Holy Monday: Of Mountains and Fig Trees
A homily on Mark 11:12-25,
preached “at” the Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham, Alabama,
on Holy Monday 2020, Coronatide
I would speak to you in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
The passage I’ve just read describes events that took place on Monday in Holy Week. After Jesus arrives triumphantly in Jerusalem on Sunday, he retreats to Bethany with his disciples that evening. And then, on Monday, he returns. And, Mark tells us, as he makes his way back to Jerusalem, he is hungry. We follow him in the narrative toward a fig tree, and as we do so, we should probably already be wondering if there is some symbolic significance in Jesus going to examine a tree to see if it is bearing fruit. Perhaps as Jesus neared the leafy tree, his disciples remembered the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “[T]hus says the Lord: Like the bad figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten, so will I treat King Zedekiah of Judah, his officials, the remnant of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who live in the land of Egypt…. I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, until they are utterly destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their ancestors.” Would Jesus likewise use this fig tree to teach some lesson, offer some parable, as the Old Testament prophet did?
Jesus finds no figs on the tree, only leaves. And within the earshot of his disciples, he pronounces a curse on the tree: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.”
But Mark doesn’t let us, the hearers or readers, linger there with our questions about this strange incident. He briskly cuts to a new scene. Jesus arrives in the Holy City and heads straight for the temple. And the one who had formerly touched the sick and the young with such tenderness now begins to create a ruckus — to put it mildly. In the temple were money changers who helped pilgrims streaming in from the Diaspora exchange their foreign coins for Tyrian shekels so that they could buy the animals they needed for the required sacrifices. Interrupting this entire exchange, in strides Jesus and begins to tip over the moneychangers’ tables. Coins rain down on the temple floor like confetti. He quickly takes charge, as if he is now the presider over the temple’s functions: “he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.” And with that, he momentarily puts an end to the temple’s regular worship. Everything grinds to a halt.
But what does this all mean? Shock and confusion must have been mingling in everyone’s minds. What has Jesus just done? And why?
Finally, Jesus speaks: “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.”
Those who have ears to hear, upon hearing Jesus say this, may think of another of Israel’s prophets — Jeremiah, whose words we heard a moment ago — and his famous sermon of judgment on the temple. Jeremiah once pictured the temple as a sort of Batcave for the unjust flee to after finishing their escapades. By day the wicked in Israel oppress immigrant sojourners, orphans, and widows, and by night, as it were, they retreat back to their lair to count the spoils of their conquests. They sing to themselves, says Jeremiah, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” They hum along merrily counting what they’ve stolen from the poor, all the while trusting that the temple will shield them from any judgment they might otherwise fear.
But Jeremiah warns, speaking the word of the Lord to the people huddled in the temple for safety, “Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’ — only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord.”
Jesus — a new Jeremiah — rebukes God’s people in the same way. Do not think, Jesus says in effect, that you can persist in all your injustice, your exploitation, your idolatry and find sanctuary in the temple. The temple will not save you when the judgment comes. And it is on the horizon even now.
And then, that evening, Jesus leaves again and goes out of the city, presumably back to Bethany. The next morning, Tuesday morning in that holiest of weeks, as Jesus and his disciples head back toward Jerusalem, they see the fig tree that Jesus had cursed the day before “withered away to its roots.” Then, Mark tells us, Peter recalled Jesus’s curse and blurted out, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”
Many readers of Mark over the centuries have been struck by how he has constructed a sort of literary sandwich with the way he describes Jesus’s actions with the fig tree and in the temple. He has put the two halves of the fig tree story — the two pieces of “bread” in the sandwich — on the outside, so to speak, and in between them he has put the “meat” of the sandwich, Jesus’s visit to the temple and his disruption of the buying and selling happening there.
If Mark has constructed this sandwich to make a point, what is it? It seems that Mark wants us to connect what happened with the fig tree to what happened in the temple. Jesus pronounced judgment on the fig tree, and it withered away to the roots. And, likewise, Jesus pronounced judgment on the temple too, in a way, and a couple of chapters later in Mark’s Gospel, he says, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” The temple itself — the site of God’s presence, the place to worship the only true and living God — will be destroyed.
We cannot overestimate the sheer horror that Jesus’s words would have conjured up for his disciples. (It is perhaps not completely unlike what we are living through right now.) The destruction of the temple represents the end of the only world that made any sense to Jesus’s disciples. It was the center of the Jerusalem, the Holy City. It was the center of the world, the place where heaven and earth meet. It was the mountain that Isaiah said would endure forever: “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.” How could it ever be that the temple would be destroyed — again? Were such an unthinkable event to happen, it would mean the collapse of everything Jesus’s followers held dear. Where would they offer sacrifices? Where would they worship? Where would they pray?
And Jesus, turning to them and, I imagine, gesturing with his arm toward the temple mount, says, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.”
Strangely, mysteriously, Jesus indicates that his disciples will live to see the destruction of the temple but that — even so — they may continue to trust God as they always have and pray as they always have. Even the unthinkable — even the collapse of the world — cannot prevent God from hearing the prayers of his people.
“So I tell you,” Jesus says — I tell you, not the chief priests, not the scribes, not the Romans who think they own the temple; I tell you on my own authority — “whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” On the basis of his authority as the world’s true Lord who will, in a few days’ time, die and rise again, Jesus promises that those who come to God through him, in his name, will ultimately see their hopes fulfilled. They will pass through the fire of divine judgment, and they will be saved.
Friends, I feel, some days, as if I am watching the destruction of the temple, the collapse of civilization, the beginning of the end of life as I have always known it and taken it for granted. But what I hear when I turn to the risen Lord Jesus is the assurance that even though Jerusalem itself might be overrun, there is nothing that will thwart God’s determination to be always and forever the God who hears and answers prayer.
“Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved, and though the mountains be toppled into the depths of the sea… The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.”
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