Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face. (John 19:1-3)

God never intended for work to be painful and frustrating. According to Genesis 1 and 2, work was God’s first gift to humankind.

But when sin entered the world, the curse broke every part of creation, including the world of work. God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you” (see Genesis 3:17-18).

That backstory makes the Roman soldiers’ choice of a “crown of thorns” for Jesus all the more poetic. Knowingly or not, the Romans used a thorn—this symbol of the curse—to crown the One whose resurrection would overturn that curse. It is precisely because Christ allowed himself to be crowned with thorns...

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face. (John 19:1-3)

God never intended for work to be painful and frustrating. According to Genesis 1 and 2, work was God’s first gift to humankind.

But when sin entered the world, the curse broke every part of creation, including the world of work. God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you” (see Genesis 3:17-18).

That backstory makes the Roman soldiers’ choice of a “crown of thorns” for Jesus all the more poetic. Knowingly or not, the Romans used a thorn—this symbol of the curse—to crown the One whose resurrection would overturn that curse. It is precisely because Christ allowed himself to be crowned with thorns...

[Pontius Pilate] took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!” (Matthew 27:24)

Pilate wanted nothing to do with the prisoner, Jesus of Nazareth. So he tried to make him someone else’s problem, pawning him off on the Pharisees and Herod (see John 18:31 and Luke 23:6-7). But ultimately, Jesus wound up back at Pilate’s doorstep.

Exasperated, Pilate succumbed to political pressure and agreed to have Jesus crucified. But not before one final act of trying to absolve himself of responsibility. Today’s passage says that Pilate “washed his hands in front of the crowd” and said, "It is your responsibility." In other words, “This is not my problem.”

Just hours earlier, Jesus was doing a bit of washing himself. “He poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet,” to clean their external filth as a symbolic act of the deeper internal filth he was about to wash clean on the cross (see John 13:1-1...

About an hour later [a third person] asserted, “Certainly this fellow was with [Jesus], for he is a Galilean.” Peter replied, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. (Luke 22:59-60)

With Easter fast approaching, I want to spend the next few weeks focusing on five characters in the Easter narrative and what their work can teach us about our own work today. We will start with an overlooked character in today’s passage: the rooster. 

Now, before you roll your eyes at my assertion that the rooster had a job we can glean wisdom from, bear with me. I promise this will be a great encouragement to you today. But first, let’s set the scene.

At the Last Supper, Jesus predicted Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crowed—a prophecy Peter vehemently rejected. But as the third denial left Peter’s lips, we see one of the most cinematic scenes in Scripture: “Just as [Peter] was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and look...

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

After losing a dramatic civil rights showdown with President Lyndon B. Johnson, Fannie Lou Hamer thought her work was in vain. To refuel her for the fight, her employer sent her on a trip to Africa.

There, resting her head on the back of a bathtub, Hamer marveled at how far God had brought her since her days picking cotton on a Mississippi plantation. Who would ever have thought that she would find herself halfway around the world relaxing in a beach bungalow on a sprawling estate in Guinea? 

Suddenly, a knock at the door interrupted her bath. “Fannie!” called the voice on the other side of the door. “The president is here. Can you come?” 

Hamer let out a laugh. “Yeah right! Tell His Excellence that I’ll see him in a couple of hours. I’m having my bath, darling.” 

But the ...

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

Fannie Lou Hamer had gone from sharecropper to civil rights activist. But on June 9, 1963, that decision almost cost her her life.

Hamer and some fellow activists were on a bus heading home when they stopped for food in Winona, Mississippi. The restaurant unlawfully refused them service. Instead, the police inside the restaurant unjustly arrested Hamer and four of her coworkers.

Hamer was shocked. “Why was I arrested?” she asked. The officers responded with jeers and racial slurs as they drove past the city jail and straight to the county jail. Out there, Hamer realized, “Wasn’t nobody gon’ hear us.”

Once at the jail, the officers shoved four of the five women into cell blocks, keeping one of the activists, June Johnson, wit...

It is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Philippians 2:13)

Fannie Lou Hamer suffered inconceivable injustices. She was born into generational poverty, cheated out of wages, coerced by doctors into a hysterectomy against her will—the list goes on and on.

Hamer longed to fight against these injustices. But there were two major problems. First, speaking out against injustice in Mississippi in the mid-1960s often got you killed. Second, Hamer was taught to “let go and let God” handle your problems. If she was going to do more than that, it was going to take a sign from God. And on a summer night in 1962, that’s exactly what she got.

“Stop waiting on a sign from God!” preached James Bevel from the pulpit. 

Upon hearing those words, Hamer’s hand stilled. Her paper fan—and the sweltering humidity—were briefly forgotten as she leaned in to hear what the preacher had to say. 

Reverend Bevel’s goal was to stir fellow Christians to register to vote...

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28)

I’ve never met a white friend who knows Fannie Lou Hamer’s story. And I’ve never met a black friend who doesn’t. Over the next four weeks, we’ll study how this remarkable sharecropper-turned-activist followed Jesus in her work and extract lessons for our own jobs today. Let’s begin by parachuting into one of the most dramatic scenes of her life.

Election Day 1964 was three months away, but President Lyndon B. Johnson wasn’t worried about his Republican opponent. The greatest threat to his presidency was Fannie Lou Hamer testifying at the Democratic National Convention, AKA the DNC.

For weeks, Johnson did everything he could to stop her. He had the FBI tap her phones and pressured DNC leaders behind the scenes. But it was no use. On August 22, the DNC decided America needed to hear Hamer’s testimony.

At 3:00 p.m., Hamer took the stand, and the nation tuned in ...

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:16-18)

My friend Josephina was so excited to tell me that she had finally landed a job packing boxes in a warehouse.

“Congratulations!” I said. “How’s the job going?”

“Well,” she said, “they are only paying us minimum wage and my boss is constantly screaming at me and my co-workers. But I feel like I get paid $50 an hour.”

“What!? Why?” I asked incredulously.

“Because every day I get to pray for my co-workers who are in that brutal environment.”

Josephina is excited about a tough, low-paying job because she understands the privilege and power of prayer—a theme James focuses on at the conclusion of his letter. 

James says, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” He then ...

If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. (James 4:17)

If you were to ask me to confess the last three sins I can remember, they would all be sins of commission—things I’ve done that fall short of God's commands. None would be sins of omission—good things I felt the Lord prompting me to do that I failed to act upon. But in today’s passage, James is directing my (and your) attention to the latter.

“Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family,” says pastor John Piper. “So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing—just lots of hard work during the day…and lots of fun stuff on the weekend—woven around church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more.”

Because Jesus lived a life of far more! Jesus didn’t just avoid evil. He proactively did righteousness. And so, if we long to fully image him—if we long for ...