I don’t understand the fig tree story. Jesus, the day after everyone’s laying down branches and cloaks, heads back to Jerusalem. Hungry, he goes to a fig tree. There’s no figs; because, it’s not the season for figs. And, so, Jesus curses the tree, and it dies.
As I said, I don’t understand this. And, right now, this is not the Jesus I’m needing.
This week is going to be bad. Nothing less than a miracle will change this. This curve we’ve been riding for weeks is steepening. We’re about to head straight up, it seems, watching the numbers expand exponentially. And, I for one feel the anxiety.
Add to this the coming horror of the Holy Week story, one we know ends in a death so tragic, so painful that it even mutes the joy of Palm Sunday. What do we do with Jesus, basically, killing a tree? Is this just an object lesson, a warning? Is it a visual representation of what will happen to those who do not bear fruit? Will we be cut down and cast into the fire?
A lot of commentaries you find (I looked) have this sort of bent to them. There’s a lot of writers who see this as a condemnation of the Jewish religious leaders, specifically the Sadducees. Some, incorrectly, take this as a condemnation of the Jewish people.
In the writings of the prophet Micah, there’s one of those beautiful pictures of what the redeemed world looks like. All nations will go up the mountain together. God will settle all the old disputes. And in verse four of chapter four there’s this wonderful promise that everyone will sit in the shade of their own fig tree, and they will know no fear.
Maybe all Jesus is trying to do here is tell his disciples that this is not that time.
The great shock of this week is that things do not go as everyone hopes they will. Jesus does not announce himself as the Messiah they expected. He doesn’t call down fire on their enemies and rule his people with the mighty power of God. He ends up arrested, beaten, and killed. And the disciples, far from being free from fear, run and hide in terror behind locked doors.
Maybe, rather than a story about trees and fruit and who’s in and who’s cast into the flames, this story comes to us as a reminder, one shocking enough to get our attention. It’s a moment not born of anger but of sadness. It is Jesus telling us, not yet. The great redemption of things is not yet.
This, however, he tells us, is the road to that redemption. It is not the road even he desires, but it is the only road now. It’s a road of pain, and sadness, and death.
But it’s also the road where fig trees grow.