Scripture Daily

Context No. 468 of 4322 · Mark

Context · Reflection

Mark 11:12-17: in context

12The next day, when they had come out from Bethany, he was hungry. 13Seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came to see if perhaps he might find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14Jesus told it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” and his disciples heard it. 15They came to Jerusalem, and Jesus entered into the temple and began to throw out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and overthrew the money changers’ tables and the seats of those who sold the doves. 16He would not allow anyone to carry a container through the temple. 17He taught, saying to them, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers!”

Mark tells this story in a deliberate sandwich. First, Jesus, hungry, comes to a fig tree covered in leaves, a tree that from a distance looks full of promise, but when he reaches it he finds nothing but leaves, no fruit at all. He curses it. Then, immediately, he goes into the temple and drives out the merchants and money-changers, overturning their tables, and the next morning the disciples find the fig tree withered from the roots. Mark has wrapped the temple scene inside the fig tree scene on purpose, so that the tree interprets the temple. The temple was exactly like that fig tree: covered in leaves, all the impressive activity of religion, the buying and selling, the sacrifices, the crowds, the busyness, and yet bearing no actual fruit, none of the true worship and prayer God was looking for.

That is the sting of it. Jesus is not impressed by leaves. He comes close, hungry, looking for fruit, and finds a great show of religious life with nothing underneath. And notice the specific way the temple had gone fruitless. My house, Jesus says, quoting Isaiah, shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers. The commerce had been set up precisely in the outer court, the one place Gentiles were allowed to come and pray, so the busy religious market had literally crowded out the prayer and the outsiders the temple existed for. The leaves had choked out the fruit. The activity had displaced the purpose.

That is a searching image to hold up against my own life of faith. It is entirely possible to be covered in leaves, busy with religious activity, full of the appearance of thriving spiritual life, and to bear no real fruit when God comes close and hungry looking for it. And it is possible for all that busyness to crowd out the very things it was meant to serve, quiet prayer, room for the outsider, actual love. If Jesus came close to my faith, hungry and looking for fruit, would he find fruit, or only an impressive canopy of leaves, and has my religious busyness quietly crowded out the prayer and the purpose it was supposed to be for?

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