Lent 23: Monday in Holy Week, 2018

The air takes on a different character for me during Holy Week. I saw it on Friday. It was my day off, but I made my way to church anyway, in search of a particular book I decided I needed for my sermon (The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus' Final Week in Jerusalem by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan).

I'm sure it's partly to do with the light; brighter mornings, longer dusk. But it also has to do with the light and air at church. The sight of the Fellowship Hall set up for our Palm Sunday Breakfast. The sight of that cleared away, and the same space set up for Maundy Thursday.

Something is stirring. I feel the character of this week in my bones, and day by day I am reminded of what is coming.

On the day after Palm Sunday, according to the gospel of Mark, the first thing Jesus does is to have a little fit over a fig tree that is not giving figs.

On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. ~Mark 11:12-14

I can understand Jesus' disappointment. Like many people my age, my initial introduction to figs-- the wonderful objects known as Newtons-- was my only experience for a long while. It took college and a course on D. H. Lawrence for me to decide to eat a fresh one. It was a very rewarding experience: sweet, delicate, a tiny bit exotic, and, like an early-blooming flower, fleeting.

Jesus is angry that something God created is not living up to its purpose. And he curses the tree, in the presence of his disciples.

And if that were all there were to Monday in Holy Week, we could chalk it up to very human jitters at a very momentous time. But that's not the only thing.

Jesus then goes to the Temple, and what he does there, arguably, is the straw that breaks the back of both religious and civil tolerance of who Jesus is and what Jesus says. This is most likely the reason he is hanging on a cross within days.

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
    But you have made it a den of robbers.”

And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city. ~ Mark 11:15-19

Jesus is angry at what he witnesses in the Temple: a system of religious practice which excludes the very poorest from access to the rituals of their faith. The clue is his focus on those who sold doves.

Fig Tree, by Alex Proimos, Syndey, Australia.
Made available by Wikimedia Commons

In Leviticus, those who want to make an offering for the blotting out of their sin bring a sheep-- unless they are poor. The poor can bring an offering of two doves (Lev. 5:7). And if you can't afford doves, you can bring a small amount of flour (Lev. 5:11).

In either case, the poor are being asked for something they cannot afford. And if they cannot afford to bring items to be sacrificed, that more or less guarantees that they will have no ability to access divine mercy.

Jesus is angry that something God created is not living up to its purpose... to be a house of prayer for all people, not just those who can afford the cost of the ritual.

... All of which puts the fig tree in a very different context. The fig tree and the temple seem to be commenting on one another (a fact made clear on Tuesday morning when Jesus and the disciples walk by the tree again, and see that it has withered).

Jesus has not come to town to make nice. He has come to speak the truth.

All around me... both in my community here in the Southern Tier of New York, and in the virtual (and very real) online community of preachers... we are making preparations for sharing this story this week. I don't know of anyone who is tipping over tables in any particular sanctuary. But I do know that the call to justice doesn't end when we walk in the doors of our sanctuaries. If anything, it should be given birth there. Justice is more truly "God-given" than many of the items usually asserted to have divine origin.

Praying with and for all who lead and participate in worship this week, that words of truth may be spoken and heard, in Jesus' name.