Carlos Padilla—Year A Easter 5–Pentecost

Welcome to the Gospel Reverb podcast. Gospel Reverb is an audio gathering for preachers, teachers, and Bible thrill seekers. Each month our host, Anthony Mullins, will interview a new guest to gain insights and preaching nuggets mined from select passages of Scripture in that month’s Revised Common Lectionary. The podcast’s passion is to proclaim and boast in Jesus Christ, the one who reveals the heart of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now onto the episode.

Anthony: Hello friends, and welcome to the latest episode of Gospel Reverb. Gospel Reverb is a podcast devoted to bringing you insights from Scripture found in the Revised Common Lectionary and sharing commentary from a Christological and Trinitarian view.

I’m your host, Anthony Mullins, and it’s my delight to welcome our guest, Carlos Padilla. Carlos is a theologian and PhD student whose work unfolds in the sacred tensions of Christology, election, and the un-scapegoating grace of God. He’s a graduate of St. Stephen’s University with a master’s in Theology and Culture and is shaped by the quiet brilliance of thinkers like Karl Barth and TF Torrance. And his writing lives at the intersection where doctrine becomes lived reality, where the faithfulness of Christ gently reorders imagination, ethics, and the way we are with one another. Carlos, thanks for being with us and welcome to the podcast. And since this is your first time, we’d like to know a little bit about you, your story, and especially what has you experiencing delight these days.

[00:01:43] Carlos: Hey, Anthony. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be with such a great community in great conversations, especially in what’s going on in our modern-day environments.

Like you said , my name is Carlos Padilla. I’m originally from the Great Nation of Texas, San Antonio. But now I hail in Omaha, Nebraska with my beautiful wife, Beth, and our 13-year-old husky, who you might hear bark every now and then, named Lincoln. Yes. I just finished my master’s degree at St. Stephen’s University in a beautiful community led by Bradley Jersak. And not only was it a great theological education, but it was heart surgery. If one thing I learned from that university and one thing I’ll always be grateful for is, I learned that you don’t necessarily have to have all the confidence, but people who are loved by God will have the confidence for you and share that openly.

And that’s my experience of everybody at that university, which I’m so grateful for. All my friends and family that I’ve met there. Since then, I’ve taken this year off. I’ve applied for PhD opportunities and we — my family: Beth, myself, and Lincoln — will be moving to Scotland this coming September to start a PhD journey.

Anthony: Come on. That’s so awesome!

Carlos: Yeah, so we’re super excited about that. Super excited about that. The same thing too during this time. Just putting things in the right pockets so we can leave Omaha and yeah, just pursue this greater conversation. And yeah, so that’s where we are today, and I think this is a beautiful time for the conversation because I have many thoughts and many questions and I’m sure it’s going to be a delight for everybody.

[00:03:24] Anthony: We’re anxious to hear your thoughts. And I have heard some of your thoughts — heard in air quotes — because you authored a book Rediscovering The Forgotten Man: The Election Without Scapegoats, which I recently read and really thoroughly enjoyed. And it seems to me that your central idea is that no one is left behind in the person and work of Jesus Christ as the objective and subjective reality of election. Is that a fair assessment of your theological ponderings? Which of course sounds like good news to me but tell us more.

[00:04:00] Carlos: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great place to begin. One thing that has changed my passion and has just really awakened me and has been this divine metronome in my heart that’s been beating is when I encountered the doctrine of election by Karl Barth.

And I think Torrance says that once you read Karl Barth, it’s hard not to read him into anything else you’d ever consider. And primarily about the doctrine of election. I was taught with the basic understanding in Western Protestant Evangelicalism, that election was either, it was more of the Calvinistic leaning where everything’s predestined and God before he creates anything, knows whether you’re going to hell or heaven. And then the Arminianistic response to it, that’s no, there’s scripture that says that you shall call the name of the Lord and you will be saved. So, there’s a human agency in there. And we are caught in the cross hair and the crossfire.

And for me, I was thinking about it, and I was like, how do you have any certainty? How do you approach the throne of God with boldness? How do you have this assurance of faith that the book of Hebrews talked about? Because when I considered both of these paradigms, it just led to just deep, deeper levels of psychosis, of uncertainty, of moving ground, not this firm foundation that Jesus would talk about.

And when I was thinking about it, I equated it to this. So, it leaves you in this paradigm. It’s like, say, you’re standing on the porch of your home and in the middle right in your front yard, there’s two people fighting, right? And you arrive in the middle of the fight. You’re not sure who started it, but there’s punches being thrown.

And then the neighbors come and there’s all this chaos and all this drama in your front yard. And meanwhile, you’re trying to take sides and see who did what and do the forensics to see who’s right and who’s wrong, and who should go to jail and all these different things. And there’s all this commotion in your front lawn.

But while your focus is on the drama, somebody comes through the back door of your house and just steals everything. And I just came to the determination: that’s what that conversation looked like until you meet Karl Barth. See the difference between Karl Barth and those doctrines of election is that he makes it Christocentric, where he makes the doctrine of election in Christ himself, where he himself is the electing God and the elected man in the Incarnation.

So, what this means is that Jesus is not only the vicarious representative for us to God, our human response, but rather he is the proposal in God towards humanity in his hypostatic union. So, when I started thinking about that, when I started thinking about the radical inclusivity of everybody, how big is this election?

And obviously we have scriptures that say one died, all died. If all humanity has certainly been crucified with him, certainly they’ll be resurrected. And there’s this a radical inclusiveness that both Jesus and Paul talk about that kind of informs the brilliance of our heldness in this election.

And rather than it being a Calvinistic thing where God can save everybody, but he just doesn’t want to, so he elects some. Or the Arminianistic one where it’s more along the lines where God wants to save everybody, but he just doesn’t have the power to. Now, to Karl Barth, where election is totally in Christ, that Jesus Christ is God’s yes to humanity, but Jesus Christ is also our unformidable broken attempts to say yes, back to God.

[00:07:38] Anthony: Hallelujah. Praise God. Because doesn’t that reduce the anxiety of election? Because so often, we’re looking to who’s in and who’s out. And again, like I think you’re alluding to, in some ways it makes us our own saviors. We’ve got to figure that out. Whereas, in the personal work of Jesus, it has been done, and, therefore, our yes is encapsulated in his yes. And that’s such good news. It takes the pressure off.

[00:08:05] Carlos: Amen. And I think this is … I’m a firm believer that great theology should produce great anthropology, that great beliefs about God should automatically address our ethical situations.

And that’s why I use Rene Gerard as one of my interlocutors as well, because he too. The synthesis of my thesis or this book I just put out, Rediscovering the Forgotten Man: The Election Without Scapegoats, the central primary reason is pretty much this: If you want to know who God has chosen, look at the one whom we’ve crucified and realize this, that God didn’t choose the victim to satisfy justice. He chose to become the victim to expose our justice and violence. And in the crucified scapegoat, God’s election is his unbreakable decision to be the very yes for all humanity, even the broken ones that have put him there.

[00:08:58] Anthony: Man. Oh man, that’s such good news, and it reminds me of TF Torrance’s brother, JB, who just really drove home the point that God is all about covenant love, not contract. Election is not a contract. It is covenant love. And he has not only given us the covenant, but he has fulfilled it in himself. And that is such good news.

[00:09:23] Carlos: Amen. Because we can all attest to this — we’ve been to church and everybody’s saying, we just make it all about Jesus. Let’s make it all about Jesus. But yet, a lot of our theology and our doctrines are formed in, like you said, that natural theology, that humanistic view, the wisdom from below, as of God where a projected image of us and just a little be a bit better merciful or more forgiving than our best they could be.

But in this doctrine of election, it really makes it about Jesus. And in Rene Gerard’s research of the scapegoat, he makes it all about Jesus and all of our violent tendencies are ended in the cross. And not only that, it spit out a new mimetic way for humanity, a mimetic way that looks like, after we crucify Jesus, after we do the most horrendous act of killing our God and our Savior, he returns to the people in the upper room. And you’d think that he would say, you know what, “You scoundrels. You idiots. You crucified me. Now you’re going to pay” — just like all the other mythological gods of our imagination that are created in our infidelity.

But he doesn’t do that. He sets a precedence of a new mimetic way where a violence that we incur on God is subverted. And what does he tell his disciples? The very first thing after we’ve crucified him and he walks through a wall, he says, “Peace be with you.”

[00:10:48] Anthony: Peace be with you, brother. Thank you for that.

And let’s transition to the text that we’re here to discuss today. We’re in the month of May in terms of the pericopes. Our first passage of the month is John chapter 14:1–14. I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, the updated edition, which is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for the fifth Sunday of Easter, May 3.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴ And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” ⁸ Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. ¹² Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” It’s a bold and I think maybe even a potentially troubling statement during troubling times. Carlos, for me, it’s akin to when somebody says to me, “Don’t take this the wrong way….” Guess what? It has 0% chance of being successful. I’m already taking it the wrong way. So, when he tells us to not let our hearts be troubled, when it’s so troubling about us, is he setting us up for failure? Reveal something about Jesus’s authority and pastoral care here.

[00:13:45] Carlos: Yeah. Oh, man. Talk about subversion when you meet Jesus, right? He’s the way, the life, and the truth as we just read. So, everything he says, everything he breathes, everything he eats, the way he walks is not only fulfillment of our humanity, but it also serves as a contradiction to what we think we believe about him, right? So, when I look at these with this statement, obviously there’s a lot there, but what Jesus is revealing to these — really just look at it.

He’s given the last call for alcohol. He’s about to walk into the crucifixion. He just washed the disciples’ feet, and they can’t understand that he’s leaving. And he’s confronting that. The disciples believe that the story’s ending, but what he’s really saying is no, it’s about to begin.

And what I’m about to do is going to subvert everything you think you know about God and me. And I know in that, and we’ll talk about this later, but in that day, you will know that I’m in the Father and he’s in me, and that we are one. And this is just and this is what revelation’s all about, where Jesus is not just trying to reveal something about himself, but reveal the Father and how the Trinity works in its essence and its oneness and its homoousion in life in live broadcasts.

What he’s talking about is the authority in the pastoral care; says that it starts with union. That the only thing that’s going to give you comfort past these days, even when you don’t understand that I’m not the God you think I’m going to be, I’m not the God who’s going overthrow the Romans, give people back the temple, and put prayer back in school, but rather, I’m going be the one who’s going to be crucified by humanity and use it for their subversion and their acceptance.

And in there, you’ll see that we are one. In there, you’ll know that I am the true God. In there, you’ll know that as he sent me, I send you. And in there, you’ll find everlasting life.

[00:15:39] Anthony: Let me ask you this, how exclusive or expansive, or both is Jesus’ claim, “No one comes to the Father except through me?”

[00:15:53] Carlos: Wow. If you would’ve asked me that a couple of years ago, I would be frightened to give an answer. Because that seems very exclusive, that it’s a narrow way, that the only way to the Father is through Jesus. And is that true? That’s absolutely 100% true. But growing up I was taught to read the Scriptures with an exclusive lens to see where the limitations of God’s mercy was, to see where God draws the lines between in and out. But now when you read this verse through a Christocentric lens or through a Trinitarian lens, and you know the inclusivity about what Jesus accomplishes for all mankind on the cross, united in his death, burial, and resurrection, ascension and co-seatedness, now this gives me a lot of hope, this verse. So, I don’t see this verse as exclusive anymore, but I see it as the most inclusive verse we have in our text. Because Jesus says, I’m the only way to the Father. Is that true? Yes. Is that an arrogant statement? Just so God’s favorites can go to heaven? No. What he’s saying is that there’s no other way to experience my relationship with God except through me.

Now the inclusivity comes; it is where the economy of what Jesus accomplishes on the cross and in his life, death, and resurrection, which I think TF Torrance would call the vicarious humanity of Christ, where he’s the representation for all of humanity, just as Adam was universal representation at one time, where there’s a greater representation and that’s the creator himself, Jesus Christ in the flesh burying our sin, but yet giving our perfect response back to the Father.

I believe that statement right there is no longer an exclusive thing where God’s trying to pick some or the others, but rather, in the light of what Jesus has done for all of humanity, it has to be the most inclusive and most engaging, and that right there is where the gospel reveals to the depths of my heart, the joy that God has from me without my permission, without my obedience, without my devotion, but in seeing that it actually transcends and supplies the obedience, the faith, and everything I need to experience this everlasting life.

[00:18:08] Anthony: Yeah. You mentioned Jesus has the second Adam, and I think one of the questions we have to ask ourselves as followers of Jesus is, who do we put the weight on: the first Adam or the second Adam? And often the way I hear the “gospel” presented, it’s as if the first Adam won and the second Adam looks like kind of a weakling next to him as if he can only be a potential second Adam who is overcome. But let’s reference Barth here, who was quoted as saying in writing,
“Christ accomplishes the reality of our reconciliation with God, not its possibility.” He’s done it. Hallelujah. Praise God.

Let’s transition to our next pericope of the month. It is John 14:15–21. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for the sixth Sunday of Easter, May 10. Carlos, would you read it for us please?

[00:19:07] Carlos: Yes, sir. It says:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷ This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

[00:19:56] Anthony: There’s a lot there. So, if you were preaching this text, this pericope to your local congregation, what would you proclaim?

[00:20:05] Carlos: You know the first thing that jumps off this, the page, is that we’re going to be comforted by this Spirit of truth. And when I look at the word truth, for me, it means a reality. I know it really seems … it hit like that word commandment is sometimes still a bad word to me. Like, you’ll obey my commandments. So, it’s like, man, am I back under the law? Am I back under my own weight to understand and believe Jesus? And is it true that, man, if I really do the commandments first, then he’ll love me as a transactional gospel?

But I think the truth is that when the Spirit of truth comes, he reveals Christ and the reality of our condition in him, and that supplies the faith to now do the commandments in a graceful context. I always think of Exodus 20, before Moses gives the Ten Commandments. The power to do the commandments is in the verse before where God says, “I have delivered you from Egypt. Therefore, you’ll have no other gods before me.” So, I think the Spirit of truth is giving us the preceding revelation that empowers the ability to fulfill the commandments, not the need to.

[00:21:18] Anthony: Yeah, that speaks to the indicatives of grace. We first look at scripture to find where God is, because that’s where grace is. And he empowers us and activates us to actually live out a response, which is the imperative. But the indicative is always primary, right, when we come to Scripture. But often, we come looking for ourselves and what we’ve got to do.

Carlos: That’s true.

Anthony: And we miss the point when we do that. What does “another advocate” or “helper,” “comforter,” suggest about the Spirit’s ministry and the everyday experience of followers of Jesus?

[00:21:56] Carlos: I think it takes the weight off having to do it, like you said. He comes to comfort our broken efforts, the broken system, and realign those to the efforts of Christ. What’s big for me is verse 18, where it says, I will not leave you orphaned. I’m coming to you. Why?

Because we are in an orphan mindset where we think we’ve got to earn God’s love, or we think we’ve got to continue to fulfill and obey before he can even love us, that acting as anything we do changes his disposition towards us or makes us more likable or more lovable. And I think that’s what the Advocate comes to do. He comes to nourish those places in our hearts where we think we can contribute to this beautiful thing called grace.

[00:22:36] Anthony: Yeah. And I’m thinking about contributions, Carlos, and you’ve already talked to this to some degree, but JB Torrance would always talk about not throwing people back on themselves.

[00:22:47] Carlos: Sure.

[00:22:48] Anthony: But we also find that there is, the Spirit is drawing out a response in us. It’s not about earning, but there’s still effort, man. Ministry feels like hard work at the end of the day. So, how do you balance that? That, yes, we don’t earn anything but there’s still an effort in our participation in the divine life. What say you?

[00:23:10] Carlos: Yes. I think you just hit it right there. And I think one of Torrance’s primary sayings is that it’s about participation, not cooperation. There’s nothing that we do in our participation that makes this more real, but rather we are discovering what’s already real and what’s behind that discovery is what empowers the faith.

People say, it’s like yeah, so we don’t have to have faith anymore because Jesus did this. It’s like, no, the gospel actually supplies faith. It doesn’t demand it, it supplies it. And I think that’s what the Spirit comes to do. He comes to show you a love that’s unforsaking. And when you abide in that love, like you said, the natural response that love creates is to love other people, to be obedient, to fulfill commandments, not in a legalistic way, but like you said, in a way of covenantal love and a reality, not out of federal or of transactional, of inklings, absolutely.

[00:24:12] Anthony: And you said a word that kind of got me thinking, went down a rabbit trail for just a brief second. You talked about how commandments can be maybe a dirty word. Obedience can be for some people, even people who think through a Trinitarian lens. But obedience, the way I look at it, Carlos, it’s like when we see the goodness of the Father revealed in Jesus, we want to go and do what he’s doing. We want to do it like him. We want to love like him. He’s so good and faithful. What other response can there be, but this loving participation or obedience to the goodness of God?

[00:24:48] Carlos: Yeah. Karl Barth calls that, once you see that the divine commandment of God, where commandment, no longer a bad word, but rather it’s the divine empowerment to carry out the mission you’re created for.

So, I think that’s a huge way of turning it because it’s really easy, even in the grace terminology, to turn to a legalistic mindset — still having to do to get transactional reality. But the thing is, too, I think the meta narrative in Scripture is that there’s nothing we could do to do this because if we could be obedient enough, faithful enough, are obedient to the commandments enough, then we wouldn’t need Jesus.

[00:25:24] Anthony: Yeah. Amen to that. And it’s as if … I’m thinking about TF Torrance who said, “The whole universe revolves around the love of God in Jesus Christ, and all of its motion, including our participation, depends entirely upon him.”

[00:25:41] Carlos: Amen and amen.

[00:25:46] Anthony: Amen.

Let’s transition to our next pericope. It is John 17:1–11. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for the seventh Sunday of Easter, May 17.

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ² since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. ⁵ So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. ⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, ⁸ for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

Carlos, I want to give you a chance just to riff on John 17:3. It says, eternal life is knowing God in Jesus Christ. And I’m curious, what are the theological implications and how might it impact the way we talk about salvation?

[00:27:47] Carlos: Oh man, this is a huge question. For me, even just studying Karl Barth, what he believes a revelation is. It’s not things we know about God or God, things that God reveals about himself, but rather him disclosing who his whole person is and the person of Jesus.

What does this look like for eternity? Eternal life is knowing him, not knowing things about him, but rather participating in Jesus’ relationship with a Father through the Spirit. And I think when you think of salvation in these terms, it makes it a dynamic living, real salvation.

A lot of us, especially me growing up Catholic and then going to a more of a Protestant mindset, salvation was always about a place and not about a person. And in this person of Christ who’s living active, dynamic, not stagnant, not external, but internal in me having more life than I ever cared for in myself is what actually gives me life.

So, one thing that I’ve repositioned into my thinking when talking about salvation, especially as knowing him is eternal life, is that I don’t believe there is a postponed reality of this salvation. Maybe retirement home in heaven or whatever that looks like after you die.

But what I see in Scripture, what I see in the voice, in the act, in the life of Jesus is this, is that every time somebody tries to postpone some type of salvation or has a better eschatology than he, the living eschatology which he is, he rebukes him or he gets firm.

We can find this when in the Book of John, where Lazarus is dead and the friends are coming up to him saying, “Man, if you would’ve just come, he would’ve survived.” And then Martha comes up and says, “You could have done something.” And Jesus goes, “Would you believe in the resurrection?” And then she gives her the eschatology; she postpones it. She says, yes, I believe in the future resurrection, this. And then Jesus says, I am the resurrection.

And another story. They’re talking about the harvest. And Jesus says, “Oh, you say the harvest is two and three months away. But I say, if you open your eyes, it’s here.” And I think some of the strongest language that Jesus uses is for those who want to postpone salvation to a mere eschatological event in the future, rather than the living, breathing Christ, love personified, God personified in front of him right there.

So, what this means for salvation is that salvation is not a future destination merely, but rather it’s the divine participation. It’s your participation in the life of Christ in the Trinity right now.

[00:30:34] Anthony: And what I’m hearing is we have been saved. We are being saved. And we will be saved. And he is the present reality of that.

And that, boy, doesn’t that alleviate some anxiety in life knowing …, because often, again, even with … we were talking about election, salvation gets talked in those terms. Are you in or are you out? But there is a present-day reality to that, which is really beautiful. And it’s an act of participation for sure.

It seems to me, Carlos, that, and I’m hyperlinking back to the TF Torrance quote, that everything hinges on the mutual love and shared glory we see between the Father and the Son. Is that the case? And how is prayer a participation in that love relationship of Father and Son?

[00:31:28] Carlos: Okay, this is one thing I struggle with. And actually, my PhD title’s going to be around Karl Barth and “Our Father.” And more so, because I believe, like what Paul says, like, we don’t know how to pray. We pray as we not ought to. And then Jesus comes in real time in the middle of people who do know how to pray, who have been praying for centuries, the Shema, all these different things. And Jesus interrupts that reality and says, “This is how you pray.” And he starts with the first words, “Our Father.”

And this is so groundbreaking because no one up until this point has ever tried to relate to God as a Father, as a relational aspect. It’s always some external deistic figure behind the clouds, behind Mars, who you have to beg in order to have relationship, to bless you, to bless your crops, X, Y, Z, et cetera.

So, I think how it addresses prayer is that Jesus comes as a living crisis. And like, as we said and TF Torrance has called this, the Vicarious Man. And I think part of this vicarious living that Jesus does for us is in prayer as well, and even especially in the “Our Father.”

So, as we’ve seen, that “Our Father,” the first verse, “Our Father who art in heaven,” there’s a crisis here. When Jesus starts praying this in front of the people, they’re like, what do you mean this guy’s your Father? And this creates a crisis. And Jesus Christ is a living crisis, a restorative crisis. And in this mode where Jesus prays, he’s praying not only for mankind, but on behalf of mankind, because our alienated minds cannot fathom to see God as a Father.

So how does this change prayer? Because Jesus acts as a fulfillment and the contradiction at the same time. He fulfills a prayer that we can’t pray. We’re not able to call God Father because we’re so trapped in our legalistic transaction, federal, judicial mindset about how we should relate with God.

But at the end of the day, too, he reveals that it’s a living, a relationship, a family agenda, and he reveals that if God wanted anything other than a family, he wouldn’t have asked us to call him Father.

[00:33:42] Anthony: Thanks be to God, that we have a great high priest who understands, who mediates, who knows what we need, and in relationship with the Spirit even goes beyond the words that we can speak, to pray the true heart, you know, that we, our true selves are hidden in his life. Amen.

Let’s transition to our final text. It’s John 7:37–39. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Pentecost on May 24. Carlos, read it first, please.

[00:34:20] Carlos: Sure. Yeah.

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, ³⁸ and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” ³⁹ Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive, for as yet there was no Spirit because Jesus was not yet glorified.

[00:34:46] Anthony: “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” And I think this is a place, maybe we lean heavily on the vicarious nature of who the true believer is. But what does it mean and what does it look like when out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living waters?

[00:35:06] Carlos: Yeah. The term that I think crushes me is that term living. And what it does is it confronts me with a life that I have to acknowledge that I’m no longer, that God’s no longer fitting in any of my containers, that there’s no way of domesticating the goodness of God because it’s a living water. It’s not stagnant. It’s something that intrigues you because of his hospitality already inside you.

[00:35:34] Anthony: Yeah. And how do you, I’m just curious, how do you see this living water imagery? Or do you? Does it move people from a personal spirituality or even an unhealthier place of privatized spirituality into witness in the world? What say you?

[00:35:53] Carlos: Absolutely. 100%. You can’t give what you do not have.

[00:35:56] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:35:57] Carlos: And Jesus says, I will give you the Spirit. So, not only with the Spirit, do you just get this relationship, but you get the divine empowerment to be ontologically yourself, which is automatically on mission, which automatically transcends any version of ethics we have because it prioritizes a cruciform love.

And Jesus says, those who love much will forgive much. He doesn’t give us 50 billion ways and 20 different books on how to forgive somebody. But rather, he says, if you get the big rock in first, all the small ones will just fit. I think this will behold in awe and wonder the beauty of Christ, and let that revelation grow from day to day as a stagnant, as a living water inside of us. The natural response is that out of our belly, people will see this water flowing out of us, and those who are thirsty will come drink. And that is the message of reconciliation. You have been reconciled, therefore live like it.

[00:36:52] Anthony: Amen. This is a really brief text, especially for Pentecost. Is there anything else that you’d want to draw from it that you would share with a congregation?

[00:37:03] Carlos: Yeah, I would. And like you said, Karl Barth says revelation is reconciliation. There’s no way that we can see God unveiled in his glory, in true revelation for who he is, and it not lead to some type of reconciliation, not just in us, but outside of us.

The resurrection is the message about what Christ has done. It’s a miracle from heaven that he would be raised from the dead. But then he also shows us in that revelation, the true beauty of the cross, this co-centered cruciform love.

Anthony: Yeah.

Carlos: That we have the privilege of awakening to seeing our exact location, what God believes about us, and sharing that same gift of love to a hurting world.

[00:37:53] Anthony: And what a gift that is. We’re recording this during Holy Week, today’s Holy Thursday, and we see these living waters expressed in the person and activity of Jesus who walked into the room with his dear friends, even those that would betray and leave him.

And he knew all authority in heaven and earth was his. He knew he was large and in charge in a sense. And what do we see him do? Cruciform love gets up quietly from his reclined position and he washes dirty, nasty feet because he came to serve, not to be served. And it is out of those living waters that we can love one another. It’s only by that.

It’s a supernatural thing. It does not necessarily come naturally to a broken human being like myself, but by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit made manifest. We can love and love well. And thanks be to God that he acts first.

Carlos, I want to thank you for being with us. Bless you and Beth and your family as you make this move and depart from the States to continue your pursuit of truth in a PhD program. That’s awesome. We’re so grateful for you and I want to leave with a thought from TF Torrance who says, “If Jesus Christ is God’s word to man, then Jesus Christ is man’s word to God.” Thanks be to God for that. I want to thank our team with Gospel Reverb. It would not be possible without having a great group of people working behind the scenes to make it happen.

Carlos, thank you. And as is our tradition here at Gospel Reverb, we’d like to end with a word of prayer. Would you pray for us please?

[00:39:39] Carlos: Sure. I just want to keep it short. Over the last couple of years, this one prayer has really affected my heart, and I try to share it with as many people as possible. And it’s short and simple. It’s by Macrina Wiederkehr. She says this, “God, Father, give us the courage to believe the truth about us no matter how beautiful it is.” In your Son’s name. Amen.

[00:40:06] Anthony: Amen.

Thank you for being a guest of Gospel Reverb. If you like what you heard, give us a high rating, and review us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast content. Share this episode with a friend. It really does help us get the word out as we are just getting started. Join us next month for a new show and insights from the RCL. Until then, peace be with you!