Figs

Mark 11:20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots.

Have you ever noticed that some things just defy explanation! We can spend so much time trying to figure out how it happened, we miss the message of the happening. We let our intellect take over when it is the heart that is the intended receiver of the message.

I have noticed this sometimes when I hear about marriage proposals. Sometimes the way the proposal is done, the flashy, over-the-top event itself, that that flash takes away from the simple, “Will you marry me?” which is at the center of the event. Without the “Will you love me?” there would be no event.

I think we run into this type of event when we read about Jesus cursing a fig tree. What did that tree ever do to deserve being cursed, our thinking might go. Or maybe we take the tact that a tree dying that fast in impossible, so therefore it didn’t happen. We fly off on some tangent and therefore miss what Jesus is saying.

Jesus like many of the prophets of the Old Testament used illustrations, often physical illustrations to make their points. Remember, they didn’t have Netflix back then. They couldn’t make a movie to teach a message. So they used their physical environment and their physical bodies to illustrate.

Jesus falls in line with the great teachers of all time. In Mark, the Gospel message has been spreading and being accepted everywhere it is presented. He is gathering a great following of the crowds that gather. He is on the rise.

But then the tides begin to shift and the religious leaders start presenting opposition to what Jesus is saying and doing. And right before His final week, even as He is repeatedly predicting His capture and death, He sees the fig tree and places a curse upon it.

The fig tree is just like the religious leaders. There is no fruit. The timing of their fruit is off. When fruit is needed, they are fruitless. Jesus is coming as the Promised Messiah and they get hung up on where Jesus was born and their future position in society.

Between the two references to the fig tree in this chapter Jesus enters the Temple in Jerusalem and stops the sinful practices sanctioned by the religious leaders, their fruit. He clears the Temple of the commercialism outright robbery. And this act is understood by these leaders as an attack on them and their power.

The fig tree is then found to be withered from the roots up. The religious leaders have lost connection to the Source of Life. That is why they are not producing fruit.

Are you still connected at the roots to Jesus, or have you somehow allowed all the worries of this life to squeeze off the life giving juices? Are you allowing the election and the virus rob you of the peace offered in the Gospel?