Why There Is No Such Thing as Secular

Summary

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The Wake-Up Call - Episode Summary

Podcast: The Wake-Up Call
Host: Seedbed (John David Walt, with guest David Walt)
Episode: Why There Is No Such Thing as Secular
Date: July 13, 2026

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Overview: Main Theme

This episode explores the provocative claim that "there is no such thing as secular," centering on how Jesus, through his ministry and by the Holy Spirit, erases artificial boundaries between sacred and secular spaces. Using the story of Jesus calling Levi (Mark 2:13-17), host J.D. Walt encourages listeners to reconsider how they define sacredness and to embrace a life where grace is radical enough to risk misunderstanding for the sake of reaching those seen as "outside." The episode mixes biblical reflection, personal encouragement, song, and candid commentary—with a homespun, down-to-earth warmth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Breaking Down the Boundaries (00:00–09:21)

• Consecration and Prayer: The episode begins with a prayer, inviting listeners to start their week by dedicating themselves to Jesus ("Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you..." [00:21]).
• Scripture Focus: Mark 2:13-17 is read aloud, recounting Jesus calling Levi the tax collector and eating with "sinners." The host urges listeners to read the whole chapter themselves.
• Reflection on Jesus' Ministry:
  • Main Insight: Jesus does most of his work in everyday, seemingly "secular" settings—not just in religious spaces.

    "The ministry of the Holy Spirit collapses the compartmentalized categories of sacred and secular, church and world, sanctuary and streets." ([04:30])

  • Jesus operates by entering the real lives and spaces of people, not by waiting for them to come to religious institutions.
  • The Holy Spirit works most powerfully "where people live out their lives in the workaday world."

    "We tend to think the Holy Spirit mostly works when people gather in the church building. We observe the opposite in the ministry of Jesus." ([05:50])

2. The Sacredness of the Desecrated (06:50–09:21)

• Wendell Berry Quote:
  • "There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places."
  • Jesus is irresistibly drawn to "desecrated" people and places, restoring their sacred worth.
  • Transformation: "When sin touches the sacred, it becomes desecrated. When the sacred one touches the desecrated ones, the desecrated ones become sacred again." ([07:45])
• Religious Controversy:
  • Jesus' mingling with "sinners" enraged religious leaders, who couldn't comprehend breaking boundaries between sacred and secular.

3. Radical Grace & Risk (09:21–14:55)

• Jesus Embraces Risk:
  • Jesus risks being misinterpreted as affirming sin, prioritizing the restoration of sinners over public perception.

    "He doesn't care what it looks like... willing to risk being misunderstood as affirming sin in order to carry out his mission of restoring desecrated sinners..." ([08:36])

• A Challenge to Listeners:
  • Followers of Jesus are called to this kind of risk-taking love, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
• Memorable Moment:
  • The phrase "Grace is so radical... it is willing to take the risk and cross the line with quote, unquote, sinners." ([11:10])

4. Prayer in Song & Spiritual Practice (09:24–11:10)

• Song as Prayer: The hosts sing “Spirit of the Living God,” emphasizing the power when prayer and song mingle.
• Daily Spiritual Rhythm: J.D. Walt encourages listeners to make singing and prayer a habit throughout the day.

5. Journal Prompts & Personal Reflection (11:10–14:55)

• Reflective Questions:
  • "How much have you permitted the world around you to draw lines separating the secular and the sacred in your way of seeing people and things?"
  • "How might you redraw those lines?"
• Grace Redefined:
  • "Grace never affirms sin. Grace embraces sinners, just like you and just like me." ([12:20])
  • Reference to Romans: “While we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us… He didn't wait. He came all the way in.”

6. Community, Song, and Legacy (14:55–21:28)

• Intergenerational Dialog: J.D. welcomes his father David Walt, "the farmer," adding personal warmth and playful banter.
• On Following Jesus:
  • Recounts Jesus’ call to Levi: "Follow me."

    "It starts with one..." ([16:39])

  • Singing together “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus,” emphasizing the daily, ever-renewed act of decision.

    “Every day we need to make that decision again.” ([20:05])

• Influence & Example: The decision to follow Jesus is not only personal but has generational effect: "That’s going to mean a lot of people are coming behind you who see you following him." ([18:00])
• Persistence in Faith:
  • "You've got to pray every day. You've got to honor God every day. You can't just do it on Mondays and Tuesdays. You've got to do it seven days a week." ([20:19])
• Humor & Tradition: Conversation about farming, hats, and handkerchiefs adds a down-to-earth charm.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Sacred vs. Secular:

  "The ministry of the Holy Spirit collapses the compartmentalized categories of sacred and secular... The Holy Spirit doesn't seem to be in search of religious facilities." – J.D. Walt ([04:30])

• On Grace:

  "Grace is so radical... it is willing to take the risk and cross the line with quote, unquote, sinners... It's willing to take the risk of being misunderstood as the affirmation of sin just by being there." – J.D. Walt ([11:10])

• On Community Example:

  “When we start following him... that’s going to mean a lot of people are coming behind you who see you following him—children, your grandchildren, your friends. They'll be like, I want to go where he's going.” – David Walt ([18:00])

• On Daily Commitment:

  “Every day we need to make that decision again.” – J.D. Walt ([20:05]) “You've got to pray every day. You've got to honor God every day.” – David Walt ([20:19])

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Noteworthy Timestamps

• 00:21 – Opening prayer and theme
• 02:33 – Reading Mark 2:13-17
• 04:30–06:50 – Discussion on Jesus’ “secular” ministry
• 06:50–09:21 – Quote from Wendell Berry & transformation theme
• 09:24–09:52 – Prayer in song: “Spirit of the Living God”
• 11:10 – Journal prompts and grace reflection
• 14:55 – Interlude with father David Walt; segue to “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus”
• 16:40 – Reflection on Jesus’ invitation to Levi: “Follow me”
• 18:11–19:42 – Singing: “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus”
• 20:05–20:33 – On daily decision and daily faithfulness

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Tone and Atmosphere

• Warm, conversational, down-to-earth.
• Blends scriptural reflection, practical encouragement, music, and homespun humor.
• Emphasizes community, legacy, and grace without compromising truth.

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For Further Engagement

• Reflect on where you draw lines between “sacred” and “secular.”
• Make song and prayer a daily spiritual practice.
• Reconsider what radical grace looks like in your interactions.

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Final Thought:
In Jesus, the lines between sacred and secular melt away. As followers, we are called to be agents of grace—willing to risk misunderstanding, cross boundaries, and embrace people in everyday places with the love that changes everything.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Good Monday morning to you. Rise and shine and give God the glory. It is Monday, July 13th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. Let's begin this morning, this week in consecration. How about it? Jesus is ready. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on, on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. When we pray that prayer, I have the sense that we're just walking. We've, we've come up on the porch, we're walking through the door into the great hall of Revelation of the revelation of the Word of God, which leads to the transformation of the human soul in his image. And we're gonna, we're going to go there now. Today's entry is entitled why There Is no Such Thing as Secular. Now remember, we're in a series on the Gospel of Mark. We're Gonna, we're going 16 chapters. We're gonna go 16 days. We're even going to put in a weekend or two to just create even more gray space for everybody to read through these entries and to read the Gospel of Mark. More importantly, you know, last fall we did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In 89 straight days, we read a chapter a day of the Gospels. So this is kind of a miniseries, even with more grace, with some breaks in it. We're going to read 16 chapters over these next few weeks, one chapter at a time. I want you to read Mark chapter two today. I have a reading selected from it and then we'll reflect on it. So if you want to push pause, maybe you've already done it. Mark, chapter two. Read the whole chapter. This is verses 13, 17. Hear now the word of the Lord. Once again, Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. Follow me, Jesus told him. And Levi got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law, who were Pharisees, saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors? And sinners. On hearing this, Jesus said to them, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners the word of the Lord. Now consider this. The ministry of the Holy Spirit collapses the compartmentalized categories of sacred and secular, church and world, sanctuary and streets. Jesus does the overwhelming majority of his work right in the middle of the everyday world where everybody else is doing their everyday work. The Holy Spirit doesn't seem to be in search of religious facilities. Jesus spends his days next to the Sea of Galilee, in the host of towns and villages around the sea, in the homes of tax collectors, sinners and friends. By comparison, he goes to the synagogue once a week and hardly ever visits the big house, also known as the temple. We tend to think the Holy Spirit mostly works when people gather in the church building. We observe the opposite in the ministry of Jesus. The Holy Spirit mostly works where people live out their lives in the workaday world. Jesus is not creating environments for seekers. He is going out and seeking them where they live and work. The Holy Spirit breaks the you come to us approach, putting in its place the we go to you method. Jesus constantly shows us what it looks like when the Holy Spirit works through a person to enter desecrated places and restore their sacred character. It reminds me of a line in one of my favorite Wendell Berry poems, How to Be a Poet. Here's what he writes. There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places. Places Jesus is drawn to desecrated people and places with magnetic force. He touches a desecrated leper and restores his sacredness. He approaches a despised tax collector and restores his sacredness as a called one of God. When sin touches the sacred, it becomes desecrated. When the sacred one touches the desecrated ones, the desecrated ones become sacred again. This is what got him in so much trouble with the religious authorities whose work was to maintain the boundaries between the clean and the unclean, the sinners and the righteous, and to enforce the the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. In today's text, we see Jesus in the home of a tax collector, seated around the table with a crowd of notorious sinners. It looks to the religious authorities that he is affirming sin. It makes no sense to them. Hear them out. When the teachers of the law, who were Pharisees, saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked, asked his disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? The truth. Jesus hates Sin because sin desecrates all he has created. But he loves sinners and he's willing to walk right into the heart of sin, even if it looks bad, even if he gets accused of going soft on crime. Because he loves sinners that much, he doesn't care what it looks like. In fact, he is willing to risk being misunderstood as affirming sin in order to carry out his mission of restoring desecrated sinners into the sacred sons and daughters of God. I think this is the kind of risk taking he's looking for from us, his followers. The Holy Spirit is always ready to empower those risk takers. Yes, they will often pay a price, but those are the ones Jesus will be high fiving in the end.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For our prayer this morning, let's just sing our prayer. I just want to. I think we're going to sing this every day. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

[A]

Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me.

[B]

A lot of you know that one. I want you to learn it. I want you to start singing that. Riding down the street, riding down the road in your car. I just want you to bust out and sing that. That's a prayer. And when a prayer intersects with a song, you got a move of God on your hands. So let's do that. Let's just start singing that as we're moving about our days. Got some journal prompts for you today. How much have you permitted the world around you to draw lines separating the secular and the sacred in your way of seeing people and things? And then how might you redraw those lines? How about that? You know my favorite kind of line from today's. I'll get it. Not exactly right, but I'm going to say it this way. Grace is so radical. It's so amazing. That's why it's called Amazing Grace. That it is willing to take the risk and cross the line with quote, unquote, sinners. It's willing to go to the place where it doesn't look good, where it may be a bad look, where it may be bad optics. Its willing grace is so amazing. It's willing to take the risk of being misunderstood as the affirmation of sin just by being there. And I want to say, grace never affirms sin. Grace embraces sinners, just like you and just like me. That's that text in Romans, isn't it? Man, I'm looking forward to Romans this fall, while we were yet sinners, Jesus died for us. He didn't wait. He came all the way in. He ate with this sinner. He embraced us in our sin. Right? Even that text in Second Corinthians, he who knew no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. He meets us right where we are. He doesn't leave us there. But he's willing to take the risk that they're going to say, why is he talking to her? Why is he talking to him? Why is JD hanging out with those guys? Does he not know about them? Is he confused? Is he trying to send a message? Oh, you're not trying to send a message. You're trying to be love. You're trying to become love. And this is where Jesus is going. He's leading us. All right, good news. Got dad coming in today. We're going to do some singing. He'll be with us some this week. Excited about that. So, yeah, we're going to hand it over now. All right, friends, we're back in the saddle. And isn't it great to see who's with us today? If you're watching on YouTube or if you're listening, you're about to hear him. This is. This is David Walt, my father, and the farmer. He's many things to many people, but he's our worship leader here on the wake up call. And, dad, let's think. Let's. I love your hat, but let's take it off. Because people sometimes tell me, they're like, would you take his hat off? Because we can't see his face? But we love that hat because it says so extravagantly. And if we can ever get our act together at Seedbed, we're going to be able to have those for you to have one and wear out there on your field every day. Farmer. A farmer's got to have a hat.

[A]

That's right. You got to have it to keep that sun off his head.

[B]

The farmer wears a hat every day. And, you know, back in the day, the farmer carries. What's the farmer carry?

[A]

In his back pocket, he carries a red handkerchief.

[B]

A handkerchief. That was the.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Back in the day, farmers carried handkerchiefs.

[A]

Had to keep sweat wiped off of you.

[B]

And we don't see handkerchiefs that much anymore.

[A]

Well, they don't sweat as much. That means they don't work as hard.

[B]

There's some farmers listening to this, dad. They're not going to appreciate that comment,

[A]

I think.

[B]

I think they just might be writing in like. But you know, farming's not. It's always hard. It's not as hard as it used to be.

[A]

There's a lot of different tools now.

[B]

You can use a lot of different tools. It's not as hard as it used to be.

[A]

It's hard.

[B]

Super hard to make a living.

[A]

Yeah, it is. It's probably harder.

[B]

It's harder to make a living, farmers. Okay. We're going to grant you that. So you need to get you a handkerchief.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Maybe we could. Maybe Seabeck could start making handkerchiefs. Wouldn't that be fun?

[A]

Make these red ones.

[B]

Look at that man driving down the street in his lawnmower. He just ran into our rocking chairs. We're here in Gillette in the seed house and we're about to sing. Dad, in our wake up call today, we. We told the story about Jesus calling Levi the tax collector. He. And he. He goes up, this tax collector, and he says two words.

[A]

Follow. Follow me.

[B]

Follow me. And Levi got up and followed him. And before. Before long, there was a lot of other tax collectors following Jesus. It starts with one, and that's the song we're going to sing today. Call it out. What are we singing?

[A]

I have decided to follow Jesus.

[B]

This is a classic.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we're going to sing all four verses. What's our number?

[A]

It's 603.

[B]

603. In our great Redeemer's Praise, our hymnal. I have decided to follow Jesus.

[A]

That was a bit. That's a decision that everyone needs to make.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And it's not. It's never too late.

[B]

Never too late. Anybody out there need a second chance.

[A]

We all do, because it's available. Yeah.

[B]

And you know, I like to say, dad, there's not even third chances and fourth chances. They're all second chances. He'll give you unlimited second chances.

[A]

I tell you. He. He'll help you in any and every way. He always has and he always will.

[B]

That's Jesus, guys.

[A]

Yeah, that's.

[B]

And when we start following them, you know what that's what that's going to mean? That's going to mean a lot of people are coming behind you who see you following him.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Children, your grandchildren, your friends. They'll be like, I want to go where he's going.

[A]

Right. It's just. It's the only way to go.

[B]

All right.

[A]

You ready? Yeah. I have decided to follow Jesus I have decided to follow Jesus I have decided to follow Jesus no turning back. No turning back. This world behind me the mouth before me the world behind me the cross before me the world behind me the cross before me no turning back no turning back Though don't go with me I selway follow Though none go with me I still will follow Though none go with me I still will follow no turning back no turning back Last verse. Will you decide now to follow Jesus? Will you decide now to follow Jesus? Will you decide now to follow Jesus? No turning back, no turning back Amen.

[B]

That's one that people can sing all day today.

[A]

That's right. They can. Just. And you know, if you forget the words. Just put words in there.

[B]

Just put them in there. That's good. Well, the main thing is I have decided to follow Jesus. And you know, every day we need to make that decision again.

[A]

I know it. Yeah, we're, you know, we get out here and get busy doing something else and we forget about Jesus every day. We really don't, but we don't show it.

[B]

And that's why we do the wake up call every day.

[A]

That's right. You've got to pray every day. You've got to. To honor God every day. You can't just do it on Mondays and Tuesdays. You got to do it seven days a week.

[B]

You can't phone it in, can you?

[A]

No. It's got to come from your heart, through your mouth.

[B]

Well, I noticed, dad, you're wearing a shirt today I hadn't seen you wear in a while. What's that say?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

Says New room. This is the New Room conference. Dad's been to the New Room conference. And, man, I wish I could get you to the New Room conference this year. You don't like to go where there's a lot of people?

[A]

No, I don't mind, but it's several days.

[B]

Yes, several days. Anyway, you need to come to New room conference. Montgomery, Alabama, September 30th. October 1st second. Something like that. It's right there at the end of September, 1st of October. It's going to be incredible. I want you to come and I appreciate you wearing the shirt. All right, well, it's time to get our seeds and hit the fields today because we've decided to follow Jesus.

[A]

Amen.

[B]

And for The Awakening. I'm J.D. walt.

[A]

And I'm David. Walt. And we'll see you on the field.

[B]

On the field.

[A]

All right.