“Like a Fruitless Tree”
Mark 11:12-24
Barbara J. Campbell, Pastor
After the shouting died down from his “Palm Sunday” entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus went to the temple and Mark’s gospel writes, “looked around at everything,” and then, since it was late, Jesus and his disciples left the city to spend the night in the suburban village of Bethany. The following day the group headed back to Jerusalem and as they walked along, Jesus realized that he had not had any breakfast. Spotting a fig tree, Jesus went over to it hoping to find something to eat but found no fruit on it. The story was told that Jesus, the man who refused to curse even his worst enemies, became so disappointed and so angry that the tree wasn’t bearing any fruit, that he wished eternal destruction upon the poor fig tree.
This tale is so disturbing of our image of a peaceful Jesus and so filled with details that don’t make sense, (such as the fact that fig trees wouldn’t have been able to produce fruit during that particular season), that numerous interpretations have arisen as to how the story might have developed. For example, some wonder whether Jesus might have used a fruitless tree at some point in his ministry to describe Israel or the temple system and authorities. Other wonder if the disciples of Jesus might have remembered Jesus once being disappointed by such a fruitless tree, in the season when it should have produced fruit.
We will never know what sort of incident might have led to the story of the fruitless fig tree, but there is a possibility that we can begin to figure out what the story meant to the author of Mark’s gospel. Mark uses the story of the so-called “Cursing of the Fig Tree” to frame another story of an uncharacteristically angry Jesus; the story of Jesus “Overturning Tables and Driving out the Moneychangers.”
The temple in Jerusalem was one of the wonders of the ancient world. The area within the temple walls covered over 35 acres. The central shrine itself was relatively small, in keeping with the dimensions specified by Moses. In front of the Holy of Holies itself was the Court of the Priests where sacrifices were offered. Farther behind the Court of the Priests was the Court of Israel and behind that the Court of the Women. The rest of the temple mound, perhaps two-thirds of the total area was called the Court of the Gentiles. This was the only area that non-Jews were permitted to enter.
In one corner of the temple mound, as part of the court of the Gentiles, was a market where worshipers, coming and going, could purchase unblemished animals and birds for their sacrifices and exchange their everyday money, which often had the stamp of a pagan deity and therefore could not be put into the temple treasury, into the acceptable coins which were minted only in the city of Tyre.
While some claim that this story is not credible because the temple police and Roman soldiers would have quickly arrested Jesus before it got out of hand, others suspect that the incident was very quick and over long before the authorities even heard about it. The story itself says only that Jesus began to drive the people out; both buyers and sellers, not just the moneychangers.
The author states Jesus’ anger in the form of two quotes from the prophets. Jesus quotes Isaiah first saying, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” The Greek word, which in our version is translated as “nations,” usually refers in the New Testament to non-Jewish individuals; “Gentiles,” in other words, or” non-believers”. First of all, Jesus reminds the people that God’s house was a house of prayer; holy space; a place where human beings were to connect and relate to their God.
So, was it the sacrificial system itself that had turned the temple into something other than a house of prayer or was it the commercial enterprises which had secularized the temple? Though our scripture gives no reference to Jesus opposing the system of temple sacrifice, many of the prophets spoke against these rituals, and in the second century Gospel of the Ebionites, which did not become part of our canonized scripture, Jesus is quoted as saying, “I have come to annul sacrifice, and if you will not cease to sacrifice the wrath will not turn from you.”
Jesus also quotes Isaiah as saying that not only must God’s house be a house of prayer but that it must be a house of prayer for the Gentiles. Perhaps Jesus enraged by the sight of the Court of Gentiles. As he looked around he would have witnessed Gentile merchants, Gentile visitors and onlookers; all of whom were shut out from even the Court of Women. He would have stood with them outside three thick walls of stone which separated them from the sanctuary of Yahweh. He would have seen that God’s house was not fulfilling its purpose, much like a fig tree does not fulfill its purpose until it bears fruit.
Eduard Schweizer writes that, “As a place of prayer the temple should reflect the attitude that (human beings) have nothing to achieve or offer to God; consequently, it should be open to all (people.)” (Schweizer, The Good News According to Mark, pg 233). Chances are that Jesus would have been angered by any of these situations, for in each of these cases, the temple was no longer fulfilling its purpose.
Jesus is also remembered as quoting the Prophet Jeremiah, who once said that God’s house had been made “a den of robbers.” This term has led many to interpret that the commercial enterprises were corrupt in Jesus’ eyes. Yet the Greek word which is translated in our text as “robber” is not the word usually used for a “thief” but rather a word which meant something like “brigand.”
A “Den of brigands” would not have been the place where robbery occurred but the safe haven to which the brigands return with their booty. Jeremiah was condeming the people who committed all sorts of dishonesty and violence elsewhere and then came to the temple as a place where they could offer a sacrifice and feel safe.
Well known theological author, Barbara Brown Taylor, writes in her most recent book, An Altar in the World, that “The whole world in the House of God. Somewhere along the line we bought – or were sold – the idea that God is chiefly interested in religion. We believed that God’s home was the church, that God’s people knew who they were, and that the world was a barren place full of lost souls in need of all the help they could get. Plenty of us seized on those ideas because they offered us meaning. Believing them gave us purpose and worth. They gave us something noble to do in the midst of lives that might otherwise be invisible. Plus, there really are . . . people in need of saving. The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world in the same way they do.”
Taylor reminds us of the story of Jacob’s dream in which a ladder was set up on the earth which reached all the way to heaven. As angels ascended and descended on that ladder, suddenly God was there beside Jacob saying, “Remember, I am with you.” Taylor finally asks, “What if God can drop a ladder absolutely anywhere, with no regard for the religious standards developed by those who have made it their business to the way to God?
If prayer means connecting and being in relationship with the divine spirit where might God’s house of prayer be found today? In what sort of places or situations could we imagine God dropping a ladder today?
As Jesus leaves the temple again heading out toward Bethany, the “fig-tree frame” is completed with the disciples noticing that Jesus has performed another miracle, his last according to Mark, and the fig tree is completely withered. As the temple picture and its frame is finished,( in a discourse that most agree was added later,) we find that the early church may have been uncomfortable ending with the temple, and in turn the church, dead or dying like the fig tree because it didn’t fulfill its purpose.
The author of Mark’s gospel follows the disciples’ final words that the fig tree has withered with a response from Jesus that turns the discussion to the power of faith and prayer to move mountains. Perhaps even the early church felt that fulfilling their purpose would be as difficult as moving a mountain.
Some believe that the Church, as we know it, is also withering. It may die altogether or there may be something new that takes root from its stump, but people are no longer finding it a place of prayer; a place of connecting with God.
Since we began this season of Lent; a season of preparation for Easter, we have read stories of how Jesus struggled with human and cultural temptations and of how Jesus grieved that the door into God’s house seemed so “narrow” when seen through human fear and misunderstanding. But it was when God’s people shut the doors and made their temple something other than a “house of prayer” that Jesus got really angry.
If St. Mark is to be a house of prayer it must become a community in which relationship and connection with the Spirit is possible. If St. Mark is to be a tree that bears fruit, it must fulfill its purpose in being a community which welcomes all people to gather at one table, as one family, to pray and to feast and to celebrate the joy that in grace and love God’s ladder is dropped anywhere and everywhere in the world.