Palm Branches and Fig Trees

As I think about Palm Sunday many familiar thoughts come to me — how the crowd and probably the disciples were anticipating a messiah who would give God’s people political and military power so that they could break free of Rome and be able to create the kind of society that they believed God wanted — one where people were properly worshipping God free of the influence or control of non-

Tom Richards

believers. I think about how disappointed and frustrated the crowds were as the week unfolded. Jesus did not wield or display any political, military, or supernatural power, which contributed to everything from Peter’s denial of Christ, the other disciples scattering in fear when Jesus was arrested, and the crowds calling for Jesus to be crucified. It is fascinating to think about how quickly the disciples went from declaring their faith in Jesus to running, hiding, and denying Him, and how quickly the crowd went from waving palm branches to shouts of ‘Crucify Him!’

I have some new thoughts on Palm Sunday, as well, inspired by a message I heard recently on the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree. I have never given this story much thought. It seems odd and out of character for Jesus, at least to me. I don’t recall ever noticing that it is part of Mark’s Holy Week narrative. Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph — the next day He is not gathering his troops, plotting a revolution, or discussing strategy. Instead, He leaves the city, hungry and looking for food. This is surprisingly mundane coming just after all of the palm branches. More odd is when Mark pointed out it was not fig season, but Jesus got so upset when he found no fruit on a fig tree that he cursed the fig tree and killed it.  

I have always had a vague sense that this story is supposed to be a reminder if we don’t bear fruit, we are in danger of being punished. At the same time, the story seemed weird. This week, I did a quick Google search and found that most of the online lessons on this story follow the same theme. One source lists the primary lesson of this story as “Fruitlessness leads to judgment.” Another website comments that it wasn’t even fig season: “Let this be a lesson to us. There is no excuse for being unproductive. Some might say ‘I don’t know enough…’ But that is no excuse. Or else, ‘I am unwell, I haven’t much talent, the conditions are not right, my surroundings…’ These aren’t excuses either.” According to these sources, the lesson of this story is clear — bear fruit or be punished.  

This week I came across an alternate take on this story. Many scholars date the Gospel of Mark to right around 70 AD when the temple was destroyed by Rome. I came across this question — instead of questioning Jesus’ actions, what is the author of Mark trying to say with this story? Mark is a short gospel — the author clearly left out a lot of information and chose just a few details. He also chose to wrap the fig story around another story. He begins the story of the fig tree, shifts to Jesus clearing the temple, and then goes back to the fig tree. Why? I was encouraged to ponder this. Mark was probably writing just after the temple was destroyed. Jews had been taught for centuries that the way to connect with God was by bringing the proper sacrifices to the temple in Jerusalem. What would that mean if there was no longer any temple?

I wonder if the author of Mark was looking at the ruins of the temple and thinking back on his memories of Jesus as he tried to make sense of this. Jews had been performing temple sacrifices for centuries. Maybe Jesus was suggesting this radical thought — for centuries we have performed temple sacrifices and it has never produced the fruit that it was supposed to produce — love, patience, kindness, compassion, grace, and mercy. When Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman, she remarked that Jews looked down on Samaritans because Samaritans worshipped in the wrong place. Temple worship in Jerusalem had not led the Jewish people to love the Samaritans or extend them grace and mercy — it had led them to judge and look down on the Samaritans.

What if Mark is telling us the idea of temple sacrifice was the fig tree?  It had never produced the fruit it was supposed to, so God finally cursed it and it withered away. When the disciples ask Jesus how to understand the dead fig tree, Jesus simply says “Have faith in God.” Maybe Mark is telling his audience the same thing — as they look at the temple in ruins, he reminds them of what Jesus told the Samaritan woman — that one day God’s people would worship Him, not in the correct building or with the correct procedures, but rather “in spirit and in truth.”

Over the last few years many of my Christian friends have expressed despair over the outcome of elections — some when Democrats win, others when Republicans win. I think that the desire for political power that fueled much of the palm branch waving on Palm Sunday is still with us on both sides of the aisle. If we don’t have political power, how will we have moral laws? How can we have a society that acts properly? How can we force the Samaritans to worship in the right building and stop the Romans from worshipping the wrong gods if we don’t have power? For me, one of the lessons of Palm Sunday is this — a fig tree out of season will never produce fruit, that temple sacrifice is never going to produce love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness, nor will political power. Those things will come from our own hearts as we allow God to kill the ‘fig trees' that we are looking to and learn to rely on our faith alone.

In His Name, Tom