“Do Not Eat a Fig,
Do Not Pass ‘Go,’ Do Not Collect $200!”
Jeremiah 7:1-12; Mark
11:12-19
Sunday, March 3, 2009
Pastor Dave Schneider
I.
I.On
Monday morning of his last week, Jesus is hungry. In the
distance he sees a fig tree and he
immediately craves some ripe, juicy figs.
A. The fig is
one of the oldest foods in the world. It has been around
since the Bronze Age, 3000 BCE. It has
800 varieties. It
is never ripe in April.
1.Both Matthew
(21.18f) and Luke (13.6f) tell this same story.
2.In Luke it is a
parable that seems to make more sense...
a.The owner of the
vineyard asked his gardener to cut down a fig tree that had
been growing in his orchard three
years. The
gardener advises the impatient owner, “Let it alone, sir,
this year until I dig around it and put on manure.
If it bears
some good figs next summer, well and good; if it does not,
you can dig it up.”
3.I lived in
southern new Mexico for 10 years. I had a prolific fig tree.
The fig is the only fruit tree that yields two crops
in one year. I had
so many they rotted on the ground, even after I gave figs to
anyone who wanted them. It was the
common turkey fig with
its purple fruit. But having grown up in the Middle Eastern
world, I wanted a Kadota fig tree,
the variety that
yields those sweet yellow desert figs!
a.So I got a kadota
fig by mail order and planted it in my front yard. I kept my
crew of 7 desert tortoises away from it
with a small fence,
and I waited for my figs. But before 3 years passed, my
small Kadota froze to the ground.
b.In the USA Kadotas
do grow in Southern California. And we cannot grow figs in
Arkansas! (sic) But they will thrive
in the hot
Mediterranean sun.
B.There are
some problems with this story of the condemned fig tree.
1.Fig trees do not
need fertilizing; in fact it is a waste of time.
2.Not only was the
seson springtime, which is not the season for figs;
3.it requires 6-7
years to get a mature crop of figs, only a very few are
found in the first years, and never before
early June.
4.for Jesus to utter
a curse is totally out of character!
a.particularly when
the fig tree is healthy.
II.There are several
stories in the Bible about fig trees; most of them are
metaphorical.
A.Such as
Jotham’s parable of the bramble tree that agreed to be
king over the other trees in Judges 9.
1.In Judges it was
the excessive pride of the fig tree in its perfect flavor
which made it refuse to be king over the
other trees or
bushes.
2.Might we be led to
conjecture that the cursing of this tree by Jesus is a
metaphor, a symbol for something else ...
a. it is inseparably
connected to what he does next in the temple?
3.I have suggested
that Jesus did not cleanse the temple; he came to do
something far more serious than that.
a.He came to shut it
down, and all the corruption its illegal priesthood and its
dishonest worship represented.
b.You might say, he
came to curse that temple culture.
4.Borg and Crossan
point out that on Monday in these two incidents, there are
two actions by Jesus, accompanied
by two
teachings.
a.He is doing
exactly what prophets in the Old Testament did.
In
Luke 13, the parable of the fig tree follows closely on the
heel of a tragedy in which a tower in Siloam falls on 18
people
and kills them. There it is a lesson on the need for you
to
repent before death, or else ‘”you will all likewise
perish,’”
(1)that is, just like
a fig tree which will not give figs.
B.If we
examine Jesus’ relationship with the organized religion of
his day– in the Gospel of Mark–each time there is tension
present when Jesus is in the synagogue. There is divine
judgment on the local worship.
1.Jesus was faithful
and regular in his worship every Sabbath.
a.In Jerusalem he
makes his required pilgrimage to the temple.
2.At the start of
Mark, chapter 1.21, he is in his home town of Capernaum, and
he goes to the synagogue.
a.Mark says that “they
were astonished at his teaching, for he taught as one who
had authority, and not as the
scribes.”
b.That is a put-down
of the local establishment, is it not? Their teaching was
boring, stale, it did not change anyone’s
life!
3.In chapter 3
things start getting hot. Jesus heals a man with a withered
hand, on the Sabbath no less!
a.When confronted,
he challenges the establishment: “‘Is it lawful on the
Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save
life or to kill?’”
b.What is he
saying?
c.Jesus challenges
the Pharisees and scribes: their actions and collection of
Sabbath laws are in fact harming
people’s
lives, not saving them, maybe even killing them!
d.Then Mark says,
the Pharisees immediately held a Personnel Committee meeting
with the hated Herodians,
who had sold
themselves out to the Romans
e.and plotted “how
to destroy him.”
4.No wonder then, at
the trial of Jesus in Mark 14, a key accusation is the
charge that he promised the destruction of
the temple made
with (human) hands,” to be replaced by another, “not made
with hands.”
C.Is it
surprisingly then, in Mark 11, that there is no last minute
offer of grace, as there is in the Lukan parable?
1.No last minute
grace for the money changers, dove sellers and others.
a.There is a limit
to God’s patience with us, a limit to how long we may remain
in the church without growing spiritually,
without
producing our figs–our fruit.
2.In the Gospels
the limit is 3 years!
a.Time is up. “Do
not pass ‘Go’; do not collect $200.”
b.The game is over.
...at least for these players. [PAUSE]
3.But everyone in
the temple at Passover was doing the right thing according
to their Manual of Operations.
a.No one was doing
anything illegal, unless they were cheating the pilgrims in
changing money into the coins of the
realm.
4.What Jesus
objected to was the institution of the priesthood;
a.for the high
priest and his staff were crooks, illegitimate.
(1)They had bought
the jobs from the Romans.
b.These fellows were
politically as well as religiously corrupt.
(page 2)
c.The Zealots
shortly after Jesus’ time demanded a legitimate high priest
be appointed from the peasants by lot. The
Romans responded by
killing the Zealots.
6.for the house of
God had become the seat of submission to Rome.”
a.A golden Roman
eagle had been placed on the temple by King Herod when he
rebuilt the temple,
b.and coins with the
image of the emperor were used in the temple to pay for the
sacrificial birds.
c.It had long been
prohibited to have coins with any kind of image inside that
building. But no one cared any more.
7.This moral
ambiguity and ignorance of God’s law for the purity
of worship goes back to Jeremiah’s warning in 600
B.C. [pause]
D.Paul
writes to the church in Corinth who are having serious moral
dilemmas themselves.
1.He says in 1
Corinthians 6 that it is not your job to pronounce judgment
on the outside world, “the unrighteous,” but
on “the saints!”
On ourselves!
a.“Do you not know
that we are to judge angels?” Paul writes. “How much more,
matters pertaining to this life!”
E.So now we
arrive at what this cursing of the fig tree is all about!
1.the life of
unproductiveness--no fruit in or out of season
a.our moral
ambiguity,
b.our religious
uncleanness
c.our hypocrisy
d.our refusal to
forgive and to ask forgiveness.
2.The Old Testament
writers used this image of the fig tree as an analogy for
Israel and its relationship to their God
Yahweh.
a.It was paired with
the grape vine as a symbol of the gift of prosperity,
followed by Israel’s purity of devotion.
3.Micah who also
used this image declares,
a.“He has showed
you, O man and woman, what is good and what does the LORD
require of you but to do justice, to love
kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
III.We are re-called to
the lesson of Jeremiah 7 and his final warning.
A.Not to trust
in the deceptive words that the house of the Lord is safe.
1.But “‘Stand in the
gate of the house and proclaim there this word’” to everyone
who enters to worship.
a.Jeremiah does not
pull any punches.
2.We are told to go
and see for ourselves what God can do. Go and look at the
house at Shiloh, where once God
says, “‘I caused my
name to dwell,”
a.It has now become
“‘a den of robbers.’”
b.Jesus takes the
words right out of Jeremiah’s mouth.
3.The reason Shiloh
fell was not because all the members left, but because the
worshipers came in and refused to
repent:
a.they saw no need
to amend their ways,
b.to execute justice
with each other,
c.they oppressed the
widow, the fatherless and the homeless.
4.Many Presbyterians
in Arkansas have expended energy over a particular
ordination question this past week.
(page 3)
a.We have pointed an
accusing finger at Second Presbyterian Church in Little
Rock.
b.Still others have
complained about the staffing in our church and looked to
point a finger of blame.
5.But I want to
think instead about all of your who took communion to the
shut-ins and elderly,
a.who worked to get two
youth to confirmation camp,
b.who worked tirelessly
to get new drivers for ASEP,
c.who reviewed the rolls
and updated the new Shepherds’ lists,
d.who gathered to
complete our stewardship drive,
(1)59 pledges: $186,700,
or 55% of our needed budget.
e.who began putting
together a mission study,
f.who made a commitment
to rebuild our campus ministry,
g.and about the four of
you who are interested in learning more about becoming members
of Central Presbyterian
Church!
6.I received an e-mail
from Cheryl Coffman this week. A man was being tailgated by a
stressed out woman on a busy
boulevard.
Suddenly, the light turned yellow He stopped at the crosswalk,
instead of hurrying through the
intersection. The
tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in
frustration, dropping her cell
phone and
makeup. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap
on her window and looked up into the face of
a very serious
police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car. He took
her to the police station where she was
searched, fingerprinted,
and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, the
policeman approached the cell and
opened the door. She was
escorted back to the booking desk. He said, 'I'm very sorry for
this mistake. You see, I
pulled up behind your car
while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front
of you, and cussing a blue
streak at him.' I noticed
the 'What Would Jesus Do' and the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School'
bumper stickers, the
Christian fish emblem on
the trunk; naturally...I assumed you had stolen the car.'
a.Of course this was not
anyone here at Central Church!
7.Jesus tells us that we
turn God’s house into “a den of robbers.”
a.We rob and steal from
God. We imagine, because we come to worship each Sunday, we are
excused from justice,
while we make
others suffer and defraud fellow members. Those are Paul’s
words.
8.This week our Book of
Confessions class takes up the “Second Helvetic (Swiss)
Confession of 1561. In the chapter
on ministers, it
declares there can be no confusion and dissensions in the
“true church,” for as Paul says in
1 Corinthians
14.33, “God is not a God of confusion but of peace.”
a.But God uses our
confusion to bring glory to himself (11.19).
b.Can you believe this?
I hope so.
B.Coupled to that
warning by Jeremiah is God’s conditional word, “‘if,’”
God’s finaloffer of grace, which is
also in
Luke’s parable.
1.For you and me, this
is embodied in the Cross and Resurrection,
a.the temple “not built
with human hands.”
2.“‘For if you
truly amend your ways and your doings.... then God promises, “‘I
will let you stay in this place.’”
3.The obvious contrast
between a den of robbers and a house of prayer!
4.It was on Tuesday that
Jesus got into trouble in the temple. On Monday evening all he
did was look around at
everything.
5.He and the disciples
are back in town early on Wednesday, and Peter points out the
fig tree withered to its roots.
(page 4)
6.Jesus’ final word to
them has no moral ambiguity or compromise:
a. “‘Have faith in God.
Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you will receive it and
you will.’”
b.“‘and whenever you
stand praying, forgive... so your Father who is in heaven
may forgive you.’”
7.This frames the
meaning of what happened to the fig tree and the temple.
a.It is a final moment
of grace, the absolutely final moment.