“What have you been up to?” (St. Luke’s: Friday, June 1st, 2018; First Peter 4.7-13; Psalm 96; St. Mark 11.11-26)

Surprise! Have you ever taken advantage of a loved one’s absence in order to… (wait for it) …create, repair or clean something in order to surprise your significant other when they returned home? There is something deeply satisfying about having worked hard at something that you hope will please your beloved – without having been asked to do it – and then seeing the joyful reaction of that special someone as they arrive and you unveil your work. This is indeed the situation that we find in today’s readings. Sadly, in today’s Gospel, the outcome is not happy. Today’s readings are an encouragement to us, the people of God, to act in the present in light of the fact that, at some point in the future, we will have to unveil – as a Church as well as individually – the results of our life-work in the presence of our Lord and our God.

Of figs and fidelity. In today’s Gospel reading, we are given an account of Jesus’ activities during a three-day period.  Our reading begins at the end of Day 1: Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem in order to celebrate the feast of Passover. He had entered the city “triumphantly”, seated on a donkey, and after taking a quick peak at the Temple precincts, he now retires to Bethany, a suburb of the capital, where he spends the night. On the morning of Day 2, Jesus and the apostles approach Jerusalem again and on the way, Jesus spots a fig tree. After having checked the tree for fruit, Jesus utters a curse upon it. Jesus and the 12 then proceed to enter the city and go to the Temple, where Jesus proceeds to “cleanse” the shrine of Yahweh (that is the politically correct description of what he did). In other words, Jesus overturned tables, sent money flying onto the pavement and chased people out of the sanctuary… before retiring once again to the safety of Bethany. On Day 3 (guess what?), Jesus and his troupe once again descend the Mount of Olives on their way to the capital. As they pass by the fig tree, Peter (of course) points out that the poor tree has withered “to its roots”. While we’re discussing food (fruit, in any case), this passage is an example of what biblical scholars call a “markan sandwich”. I.e., in his Gospel, St. Mark often tells stories in the same way that you make a sandwich. St. Mark begins by telling a first story – if you like, he spreads mustard on the first slice of bread. Then, St. Mark will recount a second episode in its entirety – if you will, he places the meat onto the bread. Finally, St. Mark finishes telling the first story – he places the second slice of bread on top of the meat, et voilà! There you’ve got it, a markan sandwich. The idea behind St. Mark’s sandwiches is that the second story – the meat – can only be understood in terms of the first story – the bread. So, in today’s Gospel, St. Mark is inviting us to understand the “cleansing” of the Temple in light of Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree.

Symbolic tree. Fig trees are a symbol, in the Hebrew Scriptures, for the nation of Israel. In the book of the prophet Hosea, Yahweh says the following: “Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree, in its first season, I saw your ancestors” (9.10). Since Jesus finds no fruit on the fig tree, he “destroys” it with a curse. In other words, Jesus – as Yahweh’s representative; indeed, as Yahweh – has come to the people of God to examine the results of the 20 centuries that had gone by since the time of Abraham, the time when Israel’s story had begun. Had Israel been faithful to the covenant that Yahweh had established, first with Abraham, then with Moses? Had Israel produced “fruit”; i.e. had the people of God accomplished the mission that was entrusted to her? Jesus’ actions vis-à-vis the fig tree consist of a clear answer – no. Israel has failed to be the people of Yahweh; she is as guilty as any other nation for having rebelled against the Creator’s way of being human. Israel is “ripe” for judgment.

Symbolic action. All this helps us to understand the meaning of what Jesus did in the Temple. Jesus’ gesture was much more than a mere “slap on the wrist”. Through his dramatic – and violent – actions, Jesus was doing much more than criticize an inadequacy in the way that worship was being conducted in the national shrine. No, what Jesus was communicating – in a very vivid way – was that Yahweh himself had come to his “house”, only to find that the housekeepers had betrayed their mission. Rather than maintaining the Temple so that all the nations of the world could benefit from being drawn to its light and thus learning about the true God, the caretakers of Yahweh’s dwelling-place had turned their attention inward, and had transformed the house of prayer into a house of war. The Greek word translated “thieves” is the word “lestes”, which means “brigand, guerrilla fighter, revolutionary”. The national shrine had ceased to function as a beacon of truth and justice and had been co-opted by nationalistic ideology. Instead of being a place where all peoples could come and seek the mercy of the One God, it had been made to serve the interests of one people over against the others. So, seen in this light, Jesus’ actions can be seen to be a foretaste of the disaster that Jesus predicts – two chapters later – will befall the shrine, the city and the nation – within one generation. The people of God had failed to be the light of the world and had grasped at freedom and had thus attempted to fight evil with evil’s weapons. All that remained was judgment, a judgment that would take the form of military defeat, a defeat that would result in the destruction of the Temple and its sacrificial system as well as the city in which Yahweh had chosen in times past “to place his name” – as far as Jesus was concerned, his action in the Temple was the equivalent of Moses breaking the tablets of stone upon which the 10 commandments had been engraved. It signaled the breaking of the covenant, the end of the relationship between Yahweh and his people. However, just as with Moses, so also with Jesus; the end was also a beginning – the death of one covenant signaled the birth of another.

New covenant, new community. The community of the new covenant, the covenant that was inaugurated with the shedding of Jesus’ blood, is a community where all peoples are welcome on equal terms. However, the challenge to fruitfulness remains. Ever since the days of Abraham, the following principle has held true: to believe in the God of the Bible is to be entrusted with a mission. The biblical God is love; this God seeks to enter into a relationship of mutual self-giving with his human creatures. So, to believe in this God can never be simply a question of giving intellectual assent to bits of information about him. Rather, to believe in the God of the Bible – the God whom Jesus knew as “Father” and with whose Spirit Jesus was filled – is to trust him as you strive to be a steward of his gifts and thus fulfill your mission in his world for his glory. That sounds good – but we all know that serving God is not an easy thing. It’s not easy because belonging to a community is not an easy thing. Jesus says something very interesting at the end of today’s Gospel. He makes a direct link between the extent to which our prayers will be answered and the extent to which we are willing to forgive people for how they have wronged us (Ouch!). In our first reading, St. Peter tells us to consider the hardships we suffer because of our faith as being a participation in the suffering of Jesus. Seen this way, our sufferings become, not an occasion of shame, but rather of honour. Today’s Psalm tells us what the plan is: “the LORD…comes to rule the earth. He shall rule the world with justice”. The first reading encourages us to live as if the King would arrive tomorrow. When our Lord returns to judge the living and the dead, will we be ready to surprise him? Amen.