Lent Day 35: Monday in Holy Week: The Fig Tree

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

The gospel of Mark provides a pretty clear day-by-day description of Jesus' comings and goings in the days after Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem. Mark's gospel is the earliest in the canon of scripture, closest in time to the earthly ministry of Jesus. Mark places the cleansing of the Temple on Monday.

This must have been a shocking event for the people of Jerusalem. The people loved and revered the Temple. It was considered God's literal home on earth. They supported it with their offerings.

But it appears that Jesus sees the practices of buying and selling in the Temple as a worldly presence in what should be an other-worldly place, pure and dedicated only to the worship of God. 

Recently a member of the congregation I served expressed discomfort with the fact that she was selling homemade jam in the back of the church. Was this akin to the presence of the buyers and sellers in the Temple? The proceeds were going to the One Great Hour of Sharing offering, which supports the Presbyterian Hunger Program, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and the program for the Self-Development of People. I assured her that her motives meant everything.

But surely the motives of the people selling animals for worship and changing unacceptable Roman coin for the Temple currency are also worth considering? The Temple was a place for sacrifices-- that was its purpose-- sacrifices designed and believed to make right the relationships between God and God's people. It's interesting to note that the seats for those who traded doves were overturned. Doves were the acceptable offerings of the poor, who could not afford the larger animals required.

In the next chapter of Mark, Jesus accuses the Temple authorities of stealing from the people, and he specifically names poor widows as those who are harmed, as their "houses are devoured" by those in charge. 

Context is everything, of course. And verses before and after the cleansing of the Temple concern a fig tree.

On the following day [Monday], 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...

...In the morning [Tuesday] as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” 

~Mark 11:12-14, 20-21

When a story is broken up, with another story disrupting it, we think of it as a "sandwich story;" scholars call it an inclusio. The story that makes up the "bread" of the sandwich is definitely related to the story that makes up the filling.

Jesus comes upon a fig tree, and he is hungry, but the fig has no fruit to offer. In what seems like a fit of pique, he curses it. The next day, as he and his disciples pass by, they can see that the curse has taken effect. 

What does it all mean? Does the biblical adage, "By their fruits you shall know them" apply? By enclosing the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple with a story about a fig tree that doesn't live up to its purpose, is the evangelist offering commentary on Jesus' attitude toward the Temple? That by its fruits we can see that it is not living up to its purpose?

We Christians have two thousand years of death-dealing anti-semitism to account for--to atone for, to make reparations for. Despite the plain text of the Christian Testament, we must be cautious when interpreting what can amount to anti-semitism in our texts. The text about the cleansing above (as well as the one I read aloud in church yesterday) attributes deadly motives to the Temple authorities. Millions of Jews have been murdered for the past two thousand years in outrage over such allegations.

Was the Temple not living up to its highest purposes? Maybe a better question is: is the church living up to its highest purposes? By our fruits, will people know that we intend to share the love of God as we see it reflected in Jesus Christ? If any word we write or preach or teach leads anyone to consider Jews less-than or no longer embraced by God as God's people, we are utterly failing, and we are a fig tree that ought to be cursed.

Maybe the best response to a text that seems to critique a place or manner of worship is to look at our own places and manner of worship. Are we bearing good fruit? Do our worship and witness convey the essential truth, that God is love?

"Tree of Hope" by Julie Leuthold *

* Leuthold, Julie. Tree of Hope, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57033 [retrieved April 11, 2022]. Original source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/julieleuthold/7521645058 - Julie.