Take a moment and read Mark 11:11-33.

As I mentioned yesterday, even if you have places of safety—Bethany—in your life, sometimes you have to leave. As Jesus begins to press his presence in Jerusalem, he comes to the Temple, looks around, and goes back to Bethany, maybe for one final deep breath before the storm.

This episode in Jerusalem is marked by a specific sequence of images and events. Mark “bookends” or “sandwiches” the Temple incident with a curious incident with a fig tree. Most of the time when you see this in scripture it means that the outer “bookends” are intended to shed light on the inner content, and vice versa. So the fig tree is meant to tell us about the Temple, and Jesus’ actions in the Temple tell us a little about the fig tree as well.

Let’s not waste time: the fig tree represents Israel. Mark and Jesus are intentionally echoing Jeremiah 8, where the prophet is indicting the leadership of Israel as “false prophets” and leaders:

They offer superficial treatments for people’s mortal wound.
They give assurances of peace when there is no peace.
Are they ashamed of these disgusting actions?
Not at all–they don’t even know how to blush!
Therefore, they will lie among the slaughtered.
They will be brought down when I punish them, says the LORD.
I will surely consume them. There will be no more harvests of figs and grapes.
Their fruit trees will all die.
Whatever I game them will soon be gone.
I, the LORD, have spoken! (Jeremiah 8:11-13)

So Jesus is pronouncing judgment here, but why? There’s a clue in the language that Jesus uses in 11:17. Most translations use the word, “robbers” to translate the Greek word lestes. But lestes actually indicates more violence than “robber” captures. As N.T. Wright puts it, “The Temple had become, in Jesus’ day as in Jeremiah’s, the talisman of nationalistic violence…” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 420). Jesus is angry—not so much about the exchange of goods and money changing in the temple—but about the violent resistance that the Temple has come to represent. (By the way, Jesus’ actions in the Temple are probably better understood, not so much as violent anger, but as prophetic and symbolic action, representing God’s judgment on the Temple and the nation of Israel.)

Simply put, God’s kingdom is not going to come about through violence, and Jesus’ pronouncement has much more to do with how people had twisted and/or confused the mission of God into an excuse to take up arms against Rome and “the pagans”, to seek the Kingdom through military and political victory, rather than through suffering and humility.

Good thing the church never does that any more, huh?

So Jesus moves into the place of obedience: an immediate confrontation with the economic, political, and violent “powers” of his day.

It simultaneously took immense courage, first to confront the establishment, and then later to choose suffering rather than retaliation.

• Is there anywhere that you need to confront injustice?
• What could it mean to confront injustice and oppression with suffering and humility? 

Tomorrow: the Upper Room, the place of intimate betrayal.

As promised, here are the last five “Leadership Commandments” I gave to my friend as he entered into ministry.

1. (6) Thou shalt remember that people need you to lead them; don’t be afraid to. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, people actually crave legitimate leadership. If they trust you, they will entrust a lot to you, and they will do it willingly. Don’t miss an opportunity to lead just because you’re afraid to speak into someone’s life.
2. (7) Thou shalt remember that it all starts with what God is doing in your life. Though I don’t necessarily agree that you can’t take a person somewhere you haven’t been yourself (because God is way, way bigger than that), you do need to take your spiritual life seriously, and you do need to minister out of the fullness of your own life. Tend to your soul.
3. (8) Thou shalt realize you reproduce what/who you are. I learned this the hard way. You can talk and lead until you are exhausted, but ultimately you will reproduce who you are, not what you do. In one of my first ministry callings, I worked extremely hard to build a great team; we did great work together. However, I began to notice that a couple key members had become cynical and sarcastic, and lost the sense of wonder that they’d had when they began their journey with me. I realized that I had helped them become that, because that’s what was stirring around in my soul. That’s who I was becoming.It still crushes me.
4. (9) Thou shalt lead by faith, not by sight. When you lead musical worship, it’s tempting to either watch people “really getting into it” and decide that you’re doing a great job, or watch people sitting on their hands and decide that you’re doing a horrible job. Both are error. We minister to God first, and we trust that He is working. If you watch the people who are enthusiastically responding to your leading and decide that you are really hitting it, you are actually closer to idolatry than it is to leading faithfully. If you watch the people who are not responding at all and decide that you are failing, you are allowing yourself to become needlessly discouraged. Do your best, and trust God for the results.
5. (10) Thou shalt immediately begin working yourself out of a job.More than any other vocation, ministry is not meant to be hoarded. There’s a fine line between allowing yourself to “do the things that only you can do,” and just holding on to ministry roles that you really should be giving away. Ministry is meant to expand, which means you need to actively look for people to pour into.Caveat #1: It will take a long time to find them. 

   Caveat #2: There will a couple instances where you think you’ve found “your replacement”, and you will be disappointed. 

   But keep looking.

So that’s it. There will probably be a “third tablet” of commandments, someday, but these were enough to get him started.

Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath

If you deal with any kind of change—whether personal or organizational, internal or external—this book is really amazing.

One of the key concepts that Chip and Dan Heath communicate is that in order to achieve really big goals you have to “shrink the change.” Our brains can get overwhelmed with the enormity of some of the “big things” we are trying to accomplish, so in order to keep from being paralyzed, we need make change manageable, turning it into small bite-sized chunks.

For me, an unexpected result of “shrinking the change” was that sometimes I lose a bit of the sense of doing some crazy, enormous thing (the goal or change), and instead acquire the thoughts of doing these seemingly meaningless tasks.

Sometimes it actually feels less inspiring to me.

But then I got to thinking: I wonder if people who do really amazing things are aware that they are doing really amazing things.

I wonder if they just know that they are simply following the next logical step in a sequence in order to accomplish their given task…

• To write that book…
• To lose that weight…
• To change their character…
• To complete that record…

It’s tempting to focus on the “Big, Hairy, Audacious, Goals” in our lives, and to use that focus as motivation to do them.

But it’s more important to actually accomplish the goals than it is to dream them up…

… and that’s considerably less sexy.

So, the irony is that to accomplish really cool things—to change your life, to produce something, to “ship”,  you have to sometimes surrender the thought that you’re doing really cool things, and simply do the next thing that’s in front of you.

• Taking 10 minutes out of your day to pray can change your character forever
• Picking up the phone to call someone who is lonely and isolated can send a powerful message of significance and love
• Writing for 10 minutes a day can unlock the creative ideas for a book or a song
• Going to bed 30 minutes earlier can give you the added energy you need to be more engaged at work

Is it sexy? No.

Does it work? Probably.

Surrender a little of the grandiosity of your dreams in order to actually achieve them.

(I originally wrote this for my church. I added a couple of thoughts).

Bear with me just a minute.

One of my favorite records is James Brown Live in Paris in 1971. It is one of the most intense sets of music I’ve ever heard. In terms of flat out energy, I’d put it up against releases from most metal and industrial bands. For 73 minutes (the entire CD), the band just cooks. There are, however, breaks: times when James needs to hang back and sing a ballad, in order to give the band—and the audience—a break.

In short, funk—and art, and life—needs contrast. 

Dark so that light can stand out.

Silence so that noise can be pronounced.

If all you ever have is noise, life gets exhausting. If you only ever go “full throttle”, sooner or later you run out of gas. A holistic, healthy life needs to swing back and forth between exertion and rest, engagement and retreat, waking and sleeping. A holistic life needs silence, needs rhythm, needs diversity.

Our spiritual life is no different. In a sense, every Sunday is a miniature celebration of the resurrection, and all of the joy and excitement that comes with it. However, it can be easy to become addicted to “resurrection,” and to begin to think that our spiritual lives should only ever be full of joyful shouting.

For our own spiritual health, sometimes we need to engage in a different perspective.

That’s where seasons such as “Lent” can be helpful. Lent is a traditional season of the church that is useful for preparing for the earth-shattering, paradigm-shaking event of the resurrection at Easter. To that end, it’s historically been a season where Christ-followers reflect on their lives and thoughtfully contemplate the forgiveness that God offers us through Jesus, often through activities such as fasting, silence, and confession.

The season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, where we are invited to remember our mortality, to remember the beginning of Jesus’ journey towards the cross, and to symbolically begin our own. E3 will have two traditional Ash Wednesday gatherings—at 7:30 am and at noon—on February 22.

… Because even the hardest working man in show business needs some occasional quiet time.

Lent is traditionally about reflection, fasting, and giving. Here are a few questions to get you thinking:

• Where/how do you need contrast in your life? Do you need silence? Or maybe you have the silence thing down, and you need “engagement”; where can you give—but give secretly—over the next forty days?
• What have you become too dependent upon for life? What needs to be removed in order for you to re-orient yourself towards your dependence on God?
• How can you follow Jesus to the cross this season?

I need some help here…

Do you think of yourself as “creative”?

Have you ever considered the fact that you are “creating” your life—actually that as believers we charged with creating a very particular, “gospel” life—in the same way that an artist creates, and that there are some valuable lessons that we can learn from the process of creativity? 

For a while I’ve been thinking about the connection between art and the “Christian life”, and to me the connections are interesting and profound. As followers of Jesus, we believe that the gospel isn’t just for getting into heaven, but has the capacity to radically change the world now. Similarly, many artists proclaim that “art changes the world.” Good art has ability to change the way you see the world (which actually changes the world, but that’s a quantum physics discussion for another time).

The gospel changes the world. Art changes the world.

We proclaim the gospel. We live the gospel.

Can we connect artistic practices with gospel living?

I have a hunch that we can, and in the process learn more about the gospel and become more creative as well.

What are your thoughts? Send ’em on…

Like many folks, I was really troubled by the execution last week of Troy Davis.

Really I was just really hopeless and sad.

But then I also saw this story, and I was really forced to ask myself, “How pro-life am I?”

Because what that guy did was horrible…

… and if I mourn the execution of Troy Davis, then I have to also mourn the execution of James Byrd.

… and that’s really, really hard to do…

I love, love, love chipotlé salsa, specifically this particular brand. (I’m pretty convinced that Jesus would’ve dipped his bread in it at the last supper, if Rick Bayless was in his posse.)

Unfortunately, it’s pretty difficult to find in Tallahassee. The only place I know for certain that has it is World Market. A few days ago we were right in the neighborhood, so me, Levi, and Emily popped in to get a jar.

On display at the cash register were these odd candy bars. They said, “No Girls Allowed” on them, very prominently.

Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out the significance of the branding, so I finally asked the cashier, “Why no girls allowed?”

“Oh because of how many calories! 350 calories! We wouldn’t want a girl to eat 350 calories, right?!?”

With my 13-year old daughter standing there, I was pretty horrified. Though childhood obesity is very troubling, body image issues hit home for me a bit harder. We work hard to make sure she doesn’t have to compare herself with other girls, to try and understand what it means to be “healthy” rather than “thin” (or whatever other adjective you care to describe).

Yet here is this company (and/or the cashier; I understand that there’s some debate about why the ad agency went with this tagline), in plain sight, throwing it right in our faces.

I couldn’t help but think of the young women in my life who have struggled with eating disorders in order to try and conform to the standards of a world that makes unrealistic, even evil demands from them. All of these beautiful daughters of God who struggle to love them the way the Father does, because of silly, “offhand” taglines of candy bars and random retail employees.

This morning, I was listening to a beautiful piece of music when the weight of this—and many more issues—all crashed down on me. I sat in my car and sobbed, weeping for the tragic brokenness of the world. Yet no one weeps more than God.

The west has found a gun / and it’s loaded with ‘unsure’

Nip and tuck if you have the bucks  // in a race to find a cure

Psalm one hundred and thirty-nine // is the conscience to our selfish crime,

God didn’t screw up when he made you … //

He’s a father who loves to parade you …

To the daughters out there, may you receive the blessing of a Father who wants to proudly parade you today, who is smiling because his little girl is wonderfully and beautifully made… perfect in every way.

(This is 7 minutes of excruciating, beautiful, powerful prayer through music… the lyrics above occur at 2:28)