A Holy Week Reflection | Countdown to Calvary
We all have a system.
Maybe it’s attending church a few times a month. Maybe it’s serving on a team, or giving generously, or knowing your Bible well. These are good things — genuinely good things. But Jesus has a way of looking past the action to the motivation underneath, and that’s where things get uncomfortable.
This week in our Countdown to Calvary series, we followed Jesus through a relentless Tuesday of conflict with Jerusalem’s religious leaders — the chief priests, the Pharisees, the scribes, and the elders. These weren’t bad people, necessarily. They were devoted, educated, powerful men who had given their lives to the system of faith they’d inherited. The problem wasn’t their devotion. The problem was who their devotion had quietly shifted toward: themselves.
Jesus called it out plainly. They loved the best seats. They loved the long robes and the greetings in the marketplace. They performed their prayers for an audience.
And then, in contrast, Jesus sat down across from the temple treasury and watched a poor widow drop in two small coins — everything she had. No audience. No robe. No applause. Just a woman and her God.
That, Jesus said, was the real thing.
It’s a challenge that lands for us today just as it did then. The outward actions of faith can look identical whether the heart behind them is pure or polluted. You can teach a class, lead a ministry, serve faithfully every week — and be doing it entirely for your own sense of worth, your own need for control, your own love of being needed. Or you can do those exact same things as an act of quiet worship.
God sees the difference, even when no one else does.
A Question to Sit With This Week: When you serve, give, or show up — who is the audience you’re really performing for?
If that question stings a little, that’s okay. That’s exactly why Friday is coming.
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