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It was on the Monday
Figs and Pigeons
1st in series on Jesus’ Last Week
Mark 11:12-19
Matthew 21:12-22
The final
week of the man-God on earth were predetermined back when Adam and Eve were tying together their fig leaves. During Lent we are going to walk with Jesus on that final journey, observing his actions, hearing his words
so we can learn how to walk on our life-journey.
When a person
knows the end is near, only the important surfaces. The trivial, the unnecessary
is put to the side, only the vital, the important remains.
To better know Jesus, we will be focusing on his final days, his final journey to that hill outside Jerusalem.
This week is known as Holy Week. It begins on Palm Sunday when Jesus triumphantly
enters Jerusalem to the loud hosannas of the crowd lining
the street. During these Lenten Sundays, we will feel his passion, sense his
power, and see how deliberate his final deeds are done and know that he did this for each of us. As we hear these words, let us learn how we are to walk on our life-journey with Christ at our side.
We will begin
on the Monday, the day after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
As they left Bethany the next
day, he was hungry. Off in the distance he saw a fig tree in full leaf. He came up to it expecting to find something for breakfast, but found nothing but
fig leaves. (It wasn’t yet the season for figs.) He addressed the tree: “No one is going to eat fruit
from you again – ever!” And his disciples overheard him.
Mark 11:12-19 The Message
Now what
in the world is this all about? It wasn’t the season for figs! Surely Jesus knew that. Is he just behaving like a petulant
child? Or like I do when I’m feeling overwhelmed by what lays ahead of
me and will I be able to fit it all in and so I snap at the first thing that doesn’t go my way?
This is the only miracle
during this week. And its apparent destructive character does not fit the pattern
of other miracles performed by Jesus. Jesus provided food for thousands, so his
annoyance over finding no figs when he is hungry hardly seems in character, especially given the fact that the only edible
vegetation that might have been found on a fig tree so early in the season would have been buds from which the fruit would
develop.
We know from the second
half of this story that the fig tree did wither down to its roots. So when we
see such a contradiction, we need to look deeper and realize that Mark meant this fig tree episode to be taken symbolically
and we are meant to associate the fate of the fig tree with that of the Temple,
which Jesus approaches next.
Immediately upon entering the Temple Jesus
started throwing out everyone who had set up shop there, buying and selling. He
kicked over the table of the bankers and the stalls of the pigeon merchants. He
didn’t let anyone even carry a basket through the Temple. And then he taught them, quoting this text:
“My house was designated a house of prayer for all the nations;
you’ve turned it into a hangout for thieves.” Mark 11:15-17 Message
This is much more than
Jesus throwing a temper tantrum! And this is certainly not the meek and mild
shepherd who turns the other cheek that so many of us have come to expect.
What did Jesus see? Con men. Snake-oil salesmen. Faith peddlers. He saw people making a for-profit business
out of the faith and taking advantage of the poor people.
You see, it was the Passover
week. The Passover was the highlight of the Jewish calendar. People came from all regions and many countries to be present for the celebration. Upon arriving they were obligated to meet two requirements.
First, an animal sacrifice,
usually a dove. The dove had to be perfect, without blemish. The animal could be brought in from anywhere, but odds were that if you brought a sacrifice from another
place, yours would be considered insufficient by the authorities in the temple. So,
under the guise of keeping the sacrifice pure, the dove sellers sold doves…at their price.
Second, the people had
to pay a temple tax. During Passover the tax had to be rendered in local currency. Knowing many foreigners would be in Jerusalem to pay the tax, money changers conveniently
set up tables and offered to exchange the foreign money for local…for a modest fee, of course.
Want to anger God? Get in the way of people who want to see him.
Want to feel the fury of God? Exploit people in the name of God.
God said, “I’ve
had enough!” and tables and pigeons flew!
No, this was not an impulsive
temper tantrum. Jesus had seen this the day before, when the palms were thrown
at his feet. This was a deliberate act with an intentional message. This was his last week, he had a point to make!
God is a God of justice and righteousness and when worship substitutes for justice, God rejects God’s temple
– or, church.
Even though we have seen through many of those television hucksters who promised you health and happiness if you would
just send them a check in the mail – you remember Jim & Tammy Faye Baker, Jimmy Swaggart who could weep on cue,
Oral Roberts who even has a university named after him, Jim Farwell who got into our current President’s pocket, Pat
Robertson who to this day shouts that Katrina was an act of God.
One way to recognize these ecclesiastical con men are that they build more
fences than they build faith.
These con artists cloth themselves in Christian costumes and their talk is smooth, their vocabulary eloquent, they
appear genuine. They are on our television, they are on our radios and they may
even be in our pulpits.
There had been one in the little church in Roswell,
when I was appointed to clean up his mess. This man had slid into the New Mexico conference from Oklahoma
under a loophole that those who should have didn’t notice. This church
was primarily a church of old people on fixed income but that mattered not to him. His
tongue was liquid with hypocrisy and he spread that butter thicker than you can imagine.
He didn’t make enough so some of the little old ladies helped to
supplement his income. Later we learned how he went to the nearby Indian reservation
and gambled with it. He wanted to build a cathedral to himself and he talked
them into borrowing money from a local bank to do it, putting the parsonage up as collateral.
He started with a fountain out front – which he talked the builder into donating.
Then there was the fountain in the back, complete with a bridge and the open tomb.
To me it looked like a miniature golf course after a bad meal…but of course, I never told the parishioners that.
The bank was set to foreclose when I got there. I looked at that banker
and told him that I was the daughter of a banker and the mother of an attorney and I knew just enough to be dangerous. Actually what I did know was that no small town local bank would foreclose on a church
and so I got a Methodist attorney pro-bono and together we worked out a deal with the bank for the congregation to have the
payments reduced to a manageable amount.
We Methodists have a lot of hoops for our ministers to jump through, even those who are what we call “lay preachers”
who are still going to school. But snake-oil merchants can find a crack to slip
through no matter what the rules are, even in main-line churches.
Now these may be some extreme cases – ones that hopefully you will never experience but there are those that
I’m sure you have witnessed, sometimes without realizing it.
Often when churches have buildings and programs to support, they can easily fall in the trap of keeping the big donors
happy. Controversial issues such as opening the church doors to people of different
backgrounds, races, economic means, gender identification, or when the church addresses certain government policies that are
morally questionable, there is a fear that contributions may suffer. What suffers
is the gospel.
Even without that, too often our churches engage in the numbers game as a sign of being a successful church. How fast are we growing, how many people in attendance, what’s the average weekly collection?
Just as he did on questions about the Sabbath, about who is a sinner, whom we are to love, so also here Jesus calls
us back to the only question that counts. What did God intend? A house of prayer for all peoples.
It was on the Monday when religion got in the way, when Jesus saw that God’s house of prayer for all nations
had been corrupted for material gain.
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