A Fruitful Faith

based on Mark 11:12-14, 20-22



This is a puzzling story. It only occurs in Mark and Matthew. Luke and John don’t mention it at all. Mark slips it in with only three verses and then adds two more verses later. He makes no comment other than to record the disciples heard Jesus say this. Matthew, when he recounts the story, embellishes it slightly, telling us that the fig tree immediately withered and presumably died. (In Mark, the tree is found dead the next day) It seems to suit Matthew’s purpose. He likes to see God work wonders. Again, no moral is drawn from this; we must find whatever sense we can out of it ourselves.



Either way, the story remains troubling. What can we make of a Jesus who curses a tree and makes it promptly die? This is not the gentle Jesus, meek and mild we are accustomed to. This is more like the mischievous boy who appears in what we call the apocryphal gospels which is pretty much discredited by later Biblical scholars. These stories, thought to have been written centuries after Jesus, presumably by some pious monks somewhere, show Jesus getting angry with other children for not letting him play with them and telling one of them, “You won’t make it home alive.” The boy promptly drops dead. Hardly good PR for the Messiah who came to show us the mercy and love of God, is it?



Still, the cursing of the fig tree remains for us to ponder, and perhaps it will yield up a useful lesson. We might notice, for instance, that the gospels tell us Jesus was hungry. This tidbit is useful for it makes clear that Jesus was flesh and blood. He was not a heavenly being just parading around as a human being. We could forget this in our worship of the Son of God. For many, Jesus is held so high he is unapproachable. We forget he depended on his disciples. He spoke of loving one another, which implies we all have a need to be in relationship with one another. Including Jesus! After all, why would God send his son to us if he didn’t love us and ask for us to love him in return? Yes, a hungry Jesus is a metaphor of a God who wants as well as a God who gives. And by implication, a God who wants something from us must believe that we have that something, or he wouldn’t be asking us for it, now would he.



So we stand before a fig tree. Jesus is hungry. He wants fruit. The tree is not providing it. And the curse is uttered.



Is this kind of Jesus? Mark tells us the tree was not at fault. It was not the time for it be bearing fruit. Surely Jesus knew that. Then cursing an innocent tree is unkind. Are we to expect Jesus to do the same thing with us? We have our seasons too, don’t we? We have our times when we can be cheerful, generous, loving, compassionate, understanding - all the things we think of as our “better nature”. But we have other times as well. Other seasons when our faith is shaky, when our brains aren’t functioning too well, when we are frightened, or angry, or stubborn or just plain thoughtless and unable to make sense out of our lives or the world around us. Who among us escapes these very human frailties? Are we to be cursed for our very human weaknesses? We’ve heard of Jesus throwing a temper tantrum in the Temple because of the godless attitude of the money changers. We know he can be angry. And there is another intriguing episode in the gospel of John, when Jesus “flies off the handle” at the lack of faith he sees in Mary and Martha outside the tomb of their brother Lazarus. (For that’s a pretty close approximation of what the original Greek means. Our English translations tone it down quite a bit!)



What I’m beginning to see is a Jesus who has high hopes for us, has great expectations, and he is frustrated when we consistently fail to live up to those hopes. In other words, the lesson of the fig tree is not so much how Jesus has to go hungry and is mad about it. No, he’s used to that kind of spiritual hunger. He will soon hang on a cross and implore God not to be angry with we human beings who have committed this terrible deed. Why? “They don’t know what they’re doing!” Even in his dying Jesus can see and understand this. He is not a vengeful vindictive Jesus - even though the Jews had long seen God as just that. From the time of Moses their view of God was one of a supreme being poised ready to hurl destruction down on his enemies. With Jesus, that vision is erased forever.



But Jesus is clearly angry in this story. There’s no getting around it. All the disciples know it. So what is touching off this anger? Could it be frustration at a fruitless people who could do so much more if they dared to believe more? Could it be an impatient Jesus who has waited so long and is weary of how slowly we progress? Could it be that Jesus is tiring from the effort to inspire faith and hope and love in us who have no clue about the potential inside us? Thomas Merton captures this truth so vividly in his journals when he writes:



Thank God! Thank God! I am only another member of the human race, like all the rest of them. I have the immense joy of being a man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.



Think of it! Being the Son of God and seeing this kind of potential, this kind of glory, this kind of hope for the future in every person you meet. And then think of the repeated disappointment heaped upon your heart as you watch we human beings as the poet once put it:



The world is too much with us, late and soon.

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.



Our scramble to make another dollar, climb another rung of success, find more ways to secure our future - oblivious to the glory that already resides in us. I can hear God crying out, “Oh my children, if only you could see. If only you could realize the harvest that lies sleeping in your souls!”



Then I understand the fig tree. It could have been so much more. That, I believe, helps me make sense out of this puzzling story. Jesus expects so much more of us because he - unlike we - can see the possibilities, can trust what we don’t trust, needs what we so reluctantly and so unthinkingly refuse to give.



This is stewardship season. We could make this about giving money. Personally, I hate money. It has a nasty way of shifting my attention away from what is really important in life – the business of recognizing and utilizing the resources that already reside inside us. But as we are often reminded in this “giving” season, true stewardship is about bearing fruit. It is about letting the riches of our intelligence, our time, our talents, our sensitivity, our skills as giving back to the world beauty and strength and hope and wholeness. We are harvesting an inexhaustible supply of goodness within, and seeking ways to bless the world with those fruits.



I have a crab apple tree in my front yard. It bears a fruit I’ve never tasted. When I planted that tree I was assured it was a non-fruit bearing tree. Why it defied its name and bears that fruit anyway, I have no idea. But I think of that tree - faithful to its nature, giving what I did not ask for, continuing to be fruitful even when I blindly ignore its gifts. It is a far better steward than I. I think Jesus would have loved my tree.



What about yours? Amen.