The Heavenly Banquet

In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia continue to celebrate Christmas by chatting about the nativity stories, the meaning of the incarnation, and their favorite Christmas carols.

Chad: When Christmas comes around, it’s such a great time to think about just the wonder of what it means for the Word of God to take on flesh and live among us, as it is in John’s Gospel. I don’t think there’s anything more marvelous or wonderful than that. And it’s near impossible to express without saying things that at least sound completely paradoxical. So, for instance, the one who came into this world as a tiny baby is the same one through whom this world came into being.
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia take a look back at the most downloaded episodes of 2022 and recommend a few host favorites.

The top five episodes of 2022 were:

1. What is Love?

2. Will There Be Animals in Heaven?

3. The Older, Responsible Son

4. Concerning That Richard Rohr Meme

5. Faith and Doubt; Faith or Doubt?

Also mentioned in this episode were our series on the afterlife, (What Happens When We Die?, What is Hell?, What is Heaven Like?), Talking Theology With a Friend, and Let’s Talk TULIP.

Thank you to all of our listeners and our supporters for engaging this new endeavor. We’re so happy you’re with us, and we look forward to many more conversations in the year ahead.
Charlotte Elia offers a reflection on Luke 1:38-56.

“We don’t know Mary’s song because we largely have no revolution in us. And having no revolution in us only speaks of a more distressing underlying condition of having no real hope within us, no real conviction that things can or even should be better, no strength of belief in the promises of God that moves us to seize the promises as though they were already real, right before us- right before us just waiting to be grasped.”
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia chat about Matthew 1:18-25, the Gospel lesson for the fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A. This telling of the nativity story centers Joseph, his righteousness, and his dreams. Here we have a couple beset with obstacles and facing grave danger before they even begin their lives together, and we have an image of biblical masculinity characterized by kindness, mercy, and service rather than strength, violence, and authority.
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia chat about Matthew 11:2-11, the Gospel lesson for the third Sunday of Advent, Year A. John the Baptist is in prison, and he asks if Jesus is the one. Jesus affirms his identity as Messiah and commends John’s mission as forerunner, but a particular omission points to John’s fate. This is a hard passage that holds a mirror to the reality of hope and despair that marks the human condition.
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia chat about Matthew 3:1-12, the Gospel lesson for the second Sunday of Advent, Year A. This text has it all: baptism, repentance, locusts, and wild honey. Listen as your hosts discuss John the Baptist as a type of Christ, the ecological and eschatological implications of the text, the ongoing work of baptism, and the wild voices we ignore.

Charlotte: Well, what are locusts in the Bible? They’re described as the instruments of God’s wrath…

Chad: Judgement…

Charlotte: …as the repercussion of sin. So he’s already starting to destroy, in some small way or symbolic maybe, this instrument of wrath. That’s being put aside now. To be eating the thing that causes famine! He’s consuming that which consumes fields and starves people. And wild honey, the only association I’ve got for honey is these lands flowing with milk and honey. So he’s standing in this cusp between wrath and paradise here, but he’s clearly leaning into the paradise part because he’s already being shown as a type, let’s say, of Christ, as one who is literally destroying the instruments of death. And where is he doing all this? At the Jordan.

Chad: Where they cross over into the Promised Land…

Charlotte: So all of this is happening in this huge eschatological space…

It’s not just about to happen; it is happening. It’s about to, and it is, but it always has also. I mean, the intersections here of time. Salvation history, we view as a kind of continuum; on the cosmic scale it isn’t. It already has happened, is happening, will happen. So all of these points between Eden, Exodus, the wilderness, Elijah, the Babylonian Captivity, all of that coalescing in this: the activity of God brought then to this moment.
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia chat about Matthew 24:36-44, the gospel lesson for the first Sunday of Advent, Year A. The season opens by inviting us to look at Jesus’ words about his return and by demanding that we prepare ourselves for that encounter. How should we respond? What can we do to prepare? And where’s the good news here for us?
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia talk through the acronym TULIP, an encapsulation of five points of Calvinism: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. Your hosts discuss each point, how it functions within Augustinian Calvinism, and what they find either beneficial or lacking.

Charlotte: “There’s no distinction between a cannibalistic serial killer and when I ate more pie than I should have.”

Chad: “Yeah, those are not the same thing. Depends on what kind of pie you’re eating…”

Charlotte: “Sweeney Todd has entered the chat!”

Chad: “How about ‘totally dependent on grace?'”

Charlotte: “Yeah, I think that’s so much better. We’ll keep the ‘T.'”
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia discuss both their favorite and least favorite books of the Bible.

The scriptures are the authoritative, written witness to Jesus Christ and the rule of faith and practice. The scriptures are also incredibly diverse, containing both beautiful, instructive content as well as questionable, hardly helpful content.

Charlotte and Chad explore both the books they would recommend in a heartbeat and books they find less than helpful. Of course, this exercise just gives them an excuse to discuss their love for the scriptures and the need to dig deep in the well of the written word.
Charlotte Elia offers a reflection on Romans 8:31-39 for All Souls’ Day.

“Love can reach across any obstacle, real or imagined, present or future, anything in life and even the chasm of death. You know ‘Till death do us part?’ That’s a legal boundary, not a Christian one. We love each other beyond death, through death, in spite of death. On this All Souls’ Day we remember that our God turns even ghost stories into love stories, that although our bodies may die, love remains, love lives on. Love can reach across any obstacle and join us to God and to one other, and love will reach across every obstacle until the perfection of an age when we will see that love shine perfectly in the face of God and in the face of each other in the heavenly kingdom to come.”