Devotional for Monday, April 6, 2020
Have you ever held on to something way past its usefulness? Perhaps a long time ago it had served its purpose, but now, years later, you still haven’t gotten rid of it, even though you should have a long time ago?
I began to study piano when I was 12. My parents’ house still has a magnificent upright piano that plays like a dream. But, if you know anything about upright pianos, you know they’re not particularly portable. So, when I was 16, my parents and I went halfway on a Casio keyboard synthesizer. There were a lot of things it didn’t have. It didn’t have 88 keys. It didn’t have weighted keys. It didn’t have full-size keys.
But it was portable. And for someone like me who wanted to play gigs, take it to my grandparent’s winter home, and play it at youth group, it was perfect.
Here’s the thing, though. Sixteen years later, that was still the one and only piano at my house. I had been a worship pastor for a decade, made money from playing gigs, and was I beginning to show my kids the ropes. But I was still using a keyboard that lacked many of the crucial features I would tell anyone else that they had to get.
In Mark 11, when Jesus curses a fig tree, it seems petty and uncalled for. Verse 14 says it’s not even the season for figs! Why get angry at a tree that’s just minding its own business, doing only what’s natural for it to do?
The point isn’t that the fig tree is in the wrong. The point is that its time has come and gone. It's a metaphor.
The very next verse, Jesus heads into the temple and drives out those who are selling the animals that will then be sacrificed. At least for a few moments, Jesus stops the temple from functioning.
This points towards Jesus’ larger mission. His death on the cross will replace the entire sacrificial system. His people, the church, will become the embodied presence of God over the entire planet. The home and neighborhood of every nation will be the place where God’s people are meant to go, make disciples, and worship.
In other words, every function that the temple used to have (sacrifice, presence, worship) will be made obsolete by Jesus.
Just like Jesus tells the fig tree, “No one will ever eat fruit from you again,” so Jesus is enacting the same principle by stopping the temple from functioning.
This, of course, will get Jesus killed. Turns out that when you mess with people’s ideas about religion, feathers turned to get a bit ruffled.
Apply
What practices, ideas, relationships, or items in your life have served their purpose and need to be let go?
Pray
God, thank you for the road that has led me to this moment, right here, right now. Help me not to make an idol of what used to be. Rather, help me to embrace what’s next and what you have in store for me. Amen.