Word of Life Church » Podcasts

This World IS My Home (Sort Of)

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:00:43 +0000

There’s an old saying much used in certain Christian circles: “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through.” The idea being conveyed is that this world is really just a staging-ground for an eternal heaven. But this saying is actually far older than you may think. It’s a saying that originated with the early Christian heretics, the Gnostics. This Earth on which we live is full of God’s good creation, both natural creation and the idea of human society. And this is the world Jesus came to save. There is much wrong with the world today, but just because the world is broken, does not mean it is to be abandoned. God’s plan is to repair the world! The world is the place that is to become the kingdom of God, but we’ve reduced “savior of the world” to saving parts of people for another world. This world is not to be condemned, but to be repaired! Salvation is not an evacuation project — salvation is a restoration project!

The Weight

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:27 +0000

At some point or another, life becomes hard and heavy for everyone. This is the weight we all feel at times, and when it’s too hard and too heavy, we need some help. Jesus speaks to those who feel this weight and says, “Come unto me.” Many people who initially come to Christ as adults do so in moments like this. But this coming to Jesus when we are being crushed and broken by the weight is not just a private experience. Healing and restoration comes also by way of the Church. The church body is the incarnational presence of Christ to itself and to the world, and is to be a witness to the world of how Jesus saves us. No one does it alone. No one makes it on their own. We’re all in this together. We know God through others, and we love God through others.

The Blessed Hope

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:00:29 +0000

In the book of Titus, the apostle Paul writes to the fledgling Christian Church, encouraging them to wait for “our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” The appearing of Jesus is the blessed hope that brings heaven to earth and the resurrection of the dead. The Blessed Hope is not we’re going, but He’s coming. Jesus is not going to “come” from a far-off heaven, but rather, he will appear from the heavens as the world’s true king and judge. This is the gospel the Apostles preached in the Book of Acts. They announced that the world now has a new king, Jesus the Messiah. The reign of the world’s true king has already begun. But in due time the king will appear to judge the world and raise the dead. As followers of Christ, We are to be the incarnation of the age to come here and now. We are to embody the culture and ethics of the kingdom of heaven in this present age. No matter what body politic we happen to occupy, we are to be the body of Christ.

The Scream

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:42 +0000

The Scream

Edvard Munch’s The Scream has become perhaps the most iconic representation of modern life. As a famous painting, it’s probably only rivaled by Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. That’s quite a contrast. Edvard Munch described feeling a “great, infinite scream pass through nature,” as his inspiration for the painting. We have felt it too, and that’s why The Scream resonates so deeply. But what is it we feel? We feel the modern world moving away from God and the absence of God in our world. 19 centuries before Edvard Munch heard the “infinite scream” and painted it, the bible tells of other who were lost and tormented by demons, by life issues, and by the pain of loss. Jesus hears the scream of people tormented by their demons, their issues, their loss. Jesus saves us from the scream and can give us back our smile.

Heaven Is Coming

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:00:20 +0000

In describing how our world has gone wrong through the catastrophe of sin and death, the Bible paints the picture of a separation occurring between heaven and earth. The great hope given to us is that this breach will be healed. Which is why we pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” But somewhere along the way our understanding became inverted and we began instead to think in terms of an upward movement in our going to heaven. We have come to think of as heaven as a place we go to when we die, but it is actually the prophetic picture of New Creation. If we are to participate in the fullness of God’s redemption, we must understand this. If we see heaven as a distant place we escape to when we die. we tend to disengage from meaningful activity here and now. But if we understand that this world matters and that heaven is coming to earth, then we can anticipate God’s New Creation by meaningful action here and now!

I’m Not Just Spiritual, I’m Religious

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:28 +0000

We live in a time when the anti-religion band wagon is becoming increasingly popular. A popular axiom in our society is, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” But this is a hollow statement. You can’t be well-formed spiritually without religion, just as you can’t be healthy and fit without diet and exercise. We need wisdom and discipline to be well-formed spiritually, and these are imparted to us by tradition and religion. Christianity is a sacred tradition and a communal practice. Which is to say, Christianity is sustained and passed on generationally by religion. The anti-religion attitude endorsed by a privatized, individualized spirituality will kill Christianity. To produce generations of Christians who can withstand the tide of secularism takes a church, ecumenical in breadth and historical in depth. We have allowed secularism to tell us to take a consumerist approach to church, allowing people to shopping for churches and customized spiritual experiences. This ultimately results in disaster, as people reach the point where they cannot distinguish between worship and entertainment. We cannot trust ourselves to be in charge of our own spiritual formation, but we must realize that the historic-ecumenical church, handed down from generation to generation, has more wisdom than we do.

How Far Is Heaven?

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:00:54 +0000

The Christian church is going through a very important theological correction. We are refocusing our hope, rethinking heaven, and re-emphasizing resurrection. The Church in America has latched onto a superstitious, but popular, misunderstanding of heaven, and we are are beginning to come to terms with giving it up. In popular imagination, heaven is an eternal place the saved go to when they die. But Christianity is not all about “going to heaven when you die”. This is not how Jesus, the Apostles, and Scripture talk about heaven and eternal life. When the Bible speaks of heaven, it is referring to a picture of the new earth in resurrection! In other words, what we’ve come to think of as the eternal place we go to when we die is actually the Biblical picture of the restored earth in the time of resurrection. And this is why the Earth matters! God created a good creation, and God is not going to abandon it or destroy it. God is going to redeem it and restore it!

Oh Mercy

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:05 +0000

When Jesus defend his actions of healing the sick on the Sabbath, he quotes the prophet Hosea and says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”. Jesus is saying a very significant thing. Instead of saying God wants more ritualistic sacrifices that are better and more pure, Jesus claims what God REALLY wants is for us to give mercy to one another! God wants for us to flood the world with mercy. We often think that the Christian religion is all about trying to clean up the world, and sometimes we do this by pointing out sin and blaming others. But this is not what God is like. God is not in our blame. God is like Jesus. And Jesus is merciful. We should try giving people mercy in the name of God instead of blaming them in the name of God and see what we learn.

A Refocused Hope

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:00:50 +0000

In this introduction to a new series entitled “Hope, Heaven, and Resurrection,” Pastor Derek Vreeland describes the hope we receive from Jesus’ resurrection is a refocused hope. Not to be confused with a mere wish, hope, as informed by the Scripture, is a present expectation of a good future; hope patiently waits for better days. Our initial hope is in heaven, God’s dwelling place, but the resurrection of Jesus refocuses our hope past heaven to a future bodily resurrection of our own. What God did for Jesus at the resurrection he intends to do for all creation, including humanity. The great hope, the refocused hope, of the Church is the reuniting of heaven and earth, including the resurrection of the dead.

Hate Your Mom and Follow Jesus

Pastor Brian Zahnd — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:49 +0000

Living in the light of the resurrection begins with the Easter celebration and continues with the work of making disciples, inviting others to follow Jesus who calls us to renounce everything to be his followers. In shocking fashion, Jesus tells us we must even hate our father and mother in order to follow him. This command is not a literal call to “hate” our family. Rather, it is a call to subordinate our love for family below our love for Jesus. In other words, we must bid farewell to our social, political, and ethnic identities and allow our identities to be re-formed by Christ and the Church.