Triumphal Entry
The
triumphal entry passage has always been a troubling one for me. I know in many churches we gather on the
Sunday before Easter and wave palms in the air and make some glorious parade
around the sanctuary or the church grounds.
Don’t get me wrong, I think those kinds of celebrations are neat and
help bring faith to life. But what is
really going on here in the Gospel story?
This is the
beginning of a series of passages that show the heights and depths of human
emotional attachment to God. We can sing
God’s praise. We can announce that He is
the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the Almighty. We can shout that He is blessed and anyone
who comes in His name is blessed. Five
days later we can shout for Him to be crucified. We can demand that He be done away with. We can demand that His life be snuffed out
forever.
Now, I’m
not trying to suggest that all the people who were excited about Jesus were the
same people who demanded Him to die.
Jerusalem was a big important city and at the time of the Passover it
would have swelled in population as people came in for the festivities. So there are plenty of people to go around on
both sides of the issue. But the reality
is that we as human beings are very easily polarized. We think one thing is great. Someone else thinks it is horrible. A fight ensues. Tension abounds. The next thing we know the Savior of the
world is dead.
But I am
getting a bit ahead of myself. I need to
save those kinds of words for a few more days.
In the
end, regardless of what it is that we as human beings do when we disobey God’s
ways it is still true that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the one who has come to take away our
sin. He is the great prophet, priest,
and king all wrapped up in one. He is someone
to be celebrated. Let God’s name be
praised because He did send His Son to this earth.
The Cursing of the Fig Tree
The
cursing of the fig tree has always been a story that haunts me in much the same
way as the story of the Sheep and Goats in Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus looks for fruit. He finds none. The fig tree is cursed because it bears no
fruit. It withers and dies.
Make no
attempts to argue away this passage.
Yes, people claim that this is a condemnation of the Jews as the fig
tree has always been symbolic of Israel.
I have no doubt that this is what Jesus intended – especially as His
crucifixion at the hands of the Jewish leaders drew near. Yet, make sure we learn the lesson. Jesus did not curse the fig tree because it
was a fig tree (and thus a symbol of Judaism).
Jesus cursed the fig tree because it bore no fruit. It is the lack of fruit that Jesus finds so
offensive, not the nature of the tree.
That’s the part that should heighten the level of concern in all of
us. Jesus expects fruit. We are given the Holy Spirit so that we can
bear spiritual fruit.
The amount
of fruit is not as important as whether we bear fruit at all. In that respect this cursing of the fig tree
is like the parable of the four soils.
Three soils bear no fruit and are bad.
One soil bears fruit and is good, although the good soil can bear
differing levels of fruit.
Cleansing of the Temple
In the
middle of the fig tree passages we have the cleansing of the temple. This is the practical application of the
lesson of the fig tree. Bear no
spiritual fruit and be driven out of the presence of God. Turn life into something about yourself and
not something about God and you will be driven out of God’s presence. That doesn’t mean the door to repentance and
forgiveness is closed – certainly not!
But life is not about us. Life is
about God, God’s will, and God’s ways.
We are to be in a relationship with God – hence the comment on the house
of God being a house of prayer.
Furthermore,
we get a glorious hinting of the fullness of the Gospel when Jesus says “a
house of prayer for all nations.” The word
there is ethnos (ἔθνος). It is the word often used to describe the whole
nations of the world. The temple was
supposed to be a place where the world could come and be in a relationship with
the Father. Instead it became a place to
glorify the righteousness of the Jews (and make money). The Jews of the temple were bearing no fruit
– the nations were not being invited into a relationship with Jesus
Christ. Therefore the people in the
temple were driven out.
Challenging Authority
To
conclude this chapter we hear an outright challenge on Jesus’ authority. The Jewish leaders have had enough of Jesus’
arrogance and self-assurance. Notice
here that Jesus makes a clear point. If
they are not willing to make their position clear, then Jesus will not make His
position clear. In other words, if we
are not honest with God, then we have no right to expect Him to bring any truth
into our life. If we do not give Him
authority, He will not presume to have it.
He does have it – He’s God, after all – but He will not presume to have
it. Neither will He share His authority
with us.
If we deny
God’s authority, He can argue with us and prove to us why He has
authority. If we embrace God’s
authority, then He can work within us and demonstrate His authority. But if we sit on the fence hedging our bets
and refuse to even come to terms with who God claims to be and whether or not
we believe it to be true – then we are lukewarm and God can do nothing with us.
In a
manner of speaking, even this last story comes back to bearing fruit. If we bear good fruit – embracing God’s
authority – then God can demonstrate His authority through us. If we bear bad fruit – denying God’s
authority and living according to our own desires – God can work around us to try
and help the fruit become good in spite of our own humanity. But if we bear no fruit at all, what good are
we?
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