Issue 258
Based on Mark 11:12-26
Have you noticed that there are some things about life, work and spirituality that just don’t seem to make sense?
A pointless loss of life, an illness which steals freedom or downright injustice; they don’t make sense because they don’t fit. You hold a belief in your God and you can’t format it to work with a specific experience. Sometimes you can shed light on a weird occurrence by finding a background generic truth such as ‘we live in a fallen world’ or ‘ours is to trust’.
There are times when the incident or experience is so surprisingly good that it causes you to wonder at how it could happen to you. Human nature being what it is however, it is the painful, confusing, or catastrophic episode which catches your attention and provokes you to question.
Such was the nature of the Road from Bethany. The hungry Son of Man is walking with his friends and passes an out of season fig tree. Seeing that it has no fruit, he utters a cursing sentence condemning the tree to permanent fruitlessness. The following day, as they pass the same tree, it has withered and died.
Does that make any sense to you? Does that fit with the character of Jesus of Nazareth who touches the untouchable, opens eyes, sets women free, raises children form the dead, and invites you to find rest, quench your thirst and experience unspeakable peace?
How do you take a Jesus who does all these things with you into your work, life, and journey? How can you walk step by step with such a person?
There are some things that don’t make sense until you taste them: a father’s love for a daughter, the pain of a dying marriage, the questions at the graveside of your best friend, the loss of dignity, rejection or humiliation, at the hands of former friends – the deeper the wound, the harder it is to explain it to the unscathed soul. The Christian journey is not just an invitation to the intriguing, or a rallying cry to the difficult; it is a challenge to the impossible. As Dorothy Sayers observes of this moment “The cursing of the barren fig tree looks like an out-bursting of an irrational temper, for it was not yet the time of figs; till some desperate crisis confronts us with the challenge of that acted parable and we know that we must perform impossibilities or perish”.
Here is the clue: Peter, in astonishment, points to a crumpled heap of shrubbery and Jesus talks about throwing mountains into the sea, finding forgiveness from the Father, and believing the unbelievable.
If ever there was an acted parable this is it. Like all good parables it leaves you scratching your head, but this one only makes sense when it is do or die. Some spiritual mysteries only yield their secrets when you fast; others when you praise. This one will only make sense when your back is so firmly pressed against the wall that your spine is about to snap, when in front of you are twelve gun barrels, and when the second word you have heard is “Aim!”.
It is in these moments when fruitless, out of season trees are called to deliver, or when your last drop of energy has to fall to the ground and produce a flower in the sand that this parable makes sense. If you want to understand parables in general you will always need to look for the Christ in the story; a dying withered man, nailed to a tree, called to win a battle and produce a global church comes into focus. The Road from Bethany merges like so many others with the Road to the Cross.
Walk well this year.
Mark 11:12-26
12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. 15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17 And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ” ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.'” 18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching. 19 When evening came, they went out of the city.
20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!” 22 “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. 23 “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt In his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins. 26 But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your sins.”
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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