Monday, April 14, 2014

Monday, 14 April, 2014

Mark 11:12-25

Today’s Bible reading is quite a puzzle.  At first glance, Jesus appears unfair.  It wasn’t the season for figs, so why did Jesus curse the poor fig tree for having no fruit?  In the Temple, Jesus upset everything, animals running around, customers and merchants driven out, money spilled on the floor.  What is going on?  Why is Jesus acting so out of character?  Why is he who healed and restored so many people now causing damage?

To solve our puzzle, we must examine the text more carefully, consider its context and references, and compare it with other relevant parts of the Bible.  

First, in the dialogue between Jesus and the disciples the second morning (vv. 20-25), there’s one little word, often overlooked, that gives us a big hint.  It’s the word “this.”  When we say “faith can move mountains,” we are throwing the word away and misquoting Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t say “mountains”; he says “this mountain.” We need to discover what specific mountain Jesus had in mind.  

Both the text and geography give us clues.  The dialogue came while Jesus and his disciples were going from Bethany (where they spent the night) to Jerusalem. The highest, most prominent part of Jerusalem visible from all over that area is Temple Mount.  It seems likely that Jesus is referring to Temple Mount.  He may be using this fig-tree puzzle to predict the destruction of the Temple that stood there proudly. 

Interesting perhaps, but I for one don’t find this observation to be adequate evidence of what the puzzle means.  Mark keeps us waiting.

In his next chapter (11:27-12:41) Mark recounts a long series of events and dialogues Jesus had with various groups (not his disciples).  It appears these all come later on that same day the fig tree was found withered.  Mark leaves us all through chapter 12 to stew over what our puzzle really means, as perhaps Jesus left his disciples to stew over it all that day.  Finally, at the end of the day (12:43-44), Jesus called his disciples together.  First he commended the widow who was so generous with her meagre income, showing such great faith in God (echoes of the earlier dialogue).  Then, as they were leaving the Temple (13:1-2), one disciple admiring its magnificence, Jesus remarked, “Do you see these great buildings?  There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”  Thus Jesus does predict the Temple’s destruction, and it’s now looking quite likely that “this mountain into the sea” does refer to this calamity.

If we stop here, however, we are left with big questions of “why this destruction?” and parts of the dialogue don’t quite seem to fit.  Let’s now look at 11:15-18, the story often called “Cleansing the Temple.” We tend to think Jesus was trying to reform the Temple practice, get rid of the improper commerce, and put things right.  Not true:  We’ll find that his biblical references make it certain that Jesus was not announcing reform, but destruction of the Temple.  

Jesus first quotes from Isaiah 56:7, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”  This is part of Isaiah’s beautiful prophecy (56:1-8) of God’s intention for the Temple to be the place where foreigners, the excluded, the outcasts would be fully welcomed, where their offerings would be accepted at God’s altar.  There’s nothing here about a peripheral “court of the Gentiles”; all worshippers are equal.  What a wonderful intention for the Temple, uniting all nations in prayer and worship!

Then Jesus quotes Jeremiah 7:11, “but you have made it a den of robbers.”  The context (Jer. 7:12-15) spells out clearly what will happen.  God tells the people, “Go now to my place that was in Shiloh … and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel.… I will do to the house that is called by my name [the Temple], and in which you trust, … as I did to Shiloh.  And I will cast you out of my sight.” There’s no reform of Temple worship here; it is destruction.  The story of Shiloh appears in 1 Samuel 4, and it is frightening.  Read it to learn the story.

It may be helpful to note that Jesus’ action in the Temple is one of the few events in Jesus’ life recorded in all four Gospels.  Matthew 21:12-27 starts with the ruckus in the Temple, then the fig tree, then Jesus’ discussion with the Temple rulers.  Mark 11:12-33 divides the story of the fig tree into two days, and also separates the action in the Temple from the discussion with its rulers.  Luke 19:45 is a brief statement of the Temple ruckus, with no mention of the fig tree, but with the prediction “not one stone upon another” just before.  John 2:13-22 places the Temple action much earlier in Jesus’ ministry than do the synoptic Gospels and includes different content.  In John 2:19, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”—a saying used by all four Evangelists, usually quoted as evidence against Jesus on trial and as denunciation on the cross.  The author tells us in v. 21 that Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body (and thus about his death and resurrection).

I wonder if Jesus had this saying in mind during his dialogue with the disciples about the fig tree.  In this saying, Jesus identifies his own death, the destruction of his body, with the destruction of the Temple.  In predicting the Resurrection, the saying also points (see esp. Mark 14:58) to our new “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1), and in that house God’s intention in Isaiah 56:1-8 will be fully realized.  

That day by the fig tree, Jesus taught his disciples and us not only to pray in faith, believing God that we have received what we pray for, but (v. 25) to pray with forgiveness toward anyone against whom we have anything, just as Jesus on the Cross prayed for forgiveness for those who ill-treated him.  The sacrifice of his own life, once for all (Hebrews 7:27, 9:11-12, 10:8-10), renders the whole imperfect sacrificial system worthless, though it was central to the Temple.  As the Book of Common Prayer puts it so beautifully, God gave his “only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.”  Amen.

- Robert Kruse