December 7, 2015

“Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.” The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?” He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there. In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.” Matthew 21:12 – 20

“Do you not suppose that love has anger? There is no such anger as that which a mother’s love furnishes. Do you suppose that when she sees the child that is both herself and him whom she loves better than herself, the child in whom her hope is bound up, the child that is God’s glass through which she sees immortality…doing a detestable meanness, that she is not angry and indignant, and that the child does not feel the smart of physical advice? You might as well say that a summer shower has no thunder as to say that love has no anger.” Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887) Yale Lectures on Preaching, “For All The Saints” volume III (p. 16)

Why would Jesus be angry at a fig tree? It makes us wonder at the inclusion of this encounter. Jesus is angry at the money changers who are trying to turn the house of prayer into a den of robbers. The business of changing money, exchanging a coin that is not acceptable in the Temple, for a coin that is acceptable, was rife with corruption. When you have someone who desperately needs an item at your mercy, it is clear to see why the sin of corruption would permeate this business. Jesus is angry.

But Jesus has the opportunity to spend the night away from the business of the Temple and to calm down. But it seems to me he is not calm at all. Of course he is hungry, but is this the fault of the fig tree that it is not bearing any fruit? Here is some insight for all of us. The fig tree was a popular symbol for the nation of Israel. In his encounter with the Temple money changers, Jesus sees the barren fig tree as a microcosm of the whole nation of Israel –it had become barren from the business of G-d just as the fig tree was barren. When Jesus says “May no fruit come from you ever again”, is he cursing the nation of Israel, or simply stating their future if they do not turn back to the business of G-d?

Pastor Dave