What Matters Most Podcast Por John W. Martens arte de portada

What Matters Most

What Matters Most

De: John W. Martens
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What Matters Most is focused on listening to people and what is on their minds, particularly dealing with the big questions of religion and spirituality. It emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement, a Centre at St. Mark's College, the Catholic college at UBC, but our programming is intended for all interested parties, Catholic or not. In the What Matters Most podcast, we talk to people, some well-known, some not so well-known, some Catholic, some Christian, some not affiliated with any religion, some affiliated with other faiths (Muslims, Sikhs) to find out what matters to them. It is a podcast focused on spirituality and faith, but truly focused on listening to others, to learning from those connected to the Church and to those who are not. It is grounded in personal conversations that ask guests to talk about what has motivated their vocations or their work and what gives their lives meaning and purpose. The format can best be described as a conversation that allows us to get to know our guests.2024 Cristianismo Espiritualidad Ministerio y Evangelismo
Episodios
  • Easter Reflections

    Easter Reflections
    Apr 2 2026

    A bonus episode for Easter! As we are in the midst of Easter, Holy Week, I wanted to offer a few reflections on Easter season, in this case a reflection on Palm or Passion Sunday, which has just passed, and on Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of the Lord, which will soon be with us. These reflections are both based on columns I wrote for America Magazine, columns that appeared in April 2014 in America Magazine and are available online today at America Media. They also appeared in the first of my three books of columns published by Liturgical Press, The Word on the Street: Sunday Lectionary Reflections, Year A.

    The first reflection is Humble is He

    Palm Sunday (A), April 13, 2014

    Readings: Mt 21:1-11; Is 50:4-7; Ps 22:8-24; Phil 2:6-11; Mt 26:14-27:66

    "He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross." (Phil 2:8)

    The second is Risen in History

    The Resurrection of the Lord Sunday (A), April 13, 2014

    Readings: Acts 10:34-43; Ps 118:1-23; Col 3:1-4; Jn 20:1-9

    "We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem." (Acts 10:39).

    A Happy Easter to all who celebrate!

    This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark's College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

    What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark's College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark's College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors.

    A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly.

    I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas.

    If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. It's the free gift that you can give to all of your friends! And also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. And subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening, please subscribe. It's free!

    Thanks again for listening and remember what matters most.

    John W. Martens

    Director, Centre for Christian Engagement
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    16 m
  • Incarnation: A Poem by and a Conversation with Rev. Dr. Rob James

    Incarnation: A Poem by and a Conversation with Rev. Dr. Rob James
    Mar 26 2026
    Welcome to Episode 19 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with (and listen to) the Rev. Dr. Rob James. This episode focuses on the Christian understanding of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and what that means theologically for Christianity, but what it means for followers of Jesus to reflect on this reality for our human lives. This is Rob's third appearance on What Matters Most. Rob is currently priest in charge at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Vancouver. He has several degrees in Theology, including a PhD from SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. His book The Spiral Gospel: Intratextuality in Luke's Narrative was published in September 2022 by Cambridge-based publishers James Clarke. Rob has also written and published a book of stories from the Bible designed for storytellers to use with children in children's homilies or Sunday School or church camps. The first book is on stories from the NT, but there is a second coming on stories from the OT. The illustrator for both is the Reverend Amanda Ruston. The book is called Fifty New Testament Stories for Storytellers. Today's podcast is about Incarnation, which begins with Rob's poem of the same name: Incarnation, by Rob James Incarnation – He came with a cry that awakened the Universe, not in the thunder of a coronation, but in the hush of a barn, where hands make straw into a cradle, and a name is given the Nameless. The Word, whose syllables shaped galaxies, now shapes hands in infant fists. Here is God in full circumference, the circle of glory that holds stars in their orbit; here too, a mother's sigh, a bed of straw, a lantern guttering against winter's teeth. Majesty has stooped, and in stooping is not lessened but made strange, veiled, a blazing sun learning to walk under the humble skin of ordinary things. Most eyes would not see. There is a carpenter and his wife, and a baby, cause enough for joy. But, they note the birthplace: insignificant, smelling of hay, of travellers' boots; nothing more than a peculiar human birth, if peculiar at all. But the light that wove the cosmos is here. Some have worked on their sight. Others have been gifted it. The shepherds, startled by angels, are the first of the seeing; then some foreigners come to see and to give outlandish gifts; later, fishermen will fish in the dark, and land a glory that amazes their nets. A startling rule of incarnation: the fullness of God most easily concealed. For God does not clothe glory in gold so emperors will bow; but chooses a manger, where lice and lullaby mix, where a mother's breath keeps time with the stars the Word cast into space. He must learn the geography of our skin, and the dialect of our temptations. God risks being unknown. To teach us how to be human, God becomes human: not as an image of what we might dream to be, but as the figure who bears our clay, and our laughter. Look at his childhood. Physical learning of saw, plane, lathe, hammer, nails, sweat. Carpentry apprentice, he learns the fashioning of wood and of people, as they come and go, family, neighbours, customers. He grows in wisdom measured in days of doing. If Heaven had taught him by decree, thin would the lesson have been. God would not have learned it. Instead, the curriculum of human life, breaking bread with hands that would be pierced. Scandal and the consolation: God learns human craft the only way humans can learn it, by living. Perfection is not in being less tempted, less wounded. It is in being more human: more obedient to mercy than to appetite, more given to the poor than to prestige, more tender to broken things than to the pleasant, safe authorities of the world. Where the first Adam hardened his will into an instrument for taking, the second Adam bends his will into a conduit for living. First Adam learned to hide, to cover his shame. Second Adam walks toward shame...
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    1 h y 17 m
  • The Language(s) of Christianity: A Conversation with Dr. Ekaputra Tupamahu

    The Language(s) of Christianity: A Conversation with Dr. Ekaputra Tupamahu
    Mar 11 2026
    Welcome to Episode 18 of Season 4! In this episode I speak with Dr. Ekaputra Tupamahu. This episode focuses on language, post-colonial biblical studies, and how colonialism turned the Bible into a weapon of power and oppression around the world. Ekaputra Tupamahu is an associate professor of New Testament and director of masters programs at Portland Seminary and George Fox University. He received his PhD from Vanderbilt University in 2019. Dr. Tupamahu has a broad range of academic interests, including the politics of language, race/ethnic theory, postcolonial studies, immigration studies, critical study of religion, and global Christianity (particularly Pentecostal/Charismatic movement). All these interests inform and influence the way he approaches the texts of the New Testament and the history of early Christian movement(s). His monograph, Contesting Languages: Heteroglossia and the Politics of Language in the Early Church, (Oxford University Press, 2022), explores the complex dynamics of language and power in the early Christian context. Apart from discussing Contesting Languages, we will discuss three articles by Ekaputra, starting with The Bible and the Wounds of Empire: Postcolonial Reflections on Interpretation, Genealogy of the "Great Commission": Matthew 28:18–20 and Its Modern Afterlives, and Is Acts Really "The Most Overtly Missionary Book"? Challenging Whiteness in the Interpretation of Acts. Dr. Tupamahu's scholarly writings have appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and academic publications, including the Journal for the Study of the New Testament, The Bible and Critical Theory, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, the Indonesian Journal of Theology, and the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies. He has also contributed to significant academic volumes such as the Encyclopedia of Christianity in the Global South, Global Renewal Christianity, Asian Introduction to the New Testament, and the T&T Clark Handbook to Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics. Today's podcast will introduce us to Scripture, as Micah Kiel's episode did, but in this context, we are confronting the ways in which the Bible can be used to support political and economic colonialism. What happens when the Bible speaks the language of oppression and not liberation? It's not easy to hear that the language of the Bible has been used to oppress people, the way, even today, that it has been used to take away colonized peoples' ability to speak. As Eka asked, do we have a voice? Eka cited a book by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? Do colonial peoples' contribute to biblical studies or will we hear them even when they offer their contributions? The impacts of colonialism and the colonial projects that for hundreds of years have been used as tools of oppression for millions of people in the Americas, Asia, Oceania, and Africa still resonate today. This is why Eka says that post-colonialism reading does not mean a template or a method one applies but a critical response. The world is still shaped by the colonial era, the impact still continues, and one can argue colonialism is rising up again as powerful nations threaten takeovers of smaller countries by force so they can have what they want. This podcast emerges from the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark's College, the Catholic college at UBC, a centre that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, other religious traditions, and those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark's College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark's College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation. Our goal, then, is to talk to a lot of people, to learn from them, to listen to them, and to find out what motivates them, what gives them hope, what gives them peace, and what allows them to go out into the world to love their neighbors. A few thanks are in order. To Martin Strong, to Kevin Eng, and to Fang Fang Chandra, the team who helps me bring this podcast to you, but also makes the CCE run so much more smoothly. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. We are thankful to their commitment to the life of the academic world and of the work of the Church in the world by funding the work of the CCE. I am also thankful to the Cullen family, Mark and Barbara, for their support of the ongoing work of the CCE through financial donations that allow us to bring speakers to the local and international arenas. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let ...
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    1 h y 20 m
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