“For There Is Hope for a Tree” (Job 14.7): Jesus Curses the Fig Tree

Reading: Mark 11:12-25
Once again, I am privileged to be here with you; this time to share with you some thoughts on hope. Today is the beginning of the liturgical year, the first Sunday of Advent, the season of hope and of expectation. In some ways it is surprising that the Christian Church begins its new year by looking at the end of time, the end of the world. In other ways perhaps it is to be expected. We, the Christian community, find ourselves in the time between: between Christ’s first coming in his birth and his Second Coming at the end of time. We prepare for this Second Coming through this season of Advent, through our remembering the birth of our Lord. So I have chosen a passage that speaks to the time of waiting, a passage that tells about how to wait and what to expect.
Each time I have my students read the Gospel of Mark, this scene in which Jesus curses the fig tree is brought up by students who are rightly shocked. The Gospel makes abundantly clear that the reason Jesus found no figs on the tree was because it was not the season for figs, but then he curses it and it withers. How could he do this? How indeed?
First, let‘s look at what precedes the cursing. The Gospel of Mark is generally speaking, “quick and dirty.” Jesus is active, decisive. He goes into places, he heals, he teaches. Everything in the Gospel of Mark accentuates his agency and activity. In this part of the Gospel, Jesus has just triumphantly entered Jerusalem. The crowds have welcomed him with shouts of Hosanna! Then Mark tells us: Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything … as it was already late, he left and went to Bethany. As readers we are surprised. This unlike Jesus. This is unlike Mark. What is going on? What is going on indeed?
Then we move into the passage we heard. It is the next day and Jesus is hungry. He sees the fig tree in leaf. But let’s just stop there, because Mark, rightly or wrongly, expects us to know his whole gospel, more or less by heart, so when we read these words we are meant to remember Jesus’s other words about a fig tree. He speaks there also about it being in leaf. At Mark 13. 28 Jesus says: “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also when you see these things taking place, [when you see the sun darkened, the stars falling from heaven and the powers of heave shaken] you know that he is near, at the very gates.” So Jesus expects us to read the signs and to understand them. Then he gives us a sign, in fact he gives us two signs and asks us to understand them.
As he approaches Jerusalem he sees a fig tree in leaf and knows that his time is at hand. And so he does something that is outrageous. He does something to get our attention. Mark gives even more clues so that we will know that this is not about human hunger, and it is not about Jesus being petty that he didn’t get his breakfast fig. Mark, unlike Matthew, interrupts the story of the fig tree, just as he interrupted the story of Jesus raising the little girl from the dead. He interrupts it to tell us the story of the cleansing of the temple. Another outrageous act by Jesus. Both of these acts have the quality of being prophetic signs — actions whose meaning does not lie on the surface. It is like the prophet Jeremiah going before the Kings wearing yoke around his neck. It is meant to draw our attention and our interpretation. The two parts of this drama, the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple are meant to shed light on each other.
So let’s look at the cleansing of the temple. In some ways it is easier to understand. What is Jesus doing? He drives out those who are buying and selling and the money changers. Why? Why are there money changers in the temples anyway? This is the season of Passover. There are from 300,000 to 400,000 Jews visiting Jerusalem. They are there to offer sacrifice; that is their purpose. They cannot bring the animals with them. They would die on the way, so they have to buy them there at the temple. They all have to change Greek and Roman money for Jewish shekels in order to buy the animals to offer their sacrifices. And why must they do that? Because God says to Moses (Ex. 13.1): Consecrate to me all the first born; whatever is the first to open the womb among the Israelites, of human beings and animals, is mine. Let’s take these words in their simple meaning: God is commanding that every first born child be killed. At this point there is no qualification to the command. In fact, it is not until Chapter 34 that God says you can redeem the firstborn of your child, that is, you can substitute an animal for it.
So we have a series of exchanges here. Greek money is exchanged for Jewish shekels, then the shekels are exchanged for a lamb, then the lamb is exchanged for child. And the Temple is the place of these exchanges – all put into motion by the command of God. Jesus comes, he enters into our world to stop the whole thing. The whole bloody mess comes to a grinding halt. If money cannot be exchanged, then animals cannot be bought, and if animals cannot be bought, then sacrifices cannot be offered and the child cannot be redeemed. Why does Jesus stop this, are the children condemned? No. He stops it because it is over. There is no more fruit to be had from this tree. Our days of trying to please God by offering up blood are done. We have become a den of robbers – people who think that we can make economic exchanges with God and thereby control his blessings and his curses, but we have just seen — in Jesus cursing the fig tree — God is beyond our control. Our rationality says yes to the sacrificial exchange and no to cursing of the fig tree. The reaction of the chief priests to ending of the killing of sacrifice is our reaction. They want to kill Jesus. He ended the making of victims of our children and now he becomes the victim. If we cannot kill the animals, we turn on each other. Jesus is bringing all of this to an end.
“Jesus is not there in order to stress once again in his own person the unified violence of the sacred; he is not there to ordain and govern like Moses; he is not there to unite a people around him, to forge its unity in the crucible of rites and prohibitions, but on the contrary, to turn this long page of human history once and for all.”
It is now the next day and we return to the fig tree. Peter sees it and says “The fig tree you cursed has withered.” Now look at Jesus’s answer. Have faith in God. Pray. Forgive. He does not say a word about the cursing or the tree. Why? Because the cursing and the tree is not the point. Jesus only did it to get the disciples’ attention, to get our attention. He knows that only language that we understand, the only language that we will listen to is the language of power. So he uses it to get our attention, but only to tell us, ‘Don’t pay any attention to the fig tree. Something much more important just happened at the temple. Your whole life just got changed. You cannot live by the sacrificial economy any longer.’ Instead we are to live by faith, we are to pray.
He even tells us, If you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will be be done for you.’ What mountain is ‘this mountain’? Where is Jesus as he speaks these words. He is on the Temple Mount, and according to the Talmud the Temple Mount, the mountain on which the temple is located is Mount Moriah. Mount Moriah is the mountain where Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed, as God had commanded him. It is the place where God gave Abraham the great realization that makes him our Father in faith. On that mountain God gave Abraham the faith to know that God does not want his son to be sacrificed. Abraham made a huge leap forward in substituting the ram for his son. But now Jesus comes and says this whole mountain of sacrifice is over. His message is that we, with prayer, can end this whole long history of killing for God.
But I know that you are still worried about the poor fig tree, who did not do anything wrong. It was the not season for fruit. So let me tell you what I think and what I have seen. First of all, I think that there is no curse in Jesus Christ. But, you say, it is written right there. He cursed the fig tree. Yes, he did, but we have to understand what curse from Jesus means. Who is he? He is the one about whom it was written, ‘Cursed is he who is hung on a tree.’ He is the cursed one. Paul writes that ‘God made him who knew no sin to be sin.’ And so to be cursed by Jesus is to be blessed, in that it means a closer intimacy with him on his cross. Job tells us, even a tree has hope, and this tree, before all other trees, has the greatest hope. The wood of this tree has hope. This tree, like the woman in Mark’s Gospel who annointed Jesus’s, is to be remembered, wherever the Gospel is proclaimed. We remember this fig tree today.
This is what I think. As to what I have seen, I will tell you about it and someday you must tell me if I was right. This fig tree will be with us in heaven. More glorious than any other tree, more blessed. We shall not eat of its fruit, as Jesus has said, because the fragrance of this tree will still our every longing. It will be the loveliest of trees because it served its Master well and allowed itself to cursed by him who cannot curse.
So let us pray:
God our Father, as we enter into this season of Advent, we follow the command of your Son and we have faith in you and we pray. We pray that we might be be cursed, that your Son might find us worthy of his curse, which will be our blessing. Let us, like this fig tree by cursed by our Lord, so that we too might join more closely in his cross, to work more effectively for our neighbor’s salvation. We ask this in the name of Jesus our Lord. Amen