A Withered Fig Tree

DAILY BYTE

On Monday the question was asked. ‘What do you stand for?’ We heard the story of the man in Tiananmen Square who made a bold and courageous stand. While few of us will be called upon to make a stand of such public proportions, make no mistake that ALL of us, sooner or later, will be presented with circumstances where we will have to choose whether we will take a stand or not. How we choose will speak volumes about our integrity.

It happened for Jesus when he entered the temple in that last fateful week of his life – as Matthew tells the story. He saw what was going on. It angered him. He knew that it was wrong. And so he took a stand – courageously driving out all who were buying and selling, overturning the tables of the money changers and the benches of the traders.

As he does so he quotes from the scriptures, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers,’ he said.

Some people think that Jesus was simply referring to the corrupt practices of those who were involved in the sacrificial system of the temple. That his actions were directed against the individuals who were operating there in dishonest ways. But his protest, in fact, goes much deeper than that. We read that Jesus drove out all who were buying and selling in the temple. And what was being sold, and what was being bought? Animals for sacrifice, because offering a sacrifice had become a non-negotiable requirement in order to receive the mercy and grace of God.

And Jesus would have none of it. He could see that this system was robbing people of the chance for an authentic relationship with God. And so he took a stand against that entire sacrificial system. He attacked the prevailing religious paradigm that reduced relationship with God to an economic transaction – as if God’s love and forgiveness were commodities that could be bought. Instead of being a house of prayer, the temple had become a den of robbers. It promised much, but delivered little. The system had the appearance of making things right between people and God, but in fact it wasn’t.

To drive the point home, Matthew tells the strange story of the withering fig tree, immediately after this account of Jesus in the temple. The fruitless fig tree stands as a symbol of what the Temple had become. It was covered in leaves, and so had the appearance of being fruitful. But it wasn’t. And so Jesus rebukes it, and immediately it withers. Which may sound like a harsh and strange thing for Jesus to do. But in essence, his word only served to reveal the true nature of the figtree – that it was indeed fruitless. This is exactly what the Temple had become. And Jesus’ stand made that known.

So what is all of this saying to you? As you think about your life, how do the examples of that young man in Tiananmen Square, or Jesus in the Temple, challenge and inspire you? Is there anything that would prompt you to make a stand of similar integrity?

As you look around you – what do you see that is wrong? What injustice do you notice? What breaks your heart, and makes you want to weep? What makes you want to say, ‘Enough!’ And take a stand. In what ways might you be standing at a moral crossroads, where nothing less than your integrity is at stake?

PRAY AS YOU GO

God of justice and truth, today we pray for all those who are contemplating taking a stand for justice against what they know to be wrong. We pray for courage for them. We pray for whistle-blowers in private companies or government departments who are

SCRIPTURE PASSAGE

Matthew 21:12-19

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, ‘It is written,

“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’

The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what these are saying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read,

“Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself”?’

He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

In the morning, when he returned to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the side of the road, he went to it and found nothing at all on it but leaves. Then he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.