walk from Nazareth to Capernaum. We to tend to look at the life of Jesus as being filled with wonder and miracles. But in the Incarnation of God, Christ entered into the tedium of human life. But Jesus made it holy. All of the unremarkable bits necessary to living are made holy in Christ. Ordinary living is elevated to a sacrament. When we see the Incarnation for what it really is, life itself becomes a kind of Jesus Trail. In the ordinary activities of human life we are walking in the footsteps of Jesus.</p>

<p>The theme of Jesus Christ as king is the predominant theme of the Christmas Carols. We sing "Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king" and "Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king". But what do we mean when we sing about Jesus being king? Is Jesus just a “spiritual” king? A king in heaven? Actually the answer is NO! When the apostles first called Jesus King, they meant it in the most literal and political way! The gospel is the story of how Jesus of Nazareth became King of the world. The gospel is not primarily about going to heaven, self-improvement, or even personal forgiveness. Though these things are related to the gospel, the gospel is primarily the royal announcement that Jesus Christ is now King of the world!</p>

<p>John describes Jesus as "the light that has come into the darkness." All of us have been impacted by the darkness of the world's system and we have seen the effects of this darkness in the lives of the next generation. It is up to us to bring this next generation, our children, into the light of Christ and each of us have a part to play.</p>

<p>The "kingdom of God" is Jesus-language. Jesus began his public ministry by saying, "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand." He continued to proclaim the kingdom and demonstrated the kingdom throughout his ministry. After his resurrection he spent time with his disciples, talking to them about the kingdom, but did they see it? Do we? For all of our worship and devotion to Jesus, do we see the kingdom he proclaimed? A glimpse of the kingdom of God changes everything. It changes how we live, how we love, and how we pray. Seeing the kingdom is possible, but it requires new eyes. We must be born again if we are to see this kingdom which has come.</p>

<p>At the core of being an authentic expression of the Kingdom of Jesus in the 21st century is following King Jesus. As we follow him, we hear him calling us to go and make disciples. We are followers of Jesus who are called to make followers of Jesus. We invite people to follow Jesus and welcome them into the family through baptism. From baptism we continue the disciple-making process by teaching them the ways of Jesus. He enables us to make disciples by being present with us. He has promised to be with us by his Spirit, transforming us into the kind of people who want to follow him.</p>

<p>To be a Christian is to confess faith in God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and is himself God. Part of the ongoing ministry of Jesus is to baptize us or immerse us in God's life-giving Spirit. The picture of this baptism is not so much of individuals getting the Holy Spirit within themselves. Rather the picture of full immersion in the Holy Spirit is Jesus gathering his church together and plunging us into the depths of the Spirit. We need the Spirit like our body needs each breath and as we live immersed in the Spirit we find a life of righteousness, peace, and joy.</p>

<p>Christianity is inherently full of mystery. Christianity is not an explanation, it is the confession of a sacred mystery. At the heart of the Christian faith is the great mystery of the Incarnation. Most Christian heresies come from trying to relieve the tension of the Incarnation. In trying to lessen the tension we either diminish the deity of Christ or the humanity of Christ. We must learn to enter the mystery and live within that tension, that Jesus is fully human AND fully God. The flesh and blood of Jesus is both human flesh and blood and divine flesh and blood. When Jesus offers us his human flesh and blood, he offers us divine, life-giving flesh and blood. Don't try to explain this mystery, don't resist this mystery, don't balk at this mystery... Enter The Mystery!</p>

<p>One of the primary goals of spiritual formation is to become your true self. The real you is calm, content, wise, and unafraid. It is only the false self, the shadow self, that is agitated, grasping, foolish, afraid. You may have had very little contact with your true self. The self who is calm, content, wise, and unafraid is who you really are deep inside. Why are we more often agitated, grasping, foolish, and afraid? We have been distorted by sin. The fallen world has marred the image of God in our life. And so, we lift up our soul to God that we might recover the proper image and that we might escape our false self and find our true self. The psalms are meditations that bend the soul toward calm, content, wisdom, courage. This is one of the primary purposes of daily praying the Psalms: to lift up our soul to God and discover and recover our true self.</p>

<p>Jesus is a king, the king; and he has a kingdom. To be a Christian is to confess that Jesus is the world’s rightful king and to enter that kingdom by faith and baptism. Our calling is to live as citizens of the kingdom of Jesus here and now, in the 21st century. We don’t live in 2nd century persecution or 12th century Christendom or 20th century modernity. We live in the 21st century postmodern world with its own challenges to the gospel and its unique opportunities to embody the Christian faith. If we can learn to live as a people faithful to Jesus we will be a city on a hill.</p>

<p>God doesn't cause all things to happen, nor does he always prevent bad things from happening. But God does cause all things that happen to work together for good. But God is able to take all the events of your life, the good and bad, the beautiful and ugly, and weave them together in such a way that in the end the whole story is beautiful! Sometimes in the present moment our lives seem to be a confusing, painful mess. But the One at the loom working on the story of your life has a hand of grace. When dark, ugly, and painful events come into our life, we suffer. But never let go of the promise that, in the end, the tapestry of our lives will be beautiful.<br><br>"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes… and there will be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. And he who sits upon the throne says this: 'Behold! I am making all things new!'" –Revelation 21</p>

<p>When imperfect people aspire to perfection, the results are disastrous. And when people find themselves in a culture where perfection is expected, (in their family, or church, or job), they are forced to fake it. Perfectionism requires hypocrisy, and requires people to live outside of reality. But Jesus saves us from all of that! Jesus saves us from the pressure to be perfect. This is really good news! When you don’t have to be perfect, you can begin to be good. The glory of God is seen in mercy, not perfection. Jesus has established a temple for the imperfect. Being perfect is not what Christianity is all about. The church is a place where broken people can find acceptance, forgiveness, and healing in Jesus Christ. The house that Jesus builds is a temple for the imperfect. The church is to be a temple for the imperfect, a place where the glory of God is seen in mercy.</p>

<p>We don't like to admit it, but it's not always our weaknesses that get us in trouble. Sometimes it's what we are good at— our strengths, our successes, our victories— that cause trouble to find us. We pray for success, and some of those prayers are answered. But too much success can become a stumbling block. If the Apostle Paul had nothing but success and smooth sailing in his ministry, it would have been his undoing. But Paul suffered, he felt weak, and knew he had to depend on the grace of Jesus. In this way, Paul’s life reflected the contours of the cruciform. Paul would have never achieved the same authority if he had not been subjected to great suffering. Paul gains both grace and credibility because he suffered deeply.</p>

<p>Everywhere Paul went there were riots. But riots were never Paul's doing or desire or intent. Paul didn't advocate for angry, loud, public protest, but just the opposite. He wrote to the Thessalonians that they should “aspire to lead quiet lives." Paul advocates not for a riot Christianity, but a quiet Christianity. In a world that grows weary of the endless noise of ideological anger, the church is to be a haven of quietness and trust, a quiet refuge of peace. Isaiah dreams about what it will be like when righteousness returns to the earth. He write that the effect will be peace and the result will be quietness and trust. The result of righteousness among God's people is not riot and protest, but Quietness and Trust.</p>

<p>In the garden of Gethsemane, the disciple Peter was ready to go to prison and death with Jesus. But when he attempted to defend Jesus from the Roman soldiers who had come to arrest him, Jesus rebuked Peter, telling him to put away his sword and renounce violence. Peter was disillusioned and began to follow Jesus only at a distance. Before being redeemed, Peter would end up shedding some heavy tears. In in our own lives, often deep spiritual transformation happens only through the shedding of tears. Tears are necessary to soften the soul. But Jesus will not leave those tears unredeemed, they serve a holy purpose. Jesus remade Peter after his greatest failure, which caused those heavy tears. God, by his grace, uses our sins and failures to form Christ in us. Before you can be remade, you may have to be undone- and that will involve shedding some tears.</p>

<p>Pastor Derek Vreeland delivers a sermon entitled, "The Useful God".</p>

<p>Jacob swaggered through life with the confidence typical of a con man. He was a success in the shallowest sense of the word. Jacob had a kind of success; but what he didn't have was dignity, integrity, holiness. God was at work in Jacob's life and would bring about holiness in Jacob. The tool that God would use to produce this holiness in Jacob’s life was pain. When Jacob came face to face with real pain he would see the face of God. Transformed by pain, Jacob limped the rest of his life. He had been blessed and broken— and his blessed brokenness gave him a new name and a new life.</p>

<p>Jesus breaks bread and calls it his body. His broken body becomes the source of our salvation This is breaking that is good and that belongs to redemption and resurrection. This is the kind of breaking we're called to share with Jesus. But there is a kind of breaking—a kind of response to pressure—that is not good. After receiving the broken bread, Judas departed into the night to betray Jesus. Judas' journey into the darkness was a response to pressure that is Breaking Bad. Pain, pressure, disappointment are the sources of inevitable breakage in our lives. As humans, you will experience these things. It's part of the human condition. How you respond to these pains determines whether you break good or break bad. We are called to follow the Jesus way of trusting God, and not breaking bad. When we trust God, God is faithful and becomes a source of healing. But when we break bad and try to take control, we inflict our wounds on others. Let's learn to trust in God!</p>

<p>We are to be gospel-centric and gospel-saturated in the life of the church, because the gospel creates a certain kind of culture, shaping how we think and how we live. In order to be this kind of church, we preach the gospel first and morality second. God has saved us and called us to a holy life, but we emphasize the gospel of God's great love first. This life then creates the kind of culture whereby we can flourish in the holy life, where the Spirit continues his work of transformation within us.</p>

<p>The idea that God could and would truly suffer is foreign and scandalous to us. From the dawn of religious consciousness, humanity has shared similar images of God: The Glorious God, The Almighty God, The Holy God, The Merciful God. But the idea that God could suffer is something altogether unexpected. But God did suffer; torture, crucifixion, and finally death. On the cross Jesus suffers with us as God. God not only became human, he became the kind of human we don't want to be; A despised and rejected outcast, a failure. Jesus Christ God with us in life, in struggle, in sorrow, in pain, and in death. Jesus died the worst kind of death, that he might go down to the ugliest depths of death. But this suffering is not just an act of solidarity; it's also an act of salvation. God in Christ suffered death that he might enter into death and lead the way out. God saves us by suffering death with us! Only the suffering God can help.</p>

<p>In the Bible, the new day doesn't begin at sunrise or at midnight, but rather, at sunset. God wants us to see that each new day begins with darkness. The new day does not begin by being able to see— The new day begins with being unable to see. Likewise, spiritual growth does not begin with knowing. Holding onto certitude and insisting you have all the answers prevents spiritual progress. The process of spiritual growth is knowing, unknowing, and then new knowing. There are some things you have to unlearn before you can make spiritual progress. We want to think that to make spiritual progress all we need is positive addition. But a lot of making spiritual progress is about negative subtraction. Unknowing is harder than not knowing. It's not the learning that is hard, it's the unlearning.</p>

<p>Religion can be misused as a way of avoiding the reality of pain. Religion becomes delusional and destructive when misconstrued as a guaranteed way of avoiding pain. This phenomenon is dramatized in the cycles of debate found in the Hebrew scriptures of Job. The first lesson we should learn from the book of Job is to be wary of explaining to sufferers why they are suffering. If we accept that Job was a blameless man who suffered outrageous and undeserved misfortune, as the scriptures says, then our false certitudes, our easy answers, and our trite clichés need to be called into question. Perhaps the main lesson we are to learn is that blame is the satan and serves no good purpose—whether it's the friends blaming Job, or Job nearly blaming God.</p>

<p>The bread and wine in communion are more than a symbol, but not less than that. In the broken bread we see not only a symbol of the brokenness of Christ given for the sins of the world, we also see a picture of the church. Jesus blesses us; he breaks us; he gives us to the world. This three-step Eucharistic action provides for us our core identity. We are blessed. We are broken. We are given. In our brokenness we admit we are broken by sin and we also choose to break open ourselves to allow people to see us as we are. This kind of vulnerability is the pathway of love. We cannot love or be loved if we do not trust. We do not trust and do not become trustworthy if we do not know. We do not know and are not known if we are not vulnerable.</p>