Road to the Cross:Killing Plants

The "Road to the Cross" is a series of Lenten Devotion to encourage and to give hope to people as they follow Jesus and prepare to remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on Easter.

^ESV Mark 11:12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. ¹³ And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. ¹⁴ And he said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it.

I don’t know much about figs.  Figs are kind of icky looking fruit and apart from a Fig Newton, I don’t know if I’ve eaten one.  Which makes we wonder about this passage of Scripture: What exactly does Jesus have against figs? (This video is the sum total of my fig knowledge)

In following Jesus, we have learned that some things just don’t make sense.  This is perhaps one of the weirdest things that Jesus does in his whole ministry.  Walking on water we understand, feeding the 5000 seems like a no-brainer, and even the harshness of the cleansing of the temple is alright by us.  But the fig tree?  It wasn’t even the seasons for figs!!!

To understand this, I think we have to get to the heart of the matter of what Jesus is doing.

Have you ever had a crush on someone?  Remember that feeling of looking at them as they passed by and you caught a whiff of their perfume?  You used to think that person was perfect.  They never did any wrong and you knew that once you got to know them, everything was going to be perfect…..and then you actually got to know them.  And you realized that they were…human…and imperfect.  They had bad breath and pimples and odd bodily smells.  Their personality was nowhere near as perfect as you knew it was…and you realize that the dream you had was so much better than the person standing in front of you.

Or have you ever had a vision of getting the perfect job?  You knew that once you got that job, life was going to be soooooooooooo easy.  You would be living the dream…for real! Only to realize that once you had the job, things weren’t perfect and nothing seemed to be going plan.

That’s the sort of thing that is going on here…but it’s much bigger than that.

In this last week of Jesus’ life, Jesus acts more symbolically and that is true of the fig tree.  In the Hebrew Bible, the fig often times represents Israel in its relationship to God.  For instance, in Jeremiah, we read, 

“When I would gather them, declares the Lord, there are no grapes on the vine nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them.” Jeremiah 8:13 ESV

It seems that Jesus is building on this OT passage and enacting it out.  Instead of finding figs on the tree, Jesus finds none.  Just as God expected to find good things in Israel, he found none. And that is the point of this passage and the point of the miracle.

Israel was created to be God’s light to the nations.  They were supposed to exemplify the way of the Lord and the teachings of God.  They were supposed to be a model of what a perfect society could and should be.  They were supposed to take care of the poor and the widows and the orphans.  They were to lead the world into the way of peace and prosperity and most importantly, they were to be the place that reconciled the nations to God.

And none of it happened.  Instead of setting the example, they followed the ways and traditions of the world around them.  They exchanged their God for a king and followed him off to war.  They embraced an uber-capitalist ethic that oppressed the poor and the widows and the orphans.  Instead of reaching out in grace and peace to the nations, they scorned them and went to war with them.  The world increased in violence and hatred and racism and poverty.   Jeremiah continues, “we looked for peace, no good came, for a time of healing, but behold terror.” (8:15)

So when God finds no figs in them, it is not surprising, for they had departed from the way of the Lord.

Jesus finds the same thing when he enters into Jerusalem. Jerusalem was to be the city of peace and reconciliation.  Jesus found a city of violent and opportunistic people.  Cursing the fig tree reveals the truth about the people of Jerusalem—that they are fruitless, barren, and void.

We have to remember that even as much as Jesus loves us, the road to the cross bears judgment. It bears judgment against some lifestyles, attitudes, and actions.  The things that come into conflict with God’s kingdom are demonstrated to be what they are: empty vessels and fruitless trees.  Jesus curses that lifestyle no differently than he cursed the fig tree.

We in the church and on the road to the cross should not take this lightly.  The things that were important to God in the past are still important to Him today.  As James puts it, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1:27).

The lesson we learn from Israel is to care more for our neighbor and their welfare than our own. Violence and greed are not the way of the Church, peace is, and yet we do not hear this from the voice of the church.  Instead, we hear the message of greed, to get all we can in the time we have.  We shy away from taking care of the poor, because that is the path of the liberals, and we concentrate more on how to get money than to give it away. 

There is a reason that this weird miracle happens, and there is a reason that the road to the cross stops right at the cursed fig tree.  It is so we might stop and pause and consider how we resemble this fig tree.  But the road to the cross continues on….