Enacting the Kingdom

Fr. Yuri Hladio & Fr. Geoffrey Ready
  • 4.9 (23)
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  • WEEKLY SERIES

Welcome to ‘Enacting the Kingdom’: A Podcast about Liturgical Worship. Fr. Yuri Hladio is an Orthodox Christian priest with a life-long desire to keep learning. Fr. Geoffrey holds a doctorate in Liturgical Theology and is the director of Orthodox Christian Studies at Trinity College, University of Toronto. Together they explore the narrative and liturgical theology of the Orthodox Christian Church.

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  1. EPISODE 1

    Salvation Is from the Jews: Introduction

    In John's Gospel, we find a unique narrative of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well. He shows her deep compassion, speaking with her, honouring her, calling out her sin while calling her into the Kingdom. As a Samaritan, she represents the gentiles, the nations who are not part of the covenant community, being brought in. There is a particular line in this narrative that we will use as the focal point for this series: "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews." Our theology, our understanding of who God is, is mediated through the story of God and Israel. It is through the calling of a particular people, a particular nation, that all nations are saved. It is through God's interaction with this particular and imperfect people, that He reveals himself to be the God that we know and worship and ultimately recognize in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the central story that we participate in and are grafted into. You can't have Jesus, and the Church, and its sacraments, and a spiritual life, and our destiny in the Kingdom of God, without grappling with the story of God and Israel. Jesus of Nazareth was and is a Jew. In point of fact, he was a faithful and Torah-observant Jew and first century Rabbi. If we are interested in his teachings and his example, then we must understand he was a real person who lived in a real time within a real culture. It is impossible to understand his teachings without first understanding that he lived in fulfillment of Jewish tradition, not in rejection of it. The more we come to see this, the more we can fully live out our own Orthodox faith. To miss this, and to separate ourselves from the story of God and Israel, is to put ourselves outside of the worship of the one true God - and surely we want to be counted as those who "worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews." ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    32 min

  2. EPISODE 2

    Salvation Is from the Jews: The Lord's Prayer as a Jewish Prayer (part 1)

    In the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus teaches his followers how to pray using what we now know as The Lord's Prayer. As Christians, most of us would claim this prayer as quintessentially Christian, however we will find that it is also quintessentially Jewish in nature. Again, we see how Jesus, far from rejecting his tradition, lived and taught in fulfillment of it. In this episode, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri begin to discuss each clause and its deep connection with Jewish tradition, and how its themes ought to inform what it is we bring to prayer, both communal and personal. Come back next week for part two! In the meantime, we would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    33 min

  3. EPISODE 3

    Salvation Is from the Jews: The Lord's Prayer as a Jewish Prayer (part 2)

    We continue to work through the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus gave to his disciples who asked to learn how to pray, beginning with "Give us this day our daily bread." Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri explore how this traditionally Jewish theme (e.g. manna as daily bread, relying solely on God's provision) also points to the Christian practices of receiving Holy Eucharist, and participating in the Messianic age in the here and now, a foretaste of the life to come. Kind of like ordering a pumpkin spice latte at the end of summer. Seriously, listen for this analogy, it's a gem! We also discuss the etymology, and Jewish stories and traditions that might advocate for certain translations of the Lord's Prayer: using "debts" vs "trespasses", "temptation" vs "trial", or "evil" vs "evil one". ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    37 min

  4. EPISODE 4

    Salvation Is from the Jews: Facing up to Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism

    Judaism, from the beginning, in all of its multiple forms, had a built-in inter-family debate over what the proper way of being Jewish is. Everything we have written in the New Testament is Jewish literature, and part of this inter-family argument, debating principally over whether Jesus is the Messiah of Israel. Yes, the argument can become strident, harsh and difficult, but not necessarily anti-Jewish, as it's happening within Judaism itself. We've established during this series that Rabbinic Judaism and what came to be known as Christianity are the two forms of Judaism that emerged from the post temple, first century Jewish environment. Over the centuries and millennia, as these two traditions and theologies ceased to recognize each other as being from one family, this rhetoric that was once part of a family dispute, now takes on a different character. When the Jew is no longer me, or my family, or the tradition I believe I'm part of, but rather the "other", we start to see the divisions and anti-Jewish stereotypes even in our teaching, preaching and worship. Jesus is no longer the quintessential Jew, living out the best of Judaism, but rather the rebel which saves us from the Law. We read back this othering and anti-Judaism back into the epistles and gospel teachings, and it becomes the seed bed from which antisemitism grows. Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey explore the difference between anti-Judaism and antisemitism, parallel this whole othering process with marriage, separation and divorce, and also discuss Justin Martyr and his Dialogue with Trypho (both the good and the bad!). ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    33 min

  5. EPISODE 5

    Salvation Is from the Jews: Jesus the Faithful and Torah-Observant Jew

    Jesus often seems to be transgressing against the Torah and upsetting the experts in the Law, overthrowing their strictly rules-based religion in favour of a grace-filled one, yet is that really what is happening in the Gospels? Far from it. As we've discussed in this season, these inter-Jewish debates were actively being held in his day, and his viewpoints were shared by other rabbis. In many cases, Jesus held to an even stricter standard of Torah observance. Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey examine how it was not the theology that Jesus proclaimed that led to his execution, rather it was the authority that he claimed, as Son of Man, Son of God, that the leaders (both Jewish and Roman) objected to. The fact that he was indeed at the heart of his Jewish tradition and made those claims, made it all the more objectionable. He was not some crazy marginal figure that could easily be ignored. He knew what he was about. We also take a look at the Jewishness of his followers, a ragtag collection that represent the various types of Judaisms of the first century, and the symbolism of choosing twelve men in particular. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    26 min

  6. EPISODE 6

    Salvation Is from the Jews: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Zealots

    Jesus is a Pharisee.  This might be hard to take, as many of us grew up equating the word "pharisaic" with "hypocritical" - sadly, a definition that still can be found in the Oxford Dictionary. So what is it that the Pharisees believed, and how can we say that Jesus was one? Today we'll do a deep dive into understanding the different Jewish groups that existed in Jesus' time. As we talked about in the last episode, Jesus drew his disciples from these various groups to show the renewal of all of Israel and the inclusiveness of his Kingdom. We'll see how Christian theology picks up on some aspects of Sadducean, Essene and Zealot theology but is more like a sibling to Pharisaic theology. In fact, Christianity is super-Pharisaic, not anti-Pharisaic. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    37 min

  7. EPISODE 7

    Salvation Is from the Jews: The Gospel of John (the Odd One Out)

    In today's episode, we take a closer look at the Gospel of John, the gospel from which we drew the title of this series, "Salvation is from the Jews". It is generally considered to be the odd one out among the other gospels, telling the story of Jesus from a very different angle. Some claim that it is even antisemitic, as the opponents of Jesus are often blanketly called "the Jews". Often? In actual fact, 71 times. But who's counting? Fr Geoffrey explains how we can better understand this term within different contexts by exploring the history of Judeans, Galileans and other Israelites. We'll also see how in his gospel, John beautifully connects Jesus' words with the Jewish feasts that are occurring during his ministry (such as Passover, Purim, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Feast of the Dedication), with Jesus riffing off these festal themes and calling people back to the true meaning of the feasts. Often connected to these feasts are the "I am" statements of Jesus, also uniquely found in John's Gospel. The more we know about Jewish history, feasts and practices, the more the gospel comes to life! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    33 min

  8. EPISODE 8

    Salvation Is from the Jews: Messianic Expectations

    There were many different ideas among the various Judaisms about what and who the Messiah might be, that coalesced around one or more of three central expectations having to do with land, kingship and temple. Many Christians think that Jesus was rejected because he wasn't what the Jews had expected, for instance, a spiritual teacher instead of a military leader. On the contrary, Jesus touches on every single one of the messianic expectations - and that was the confusing part! Everyone had something to object to. There was no prophetic messianic checklist with boxes that needed to be ticked off. There is so much more to it than that. We see that in Jesus, every aspect of the scriptures is fulfilled, every part of the history and life of Israel is taken up, recapitulated and lived out in its fulness in the life of Jesus. Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss all this, as well as the wrinkle in the story - if the Messiah has come, where is the messianic age? ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    31 min

  9. EPISODE 9

    Salvation Is from the Jews: More about the Pharisees

    Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri field a question from one of our listeners in regards to the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. We reflect on the four roughly divided sects of the Judaisms of the first century (Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots and Essenes) and also how some Jews probably intersected more than one of the categories, or never properly belonged to any of them. Mapping geography on top of this adds a new dimension, and is affected by the primary focus of these groups.  We also learn about a canonized saint within the Orthodox tradition who is also a key figure in Jewish tradition, who held a senior position in the Sanhedrin, and is considered in the Mishnah to be one of the greatest Jewish teachers.  ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    34 min

  10. EPISODE 10

    Salvation Is from the Jews: A God-Infested World

    The people of the first century lived in a god-infested world. In fact, we still do, though in our society we experience it more as a god-vacuum, as our theological imagination is devoid of divinity and the spiritual realm. At the time of Jesus, it was understood and accepted, even by Jews, that every nation was associated with multiple gods. Jews were not monotheist in that they believed there was only one god, rather they were set apart because they believed that their god was the one True God, the Most-High God, to whom all other gods were subject. It's more accurate to call the Jews monolaters, a people who would only offer worship (latreia) to their one true God. Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey explore what it would have been like for the average everyday Jew to navigate this world of multiple gods, participating in society along with the nations, and also why it would have been difficult for early gentile Christians to adopt monolatry. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    27 min

  11. EPISODE 11

    Salvation Is from the Jews: Paul's Conversion (?) Story

    Did Paul really convert on the road to Damascus? As a Torah-observant Jew, conversion would have meant turning away from the one true God of Israel, so Paul certainly would not have considered it as such.  Clearly, there was a change of heart, but how can we properly understand this in light of what we have learned through this season so far? We discuss how, from Paul's point of view, his understanding of who God is, the covenant that He has made with His people, and the purpose of the covenant to bring in all the nations, is being fulfilled - not changed. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    30 min
See All Season 11 (11)

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About

Welcome to ‘Enacting the Kingdom’: A Podcast about Liturgical Worship. Fr. Yuri Hladio is an Orthodox Christian priest with a life-long desire to keep learning. Fr. Geoffrey holds a doctorate in Liturgical Theology and is the director of Orthodox Christian Studies at Trinity College, University of Toronto. Together they explore the narrative and liturgical theology of the Orthodox Christian Church.

Information

  • Creator
    Fr. Yuri Hladio & Fr. Geoffrey Ready
  • Episodes
    173
  • Seasons
    11
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Fr. Yuri Hladio & Fr. Geoffrey Ready

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