Word of Life Church Podcast

<p>Beginning at Bethlehem, Jesus enters the world of the wounded and is himself wounded. Yet there is a beautiful, sacred mystery: It is by those wounds that we are healed. In bringing our hurts to the wounds of Christ we begin to find our healing. But for this to happen we must first acknowledge our wounds, our own pain. In our culture we find this hard to do, because we are schooled in denial. We have been taught to deceive ourselves and deny our pains and our wounds. Of course that kind of denial only bottles up the pain until it poisons the soul. Depression, anger, addiction, sickness are what result from un-lamented pain. When we’re schooled in denial we earn a degree in how to stay miserable. But when we face our pain with honesty, when we grieve and lament openly, we open up space for the comfort of God, given by others, to come to us and heal us.</p>

<p>The Church is the society of Jesus. That is, it is God's alternative society built around Jesus. Within the various societies of the world there are pockets of the society of Jesus, consisting of baptized communities learning to live the Jesus way and embracing the politics of Jesus. As these Jesus societies are faithful to the Jesus way they are the light of the world, the salt of the earth. But if they are unfaithful, they become nothing more than religious versions of the wider culture. This is why our first task must always be to remain faithful to Jesus, not to be "effective" or "successful." At Word of Life Church, we want to learn to be a faithful society of Jesus in 21st century American society.</p>

<p>We inhabit a world of hurt. Pain is an ever-present possibility. Grief stalks us. This is not just true of people in third-world countries suffering deep, grinding poverty. This reality is not restricted to the victims of violent regimes in the Middle East. It is the human condition. Pain is no respecter of persons. It comes to us all. To take part in the journey of life, pain is inevitable and unavoidable. Part of our Christian hope is that God will someday lead his creation beyond pain. We have the hope of a world beyond hurt. But our present world is quite different. For now pain remains the price of admission into God's good creation. What we see in the Bible portraits is people who learned how to transform their pain. They learned that by grace we can transform our pain into a kind of grace: A grace that heals.</p>

<p>In the final track of the summer 2013 series, Finding God On Your iPod, Pastor Brian Zahnd examines the song “Show Me The Place” by Leonard Cohen. It is a serious and prayerful reflection on the Incarnation. If we drift too far into the realm of ideas and out of the realm of matter, we easily drift away from Christianity and toward Gnosticism. Christianity is an intensely earthy, material religion. God came to earth, not merely as an idea, but in the form of a man, with all of the dirtiness and pain that human life requires. God shares human suffering with us. He suffered sorrow, bereavement, betrayal, rejection, torture, and even death. This is the great scandal of Christianity: We worship a suffering, crucified God.</p>

<p>In the final Sunday morning installment of the 2013 edition of Finding God On Your iPod, the rock & roll foursome Alabama Shakes tell us that "you gotta hold on". Take hold of the life of the age to come... and hold on! We can't settle for the script of the old age; we must lay hold of a new way of being human. Jesus in his death and resurrection really did re-found the world. The powers and principalities with their ways and means of death have been overthrown. Believe that in the resurrection of Jesus a new world order has been inaugurated. Sometimes it's hard to see that God's new age has dawned, but hold on! The bitterness of death and the sting of salty tears is still with us, but hold on! The ugly specters of war, poverty, and injustice still haunt us, but hold on!</p>

<p>Our 21st-century Western culture prescribes consumerism to quench the thirst of our soul. The up-and-coming hip-hop artist Macklemore uncovers the fraud of such prescription in his track called Wing$. As consumerism is exposed, it leaves us wondering is there anything that can truly quench the thirst of the human soul.</p>

<p>Dave Matthews is someone who hungers and thirsts for justice. It's a theme that repeatedly appears in his songs. What Dave Matthews may not realize, however, is that the justice he hungers for is what the gospel is really all about. In the song Mercy, Dave Matthews sings, "Imagine that we could get it together / Stand up for what we need to be / Cause crying won’t save or feed a hungry child / Can’t lay down and wait for a miracle to change things". And in the song that immediately follows on the album, the recurring line is, "We gotta do much more than believe if we really wanna change things." We DO have to do more than believe and pray. But, we must believe and we must pray. We do this because believing and praying is how we are properly formed into agents of God’s mercy and redemption in the world. Jesus spent his time on earth in ministry changing the world as it was at that very moment. He did not have a focus of teaching people how to go to heaven when they die. Jesus insists that God actually cares about the kind of world we have. Jesus wants us to bring the will of God on earth as it is in heaven, right now! Between now and our death, let's try to bring heaven to earth. Let's multiply mercy.</p>

<p>In the song Demons by The National, Matt Berninger sings about wishing that he could rise above his depression, hurt, and pain, but instead "stays down with his demons". Emotions like shame and anger, lust and loneliness, are human emotions. But, improperly processed and left unattended, these wounds can become the breeding ground for demons, such as addiction, depression, violence, and suicide. Jesus never blamed people for their sins or for their demons. Jesus came, not to condemn people for their demons, but to lift them out! Alone, a person may not have the ability to rise above their demons. But a person can always turn towards Jesus. You don't have to stay down with your demons. Jesus can heal you and set you free from those demons.</p>

<p>If Blowin' In The Wind is a modern psalm of prophetic imagination, The Whole Night Sky is a modern psalm of lament. The idea that faith is a means of avoiding suffering is a big con. It is popular, but it's simply not true. Faith does not give us an exception from being human. Faith does not prevent pain and suffering. What faith does is enable us to encounter God, even in our pain, and give us purpose. Our purpose it to become fully human, like Jesus. Jesus endured pain and suffering, but transformed it into grace and beauty. Jesus' faith transformed an ugly crucifixion into the beautiful cruciform. We will either transform our pain or we will transmit our pain and hurt other people. Faith enables us to transform our pain from something ugly and destructive into something beautiful and redemptive. Jesus saves us in our pain and suffering, not by taking us out of it, but by sharing it with us. We are not alone in our pain and suffering; God in Christ shares it with us.</p>

<p>Micah the poet/prophet was living during a time of economic prosperity, but he warned Israel and Judah of pending punishment. While judgment was coming, Micah expressed his desire to wait for the salvation of God. Much of the Christian journey is waiting. Following Jesus requires more patience than power. While many of us hate waiting, we find that in waiting we become more like Jesus. Waiting is the work of prayer where we create space for God to be at work. Prayer, corporate worship, and small groups are all places where we can wait on God.</p>

<p>Pearl Jam front-man Eddie Vedder has quietly written and recorded a number of acoustic-driven songs over the last six years, songs filled with meaning and substance. In 2007, he wrote "Society" for the soundtrack to Into the Wild, a movie about Chris McCandles, a young man who lived life off the grid. Vedder captures the spirit of McCandles who said good-bye to a world filled with greed and consumerism. Jesus gives us a similar call to exit a world of wealth, a culture of consumerism, and a society of stuff. Life, according to Jesus, does not consist in the abundance of possessions.</p>

<p>The Grammy-award winning, Philly-based, hip-hop band The Roots collaborated with Monsters of Folk to create a prayer in the form of a song. The heart of the song is the ancient question, "Why do we suffer?" Through artistry and poetry, the song wrestles with the classic problem of evil, that is, if God is all-good, all-loving, and all-powerful then why is evil and suffering still present in the world? In confronting this problem, we are well served by acknowledging evil instead of ignoring it, praying instead of simply reacting, and looking for solutions instead of assigning blame. In the end, while we do not find explanations, we do find hope in the mystery of our faith: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.</p>

<p>What are prophets? Prophets are channels, conductors, conduits of holy imagination. Prophets have enough of the spirit of God to imagine the world other than it is. They give artistic expression to an alternative way of arranging the world. Today we tend to call them poets—but prophets are really just spirit-filled poets. In Blowin’ In The Wind we have a modern day poet asking a prophetic question: “How many roads must a man walk down? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.” But what does that even mean? Is the answer just too ethereal to grasp? Or does it mean the answer is right in front of us? Perhaps the answer is from the breath of God, from the deep spirit of God, from the blowin’ wind of God.</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>In his gospel John strategically places seven miracles of Jesus as signs to guide us. These signs are intended to point us to the right way to believe in Jesus the Christ. In the final installment of the Seven Signs In The Gospel of John series, we have a surprise. There is actually an eighth, hidden sign in John's book. It is the sign of new beginnings. New beginning is one of John's major themes in his gospel. And when we read the account of Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb early on the third day after Christ's crucifixion, only to find the tomb empty, we are seeing the new beginning of the world. Jesus Christ is the firstborn of the new humanity. In Jesus Christ humanity finds its second genesis. In Jesus Christ we recover our original vocation: to make the world a garden.</p>

<p>Jesus' received word that his friend Lazarus was sick and Jesus responded by waiting two whole days before he went to see him. During this time Lazarus died. His sisters, Martha and Mary, were grief-stricken. When Jesus went to see them, he did not lecture them or preach at them, but he entered into their grief, encouraging them and weeping with them, shedding the very tears of God. When he went to the tomb of Lazarus he raised him from the dead signaling the defeat of death, so that all who put their faith in Jesus no longer fear death, as the sting of death had been removed.</p>

<p>While there are those who have attempted to strip all of the hardship out of the Christian life, the reality is life is hard and following Jesus is hard. The Apostle Paul said he chose to boast in his hardships, calling some of his hardships a “thorn in the flesh.” Jesus said the way he was blazing for us with narrow and hard, so we should accept hardship and expect it. The hard is what makes life great. Indeed everything we call great was bought by the hardship of someone.</p>

<p>When Jesus’ disciples saw a man who had been born blind they asked the a question framed around blame. Who sinned? Who can we blame? Whose bad karma is this? The disciples belief was essentially that because something bad has happened, someone must have sinned, and somehow they deserved it. People who blame suffering on bad karma (and Christians do this all the time) still have mud in their eyes; they are still blind. Jesus is the light of the world. And his light brings a whole new perspective to the works of God. The works of God are not to assign blame and condemn the victim. If we will wash in the water of Jesus, we will get the mud out of our eyes and begin to see. It doesn’t matter who sinned; the way of God is grace and the work of God is mercy!</p>

<p>Often, we confuse God for a malevolent monster that intends us harm. Because of deep-seated shame the thought of God produces anxiety and avoidance and generates a “monster god” neurosis. This becomes the foundation for appeasement-based religion. The monster god narrative feeds into a wrong theology about Jesus— that Jesus came in order to save us from God. We are terrified of the One who is actually trying to help us. We mistakenly think the One coming to help us is coming to harm us. But the revelation of God based in Christ tells us something else: God is love! Jesus comes as the rising sun giving full revelation and dispelling the monster god. Jesus does not save us from God! Jesus reveals God to us! Jesus calls us into a world free from the monster god— A world created by the true and living God, the Father God who is love.</p>

<p>In Jewish culture, the sea is a representation of chaos and the origin of evil. The biblical Israelites were not a seafaring people. This is made evident by the way the bible uses the sea in metaphor. The book of Revelation the new earth has no more sea. Job, in praise of God, says, “God tramples the waves of the sea.” And in the book of Daniel, the author describes a vision of beasts that come up out of the sea. So when Jesus came walking on the sea to the disciples who were in great distress in the storm, it is a sign. It is a sign that leads us to life and informs our faith in Jesus. When we see Jesus walking on water on the rough sea in a dark and stormy night, it tells us that Jesus is Lord! When our life feels like a sinking ship and we are in a dark and stormy situation, we are not alone. Jesus will come to us and calm our fears. When Jesus comes to you everything will be alright!</p>

<p>At your worst, most sinful, backslidden, far from God state, God’s heart towards you is still one which burst with longing for reconciliation. God is not full of vengeance or angry with you. His attitude toward you is one of unwavering love, like a mother or father has towards his children. God knows you and loves you, and knows you have a complicated story. Unlike most people, God does not put all of the blame on you. God as your Father is responsible for you.</p>

<p>The human condition suffers from a kind of emptiness. We are born with a pervasive mentality of scarcity and insufficiency. We don't perceive ourselves as blessed with abundance, but cursed with scarcity. We fear there won't be enough oil, land, water, food, money, labor to go around, so we use force to guarantee us what we believe is ours. This way of viewing the world is absolutely dominant, And into this sad world dominated by the paradigm of scarcity the Son of God appears. Jesus came to save us from the cycle of conquest, war, famine, death. Jesus constantly tell us not to worry about scarcity, but to trust in God. The miracle of the loaves and fishes is the sign pointing us to Jesus and a new way. Christ is the single point at which the Infinity of God is poured into the finite Creation. We don't have to fight down here. To connect with Christ is to connect with the Infinite! This connecting point is called Jesus Christ. To connect with this point is called faith. To believe in Jesus in the right way is to connect our lives to The Beauty of the Infinite.</p>

<p>We read in Hebrews 11:1 that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. We accept this statement about faith, but how exactly is faith substance and evidence? Some have tried to make faith too spiritual by imagining faith to be a spiritual substance, a force under our control. However this is not how we see faith at work in Scripture. Others have attempted to define faith as empirical evidence, trying to conjure up rational arguments to answer every question raised against the faith. Yet faith is not empirically verifiable because the God who is the object of our faith cannot be found using the rules of empiricism. When viewed in the context of Hebrews 11 and 12, we discover that faith is substance and evidence as it is confessed and lived out in the life of the Church. We become the substance and evidence of faith as we rightly confess and rightly live out the things we believe.</p>

<p>This is the third message in a series of the seven signs John recounts in order to form our faith in Jesus. It's the story of a man paralyzed for 38 years whom Jesus healed at the Pool of Bethesda. In this story we see that what the healing that the Pool of Bethesda promised is what Jesus does! And Jesus is not only the hope of the Jews; he is also the hope of pagan Gentiles. We are all in need of some kind of healing, and Jesus is the healer.</p>

<p>In order to experience natural, open conversation with Jesus, an openness is required. 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 "salvation" event ruins us for future spiritual growth. Often, people have their one moment of spiritual openness, and then slam the door forever! But nothing is more essential to spiritual development than spiritual openness. Christianity is an ongoing conversation with Jesus, the Living Word with whom we must constantly engage.</p>

<p>If we treat the Bible as a complete catalog of "do's" and "don'ts", then we can almost always find a way to justify whatever we want to justify. From slavery to genocide, you can find a scripture to "prove" just about anything you want in the Bible. But if we recognize that Jesus is the Living Word with whom we must engage, then we are engaging with the Logos of Life - God's Wisdom of how to live. To believe in Jesus is to believe that he is what God has to say. If you'll believe in the Logos of Life (Christ), your soul will be healed and you will find life.</p>

<p>The kingdom of God is something that happens at a table. The church is not a kind of Temple, it is a kind of Table. The Temple, as understood 2000 years ago in Jewish society, was closed off, restricted to people of a particular ethnicity and nationality. Moving from Temple to Table is part of the reformation work of Jesus. It is the New Covenant. Instead of hierarchical, religion, and purity code religion that excludes outsiders, the center of God's activity is now the shared table.</p>

<p>At the wedding in Cana, Jesus performs his first miracle, and in doing so, reveals his glory and his beauty. Jesus' first miracle is not "crucial". He doesn't heal the sick, or cleanse the leper, or cast out a demon, or calm a storm, or even raise the dead. Jesus' first miracle is to keep a wedding party well-stocked in wine. And it is a sign. In a beautiful and artistic way Jesus is announcing the arrival of the reign of God. It is a sign that there is about to be a huge shift in how we understand our relationship with God. Instead of washing, washing, washing, but never really feeling clean, the Kingdom of God will be more like eating and drinking with close friends. Jesus is signaling a seismic shift in the center of God's redemptive activity. With the coming of Jesus the center of redemption moves from the Temple to the Table! Instead of a hierarchical, sacrificial, purity code religion that excludes outsiders, the center of God's activity will be the shared table.</p>

<p>To first think of the "Bible" when say "Word of God" is a theological mistake. The Bible is the word of God, but only in a secondary sense. That the Bible is the word of God is true in the sense that it faithfully bears witness to the true Word of God: Jesus Christ. We're not born again by reading a book, we're born again by encountering Jesus Christ. We're not followers of a book, we're followers of Jesus! We are not worshipers of a book, we are worshipers of Jesus! There is no word from God that comes after Christ or supersedes Christ. Jesus is the true Word of God, the full Word of God, and the final Word of God. Jesus is how God speaks into the world. Jesus is what God has to say.</p>

<p>The world after Easter is fundamentally different than the world of Good Friday. In the world before Easter Caesar is Lord, because Caesar holds the power of death. But in the world after Easter Jesus is Lord, because Jesus has conquered death. And not by by means of a temporary resuscitation that ultimately again succumbs to death, but by the complete triumph of resurrection unto eternal life! Which is why our ultimate Christian hope is not heaven, but resurrection! When Christ appears heaven and earth will be made one. The resurrection of the dead is the full realization of New Creation. Christ is coming, not to take us away, but to bring heaven to earth. The blessed hope is not that we are going somewhere. The blessed hope is Christ is coming!</p>

<p>The Old Testament story of Job is one of tragedy. In three thunderclaps of horror Job loses his wealth, his health, and his children. Very quickly following this episode, Job's friends show up to comfort him, but in reality, they end up tormenting Job's already shattered soul. These three friends likely intended well, but in their obsession to explain the tragedy they became satanic agents of accusation and cruelty. In the sermon Windbag Speeches by Pastor Brian Zahnd, we discover the cruelty of talking too much.</p>

<p>The Messiah of the Jews was Jesus Christ. That Christ would be worshiped as King among pagan the Gentiles is the great hope of God! God always intended to unite the whole world as one people, without any division. God had to begin with one person, with one people; the Jewish people. But all along the plan was to unite the whole world into one body: the body of Christ! But this unity of worship doesn't come by triumphalism. It doesn't come by the ways of conquest and domination. If you have an attitude that we Christians need to conquer and convert others, you've missed the whole point! Triumphalism is the opposite of the humility of Christ! It comes by suffering! When we absorb enough of the sin and suffering of the world in an imitation of Christ, people are irresistibly drawn to the body of Christ.</p>

<p>Calling things by their names is the way of the God and the first vocation of man. In Genesis, Adam is instructed by God to gives names to all the animals. Humans are the ones who make Creation a community of the named and known and not just an impersonal collection of unknown and disassociated things. Without humanity, the universe is a cold and impersonal collection of objects. But humanity gives names to things and the universe becomes known and personal. Be wary of an overemphasis on numbers. Turning names into numbers, persons into statistics, and people into things is what the Beast does. It is the root of the beastly actions of totalitarian regimes.</p>

<p>If you want to sum up the Gospel in its most succinct form, this is it: Jesus is Lord! The Apostles actually believed that with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the world was now being governed by a new emperor, a new administration. The politics of Caesar and empire had been replaced by the politics of Christ. Through faith and baptism we become citizens of the kingdom of God, and we bring the culture of the Kingdom of God to earth through how we pray and how we live. This is what we mean when we say, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." For the baptized, our government is not from earth, but rather from heaven. Through the luck of our birth we may be American, or Chinese, or French, or Iranian. But if we are baptized, our allegiance is pledged to Christ and our citizenship is in heaven. Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not!</p>

<p>Pastor Brian Zahnd interviews P.G. Vargis, missionary and founder of the Indian Evangelical Team (IET), a Christian missions organization spread across India, Nepal, and Bhutan, and is the fastest growing missons organization in South East Asia. Today, IET trains hundreds of indigenous men and women to be effective, godly church planters and Christian leaders through its regional Bible schools and its leadership training centers.</p>

<p>In the world after Easter the Apostle Paul is possessed by a radical new vision for the world. This is what compels him to travel unceasingly throughout the Roman Empire. Paul daringly proclaims that the true gospel of peace is not the Pax Romana (Peace of Rome), but the Pax Christi (Peace of Christ). In his deeply theological letter to the Gentile church in Ephesus, Paul describes his radical vision for the world-he calls it "one new humanity." For Paul, what is saved in the death and resurrection of Jesus is not merely individual souls, but human civilization itself- "the world." In the cross of Christ the evil phenomenon of achieving unity through groupthink hostility is killed. This accomplishment of the cross gives humanity the possibility of peace. Through the gospel of peace Jews and Gentiles (and every other division of humanity) can now overcome their hostility and be formed in Christ as One New Humanity.</p>

<p>The kingdom of God is salvation in its full expression, and it's all a gift. In the midst of the human catastrophe and civilization gone wrong from the very foundation, God has acted and given to us the Kingdom of God. We cannot build it or fight for it. We can only perceive the kingdom by faith and receive it as a gift. But because human history is mostly about building and fighting and constructing empires, that is cam only be done by faith is very hard for us to comprehend. We think all the great things are built and fought for. But that is a lie. The kingdom of God is the Father's gift to humanity, given in Christ. It's all a gift.</p>

<p>Fighting, arguments, and disagreements are a part of the human condition. Many times our disagreements are over small, insignificant things. We often need to step back and ask, "Does what we are arguing about really matter?" In his letter to the Galatians, Paul put all of our fighting in context by stating emphatically: what really matters is new creation! In Christ we have been rescued from old broken down creation and have been given access into God's new creation, where there is no more division based on race, gender, or social status. When we divide over these issues we fail to see how the world has changed since the resurrection of Jesus. In this new post-resurrection world, we respect everyone, recognizing everyone is loved by God.</p>

<p>The Bible contains some shockingly brutal stories. Some of them involve gang rape, murder, and dismemberment. These are not the stories that we tell our children at bedtime. Many of these stories involve a merciless mob of people. Sodom is primarily about group violence from a merciless mob inflicted on foreigners. They are many stories of public stonings. Even the crucifixion of Jesus was at its roots a mob lynching. Lynch mobs never think of themselves as evil. But in fact, the merciless mob is the manifestation of the satan in its fullest form! An angry crowd is cruel, merciless, and stupid, but most of all, it is dangerous. If you follow an angry crowd you will almost certainly be wrong. Even if you're not wrong in the issue you will be wrong in spirit. The crowd is antichrist. Jesus loves you, but he does not love your angry crowd. Jesus never calls his people to join a crowd, only a little flock. Jesus never leads anything other than a gentle, peaceable, merciful minority.</p>

<p>With the resurrection of Jesus Christ, death was defeated and new creation began. New creation can be perceived and participated in by the body of Christ right now! The world after Easter is not the same world as the world of Good Friday. On Good Friday, the world was under the old order of the old creation dominated by sin and death. The world after Easter is a world where new creation is already dawning in the land of death. This is why Paul says, if anyone is in Christ, Hello, New Creation!</p>

<p>With the resurrection of Jesus Christ, death was defeated and new creation began. New creation can be perceived and participated in by the body of Christ right now! The world after Easter is not the same world as the world of Good Friday. On Good Friday, the world was under the old order of the old creation dominated by sin and death. The world after Easter is a world where new creation is already dawning in the land of death. This is why Paul says, if anyone is in Christ, Hello, New Creation!</p>

<p>We are called to fight the good fight of faith. Last week in Part 1, Pastor Derek Vreeland described in detail the three primary enemies of our faith-secularism, individualism, and nationalism. This week, in Part 2, he continues by describing how the resurrection of Jesus delivers the final blow to these enemies. Our fight is with defeated enemies, which requires us to live a certain way, namely as sacred people, communal people, and intentionally Christian people.</p>

<p>The world did indeed change after that first Easter Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead. In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul identifies baptism as the doorway into this new world, a world without condemnation, a world of peace, adoption, beauty, and love. In this new world we find our old selves being replaced by our new selves, new identities formed in the image of Christ. Baptism does not wash away our sins as much as it breaks the power of sin from us, enabling us to walk in newness of life free from the old world dominated by sin and death.</p>

<p>We are called to fight the good fight of faith and the enemies of our faith include secularism, individualism, and nationalism. In this message, Pastor Derek Vreeland spends time defining and illustrating what these enemies are like. Secularism is any attempt to do life without God. Individualism is the preoccupation with putting ourselves first. Nationalism is the love, devotion, and allegiance to your nation above you love, devotion, and allegiance to God. Being able to recognize these enemies is the first step in the fight against them.</p>

<p>Jesus told a Samaritan woman, "Salvation is from the Jews, but it is for the whole world." Although the Gospel began in Jerusalem, it must journey to Rome because in the world after Easter the nations are now called to surrender their sovereignty and confess their allegiance to Jesus Christ. Rome was the Capital of the Empire, and the Roman Empire stretched across the whole world. When the Gospel was delivered in Rome, it was a revolution! It changed the whole world! Taking the Gospel to Rome was not a private announcement to private individuals about how to go to heaven when you die. The Gospel was and is a public announcement to the whole world proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven has come and that God is now reigning over the nations through his Son Jesus Christ!</p>

<p>If you want to read the Bible right, you read from the perspective of the cross. If you want to get God right, you understand him as revealed in Christ. On Good Friday, where do we found Christ? He is stretched out upon a cross, dying, imploring his Father to forgive. God is not the one who demanded crucifixion. nor is he the one doing the crucifying. God is the one who was crucified! All of humanity, bound by sin and satan, killed Jesus. The crucifixion is not what God did, it is what God endured. He is The Crucified God.</p>

<p>Pastor Brian Zahnd has been teaching from the Gospel of Luke for nearly four months, as we examine the stories of Jesus. We have arrived at Palm Sunday, celebrating Jesus' triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. Palm Sunday is confusing. It is a combination of both joy and sorrow, of celebration and of suffering. It contains Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but shadows the impending doom of Calvary. Should we celebrate on Palm Sunday or do we lament on Palm Sunday? The crowd cheering and praising Jesus as he entered into Jerusalem was right to celebrate, but they did it with a wrong understanding. This is a warning for every Jesus follower about: Getting Jesus Right... Getting Jesus Wrong.</p>

<p>Throughout the Gospel of Luke, we see Jesus moves from table to table, meal to meal, announcing and enacting the Kingdom of God as radical hospitality. In the 19th chapter of Luke, Jesus is on his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. Jesus and his disciples have arrived in Jericho, just a day before they will arrive in Jerusalem and ride through the gates in what will become known as the Triumphal Entry. As Jesus made his way through the city of Jericho, the chief tax collector Zacchaeus made his way to see Jesus. Zacchaeus was rich and corrupt, as consummate moral outcast, who had been excluded from worship at the temple. He would be the last person you'd expect to find the Messiah with. But we must not be so quick to dismiss those who appear to be far from the Kingdom of God just because they don't presently participate in the accepted forms of religious life. What Zacchaeus has going for him is that he is intensely interested in finding out who Jesus really is. Discover the radical hospitality of Jesus towards Zacchaeus in this message.</p>

<p>In our modern age, "Hell" has become a catch-all word. It includes everything from the grave to an afterlife-destination to Dante's Inferno to a minor swear word, and much inbetween. Many modern English translations of the Bible don't even use the word "hell." It is important to actually listen and hear what Jesus says about hell, rather than try to force him to fit your particular theological system. In the parable of "The Rich Man and Lazarus", Jesus reveals a little about Hell... and how to get there.</p>

<p>The greatest and most famous Jesus' parables is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is the gospel found inside the gospel. The parable of the Prodigal Son is a story of the Kingdom of God being announced and enacted. Jesus gave it to those who were angry about how he was ushering in the Kingdom of God. The actions of the father in the parable are the actions of Jesus in his ministry. In his table practice and in his parables Jesus is showing us what God is like. Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God, not to change the mind of God about humanity. Jesus does not save us from the God; Jesus reveals to us what God is like. Jesus and God always act in unity. Jesus unconditionally receives the sinner who comes to him, because this is what God is like!</p>