We all wish life could be easier and following Jesus could be made simple. Discipleship with great benefits and little cost but discipleship simply does not work that way. I wish it could be as easy as the day I could not find twenty dollars looking through a mountain of clothes. I said a quick prayer, opened up the dryer and the a twenty dollar bill and a five dollar bill was sticking out and neatly folded like two towels resting on top of each other. I laughed and thought about how God cares for us in the tiny things and not just in the big things.
When heaven invaded earth that first Christmas, this was not a sanitized Christmas story with cheerful angels and clean mangers. The Christmas story is filled with scandal like an unwed mother about to have a baby and a young couple on the run from a tyrant King. The Christmas story is not just a sweet and tender story but a bitter-sweet one filled with fear and violence. The Christmas story is both messy and difficult to posses just like following Jesus is not an easy task.
Since Jesus came to a community of people and still does, the church needs to get a lot more messier as it turns from being a membership group to a discipleship group. Things are not going to get easier for the church but a lot harder and many people just don't want to sign up for "hard!" Just like the early Israelites looked foolish walking around the walls of Jericho, the church may need to get really low and look mighty rediculous to a world filled with walls. Will the church walk through the walls and do the difficult and neccesary work of God's kingdom building or will it prefer the comfort and safety and retreat within its own man made walls? God wants to break down the walls and its the church's divine moment to follow God by faith and start walking through walls which only God can bring down in the end. The world may be placing another brick in the wall but God wants his people to walk through walls like his resurrected Son did among his disciples. If Jesus walked through walls, isn't it time the church did?
