Word of Life Church Podcast

If there’s a secret to making progress as a Christian pilgrim, it’s this: When following Jesus gets hard and discouraging and confusing—and it will!—just don’t quit, but keep on pressing on.

The modern adage goes, "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." But what does that mean and where does it come from? The modern contempt for religion doesn't come from Jesus and the Apostles, it comes from the likes of Voltaire and Nietzsche. Jesus was religious. Throughout his life Jesus engaged in religious practices. Religion is essential to spiritual formation. If we hope to be formed as Christian people we can't leave it up to vague notions of abstract spirituality, instead we need the practices and disciplines that belong to the received wisdom of the Christian religion.

The Christian life is a journey, a pilgrimage. It's not a static state of being, but a call to follow Jesus. The point of the journey is not so much where we're going, but what we're becoming. Jesus didn't say, "Follow me and I will take you..." Jesus said, "Follow me and I will make you..."

In the fifth century BC Ezra led Jerusalem in a revival of fidelity to the Torah by exhorting those who had married Samaritan women to divorce them and send them away along with their children. But what happens if we invite Jesus into the story? Things change. Jesus never used the word grace, but his whole life was an embodiment of grace. Jesus embodied the grace of God by always making room at the table for the excluded other.

Zechariah is the prophet of the comeback. Israel had been on a long losing streak. A divided kingdom, a civil war, corrupt kings and priests, Israel conquered by Assyria, Judah conquered by Babylon, and worst of all, the Temple of God destroyed. It's under these bleak conditions that Zechariah dares to prophesy of a comeback for Israel. Not only will the Temple be rebuilt, but Israel's true king will come to Jerusalem. This king won't ride the warhorse; he'll enter Jerusalem on the peace donkey. But Zechariah also prophesies that the Peaceable King will be the Pierced King.