The Heavenly Banquet

In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia discuss the relationship between Christian identity and national identity. Are these even compatible allegiances? What is American civic religion? How do we recognize it, and why is it so insidious? In what ways does it compete or conflict with the gospel? You’ve seen those t-shirts that mix the symbols of our faith with the symbols of our nation. Let’s talk about them and even get some insight on it all from Revelation.

Chad Rhodes: “Governments operate ultimately by force. That’s how they compel obedience. That is not how the kingdom of God works, certainly not how the church works. I don’t want to say that we compel obedience through love, but love is the prime mechanism, not force. So that fundamental distinction has to be made. This is why, in my mind, the separation of church and state is probably beautiful, because anytime the church gets too aligned with power, invariably they use it for horrific things.”
Charlotte Elia offers a reflection on Luke 14:1, 7-14.

“When something needs to be said, there’s no time like the present. There’s no time like now in the kingdom of God. If you take nothing else with you today, see if you can’t pick up a little bit of the audacity of Jesus. Speak and witness to the kingdom of God, use your prophetic voice, when the moment presents itself. Don’t wait for some more convenient, more polite time. There’s no telling when or if that time is going to come. Channel that audacity of Jesus, say what needs to be said in the moment it has to be said. God’s time, the kingdom’s time, is always now.”
Charlotte Elia offers a reflection on Luke 13:10-17. You might hear this as just another story about Jesus finding controversy by healing on the Sabbath, but that issue was never really up for debate and seems like a distraction. The far more interesting, and unfortunately common, event here is that a religious leader witnessed an actual miracle and objected:

“I have seen God working. I have seen God working in the midst of our churches, and I have seen leaders object. Just like the leader of the synagogue in today’s story, I have seen them witness the same miracles that I have witnessed and say, ‘No, not today. That’s not on the agenda. Let’s shut down whatever that is, and get back to the business at hand.’ And that’s nonsense. That’s ridiculous. That’s absurd. And everyone knows it, and yet it keeps happening.”
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia discuss a recent post Chad wrote for our Round Table Substack entitled, “What Is the Bible?” You’d think it would be easy to tell the difference between scripture and Jesus, and yet some folks seem to offer the Bible the reverence and to give it the authority in their lives that should only be reserved for God. What’s at risk with this sort of bibliolatry? Could the root cause of all of this striving just be a plain lack of biblical literacy? What’s a more faithful understanding of the relationship between Jesus as the Word of God and scripture as God’s word? How can we learn to interpret scripture as Jesus did? What does Jesus have to say about all of this anyhow?
In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia discuss the resurrection of the body. What could it be like? Is it really physical or purely spiritual? What does it mean to have a perfected body? Will we still look like us? Will we recognize others? Listen as your hosts first look at some relevant Old Testament texts, then examine what the biblical witness tells us about Jesus’ resurrected body, and finally chat about what’s at stake in our body affirming, creation affirming faith before devolving into a debate about yellow squash and zucchini.

Charlotte: This is a very body positive, body affirming, matter affirming faith, because it’s also not just saying a body or some matter is good. It’s saying your body and your matter is good, and even Christ’s wounded body is good. That’s so fascinating to me, that we don’t see him resurrected as healed from the crucifixion but still carrying those wounds as identifying markers, and that’s what Thomas wants to see because that’s the guy he knows, but that he’s literally bearing on his body the impression of his greatest act of love for us.

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In this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia chat about heaven. What does scripture actually say, and what does the tradition invent? Are paradise, the eternal city, and the throne of God distinct heavenly states or are these various images all seeking to describe the same perfection? What will we do in heaven? And what could the experience of the beatific vision possibly be? Whatever heaven is, it seems like it is going to be far more wonderful than any of us have ever imagined.

Chad: And we’re gonna be together.

Charlotte: You see, that part sometimes doesn’t appeal to me.

Chad: Hell is other people.

Charlotte: But I do love the idea of the beatific vision including being able to see God in other people, because although I believe, to my core, that everyone is created in the image of God and is equally dignified by that image, there are some people who absolutely try that for me.

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On this episode Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia tackle hell. It’s bad, y’all, but maybe not as bad as you think. Join us as we look at the following questions: What does scripture say about hell? Who is in charge of hell? Who goes to hell and what happens there? Also, is hell forever or is redemption still possible after this life? Could hell itself be in some way redemptive?
Chad Rhodes and Charlotte Elia discuss what we do and don’t know about what happens when we die. Do we face judgement in that instant or do we sleep for a while? Would we even notice a difference? Are there some folks like the martyrs and saints who are immediately taken into heaven? Are we somehow “in Christ” until the Second Coming and final judgement? What could that mean? Listen as your hosts examine the various and often competing voices from scripture and tradition and try to sort out what really matters here.
Charlotte Elia offers a reflection on Mark 7:1-8.

“Too often American Evangelicals have pointed to verses like this in support of their’“culture wars,’ to denounce any acceptance of marginalized peoples as ‘novel,’ ‘new,’ an addition to the gospel. They teach that ‘the commandment of God’ is that set of Pharisaical restrictions that Jesus directly challenges, and they oppose any social or political change as a triumph of supposed ‘human tradition’ over the commandment of God. To accept this teaching though one first has to dismiss the spirit of the law given to the Israelites. The law brings life, literally, by offering practical advice on food safety, health, and sanitation. And the law brings life to communities and individuals by offering protection to the most vulnerable among us. The law commands the care of the orphan, the widow, the sick, the immigrant, the poor, and the oppressed. God’s law is love. God’s law is love, and where the law is applied to hurt, to abuse, rather than uplift and protect, Jesus meets those Pharisaical challenges by reminding them who God is and what God demands. God is love, and love trumps any human understanding of God’s law. Love wins. Love wins because God prevails.”
Charlotte Elia offers a reflection on Luke 10.

“We are called to love, and we are called to love in specific ways, through very specific tasks. There isn’t a compromise here. We can’t allow the words of Jesus to be watered down into meaningless platitudes meant to satisfy the tastes of those opposed to the gospel of love. We teach the Gospel. We preach the Gospel. We don’t compromise the Gospel. Where it is embraced, we make partners. We make disciples for the work of the Gospel. Where it is rejected, we… Well, we do nothing. We do nothing more. We’ve said what we’ve had to say. We’ve shared what we’ve been called to share, and if it’s rejected, we’re done. We can walk away. We can take our energy and our love and our hope elsewhere. We need not squander it or, worse yet, demean it, mangle it into something supposedly more suitable but also something entirely unrecognizable.”