Mathew 21. 1-22 Palm Sunday
Looking for fruit...
Jesus has already mentioned that he is feeling peckish. Then he sees a fig-tree covered in new, green leaves, and starts behaving a bit oddly. He goes up to it. He walks all round it. He looks into the branches. He puts his hands into the leaves and parts them, staring, looking for fruit. “But Jesus, it’s only March. Not the time for fruit. Well, not proper, sweet fruit.” But there should have been some of the small, so-called early fruit – which really are the strange inside-out flowers of the fig tree. They were sour, but poor people would eat them if they were hungry – and Jesus was hungry.
This was the third in a series of acted parables – first, his entry into Jerusalem on a Donkey, and then driving all the sheep and pigeon sellers and money-changers out of the Temple. The fig-tree was a symbol of Israel, his nation, God’s people. Michael Green says “If you wanted to be a characteristic Israelite, you sat under your own fig-tree.” God is looking for fruit, from Israel…
The point of entering Jerusalem on a donkey is that Jesus came as King – messiah. He came clearly to fulfil the old testament prophecies. He is looking for the kind of surrender that welcomes messiah, that makes God King. Teh point about clearing all the traders out of the temple was that these guys made good money out of the rules about the right coinage to use in temple offerings and the right unblemished sheep and pigeons as sacrifices. The poorest people who could only afford to sacrifice a pigeon were exploited the most. So God is looking for worship that cares for the poorest, for community life that does not exploit. And He is looking for his people to be a family that is ready to welcome outsiders which is why it was so wrong that the only place in the temple where gentiles could worship was turned into a shopping mall. That’s the kind of fruit that Jesus was looking for.
Nothing but leaves.
So Jesus is looking for fruit. But he doesn’t find any. Not even the sour, early inverted flowers. Nothing. Just leaves. It looked fine, but there was no fruit. And if there were no flowers, there was no likelihood of fruit. Jesus explodes with anger: “May no-one ever eat fruit from you again!” And the disciples hear him. To us it seems childish, bad-tempered, selfish. “What sort of person would curse a fig-tree?” one atheist website asks. But remember, this was an acted parable. He is not losing it and forgetting people are listening. He intends to be heard, and wants to be understood. “May no-one eat fruit from you again – ever.” What happens to a nation that sits under its own fig-tree, if it isn't producing fruit? Remember, the fruit of surrender to God’s rule; the fruit of care for the poorest; the fruit of passion for mission. What will happen to the nation that will not receive its Messiah? No fruit. No excuses. “No-one will eat fruit from you again.” God looks for fruit and if he isn’t finding it, that tree – or nation – is under his curse.
Luke doesn’t give us the story of the fig-tree. But he gives us something else about Palm Sunday that tells us the same thing – and a little bit more: “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognise the time of God’s coming to you.’ (Luke 19.41-44)
Withered!
The fig tree begins to wither, leaves begin visibly to dry out as Jesus finishes speaking. Mark tells us that when the disciples came back in the evening the tree was utterly dead. The details of the timing doesn’t matter. The miracle still happened, whether it took ten seconds or ten hours. Normally a tree would take weeks to die like that. The judgement that Jesus speaks over unfruitful fig-trees and over unfruitful Israel, would eventually happen. For Israel, it happened 70 years after Jesus was crucified, when the Romans came and flattened Jerusalem, killing its people. It was all very much like what Jesus said would happen in Luke 19. In putting Jesus to death, Israel was rejecting God’s Kingdom, dismissing its values of care for the least, and God’s call to be a blessing to the nations.
Faith
When the disciples see the fig-tree withering away, they are a amazed. They are like “Whoa! Did you see that? How did the fig tree wither so quickly? How did you do that?” And Jesus answers, ‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig-tree, but also you can say to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.’ Some clever people would tell you that this teaching about prayer was kind of tagged onto the end of this story. The say “It doesn’t fit with the judgement theme of the rest of the story”. But that is rubbish. Here’s why.
Faith is central to the whole story. Taken with its proper ending, this acted parable tells us that it is faith that makes the difference between the kind of religion Israel had and what God wanted for them. It is faith that makes the difference between dead, formal, empty and fruitless religion, and living vibrant and life-changing relationship with God. Just that. Faith that would take God at his word. Faith, that understands the concept of God-given authority that goes way back to the creation itself, when people were told to be fruitful and multiply, to replenish the earth and subdue it. Faith that could believe in their God in the face of enemy activity. Faith that could bring the healing of God’s Kingdom to the lame and the blind. Faith that could trust in the Lord, their One God.
When Jesus entered into Jerusalem on a donkey a few days before Passover, it made people think about the feast of Shelters, when they remembered God bringing them through the desert: the “Hosanna!” shout comes from Psalm 118. 25 which was sung during the Feast of Shelters. And it made them think of Hanukkah – the rededication of the temple after Judas Maccabaeus had defeated the Greek emperor Antiochus Epiphenes. Great victories for God’s people… Faith is the victory.
Jesus and as
So God looks for fruit from his people. He looks for fruit from the Fig tree. He looks for fruit from Israel. He looks for fruit from the Church and he looks for fruit in our individual lives. It is to us and the church in our land, our city, that we need to apply this teaching. God is looking for fruit. He is looking for hearts that are seeking his Kingdom. He is looking for compassion for the poor. He is looking for missional hospitality instead of narrow exclusivism. Michael Green says about this passage “if there is no fruit (in prayerfulness, in evangelism, in love and ministry to the community) God will judge such churches and they will die... His preference is to renew… but if the new life is not welcome in the old fig-trees, the day may come when those old fig-trees are cut down.”
In the little picture Luke gives us instead of the story of the fig-tree, we are told “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace...” When Jesus judges, he does so not out of anger – but out of compassion. He judges with a broken heart. The narrative of Holy Week, is a story of hearts that fail to respond to being loved by Jesus: the result is betrayal, denial, desertion, deception prejudice and cynicism
. But Jesus is looking for fruit. He is looking for faith. He is looking for lives ready to respond to his love, for lives being transformed by his love.
© Gilmour Lilly March 2018
