William A. Walker III

By now it has become fairly common for many evangelicals to have expanded their understanding of the gospel to include the good news about the Kingdom of God, and about a new way of life that is made available in the Spirit because of Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection. This should be celebrated! And the message still needs to be proclaimed throughout our culture and the whole earth, for that matter, but it is really great that there has been some headway made on this front in many churches, thanks to scholars like N.T. Wright, Scot McKnight, and many others before and after them.

At the same time, a problem remains within these same evangelical circles concerning the way we think about the gospel. The “Kingdom-of-God critique” does succeed at making the gospel bigger and more contextualized. It reveals that the good news is for all of creation, and not just human beings, and it situates the story of Jesus within the larger history of Israel as its climax and completion. This is very good, but we still need more.

Trinity Sunday Sermon: Nicodemus and Life in the Spirit

By Bill Walker

On June 2, 2015

In Sermons

[This is the manuscript to a sermon I preached this past Trinity Sunday, May 31st, on John 3:1-17. The audio can be heard here.]

When we talk about life in the Spirit, we are essentially at the same time talking about life in the Trinity, because the Spirit is that relationship that is shared between the Father and Son that we too get to participate in.

God the Father, who is called father not because he’s male — God transcends the categories of gender and is also “female” — but because “father” says something about the intimacy that Jesus has with God. The “Father-ness” of God also tends to point to God’s attributes as great, big, beyond, eternal, infinite and Creator, who is vast, transcendent and more immense than the universe itself. While on the other hand, the Son, Jesus Christ, we could say, is that particular, near, close, concrete, historical, embodied, human side of God. And everything between them, that relationship itself, is a field of energy charged with love, communion, interconnectedness, and movement. And that field of relationship is so dynamic, so alive, so strong, so intimate, so mutual and so deep, that Christians started to regard it as having its own personality in God — not separate from God, but distinct in the way we experience its presence.

Seeing Truth after Modernity in the Gospel of John

By Bill Walker

On May 4, 2015

In Theology

[This post appeared first on the Missio Alliance blog here.]

This last month I started teaching a class at our church called “Jesus in John.” In surprising ways, I’m finding that the season of Easter and the celebration of the resurrection is especially brought to life by the fourth Gospel. Immersing myself in a study of John again has alerted me to how much I’ve sometimes let the biases of modern scholarship creep into my thinking about Jesus’ teachings and self-understanding. In spite of all the light that historical criticism may shed on what we can confidently say about the biographical details of Jesus’ life, I’m reminded of the extent to which a focus on merely measurable truth can seriously limit our imagination and capacity for perceiving truly human and transcendent truth.

In the passion narrative of John’s Gospel, Pilate infamously asks, “What is truth?” I say he “asks,” but it is hard to know if Pilate is really asking anything. Does Jesus simply refuse to respond, or is John taking us into Pilate’s inner monologue? Pilate is conflicted. He has no measurable reason for believing the claim that Jesus has been given authority that is greater than the Emperor’s. In the end, for Pilate, the truth of power wins out against the weak truth of his own blurry vision of Jesus, who for John is truth made visible, because he reveals the Father (1:18).

Good Friday Sermon: Participating in the Crucifixion and Denying our Discipleship

By Bill Walker

On April 6, 2015

In Sermons

Text: John 18-19

At the Palm Sunday service this past Sunday, we read this same passion narrative, but from the book of Mark. There were a number of different readers throughout the congregation, each one speaking out as a different character in the story. It felt very real to me for some reason. I was moved, but I was also unsettled by it, especially when we were all asked to responsively say together, “Crucify him, Crucify him!”

Because everyone takes part in the crucifixion at some level. The Pharisees, Pilate, the disciples, the crowd… they’re all committing sins that, together, condemn Jesus. And Jesus in turn takes on those sins, and absorbs them fully, on the cross, rather than retaliating, and as Christians we believe that this is what allows us to be reconciled to God.

The (Im)Possibility of Christian Kindness

By Bill Walker

On March 22, 2015

In Sermons

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[This sermon was preached at Saint Peter’s Church on March 22, 2015, reflecting on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and John 12:20-33. You can hear the audio here.]

So we’ve been going through the fruits of the Spirit these last few weeks, and this Sunday we come to kindness… It feels little bit cliché and even boring honestly to be talking about kindness in Church — I guess because it’s so expected. And everybody tries to claim it!

Pretty much every major world religious tradition says something about the importance of kindness and compassion, such that the Dali Lama can say, “my religion is kindness; kindness is my religion.” And even among non-religious people there is a widespread acknowledgment of the value and desirability of kindness.

Thinking, Feeling and Doing: Three Kinds of Repentance for the Truly Human Life

By Bill Walker

On February 25, 2015

In Spirituality

[This post originally appeared last week on the Missio Alliance blog]

In the Christian liturgical year, Lent is a season especially dedicated to spiritual discipline and repentance. The purpose of this discipline is movement toward the resurrection life that is made available to us in Christ, and we repent because the path we naturally follow doesn’t lead to this life. But repentance is a hard thing to manufacture. If the prompting doesn’t come from a place of genuine conviction, discipline is likely to either be motivated by guilt or to produce self-righteousness. In either case, the outcome doesn’t sustain real change.

Proclaiming the Message: Evangelism, Discipleship and the Temptation of Constantinian Christianity

By Bill Walker

On February 9, 2015

In Uncategorized

[This is the transcript from a sermon that I preached yesterday (Sunday, Feb. 8th) on the New Testament lectionary readings, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 and Mark 1:29-39. The audio is available here.]

I started teaching a class two weeks ago that some of you have attended called “Christ and Culture,” and at the beginning I basically posed this question: “how do we as Christians, and as the church, understand and relate our message, our good news, to a society that increasingly does not recognize the authority of the Christian faith?” Both of the readings today speak to the importance of proclaiming our message of good news. Jesus proclaimed the message, Paul proclaimed the message, and we’re to proclaim that same message. In many ways, there’s hardly another activity commissioned for Christians to do that produces more anxiety or reveals more insecurity than that of evangelism. Maybe it was easier in the past when a higher percentage of people in this country were going to church. It felt more natural to talk to people about faith, because it was a more routine and normal part of the national life! Of course, that is changing.

Exodus, Exile and Resurrection: Living Beyond Tribalism and Individualism

By Bill Walker

On February 2, 2015

In Church and World, Ethics, Theology

[This post originally appeared on the Missio Alliance Blog.]

The beauty of the Bible has as much to do with what it tells us about human nature as it does to do with what it tells us about God. Indeed, the story of salvation only makes sense when we see the various dimensions of the human person and experience with all of its flaws and struggles that Christ has come to redeem. It starts with the most simple and obvious needs and moves to the deepest and most mysterious longings.

Naturalism is not Enough: Or, Why Transcendence is not the Problem

By Bill Walker

On January 21, 2015

In Theology

[This blog post originally appeared at HomebrewedChristianity.com, and was written in response to the podcast linked below. LeRon Shults graciously responded on his website, and we continued to dialogue in the comments section there.]

There has been a great discussion in the comment section of the latest TNT episode where Tripp talks with LeRon Shults and Barry Taylor, both of whom I admire. Shults defends a form of radical theology and at one point even uses the term “atheist” to describe himself. His ontology is a strictly “naturalistic” one. It reminds me of Kester Brewin’s recent criticism of Rob Bell’s benevolent conception of the universe. Several people commenting in response to the conversation have asked why process philosophy or theology isn’t more attractive to Shults, or why it doesn’t pass the science test. This is a great question and a discussion worth having, but I want to make another observation.

How to Fear Not and Love Your Neighbors: Church Barriers to the Gospel and the Great Commandments

By Bill Walker

On December 30, 2014

In Church and World

This post originally appeared on the Missio Alliance blog yesterday.

I heard it said once that the heart of Jesus’ teaching is pretty well summed up in these two commandments: Don’t be afraid, and love your neighbor as yourself. Of course, simple as this sounds, we soon figure out that nothing could be more difficult. This is all the more true given the way that Jesus defines neighbor (i.e., even your enemy), and given that fear is often more deeply rooted than we care to admit.

It starts with subtle worries about every day things from bills to pay, job security, and health to retirement, but then grows deeper into anxieties about rejection, loss, pain, loneliness, failure and the absence of purpose. The root of this fear is that as both finite and free, human beings have natural limitations, but infinite expectations and pretensions. This leads us to become self-conscious about our insecurity, which in turns produces the anxieties just mentioned. Anxiety inclines us to seek control of our own lack of certainty and security, of which there is never enough, and so we are driven to chase after these things to the detriment of others. Generally we either 1) abuse our freedom by grabbing for power, or 2) flee into our finitude via sensual indulgence (these are the sins of the older and younger brother in the Prodigal Son parable, respectively). In other words, fear and anxiety are what stand in the way of us actually loving our neighbors.