the curious story where jesus curses a fig tree

Pastor Holly Johnson

Spirit Garage

Mark 11:12-25

August 11, 2024

This summer we explored how God is creative, quirky and Curious, much like us. In the month of August we are exploring things about God that are curious. When we talk about ourselves being curious, we mean both things–that we are curious about God, curious about life, curious about our neighbors. And we are also probably kind of curious characters ourselves as well. 

When we speak of God, we know that God knows all the things. But since we don’t know all the things, we find God curious. So we’ll wonder together through some strange texts and see what good news we might find there. 

This week is a strange story from the Gospel of Mark: The story of Jesus cursing a fig tree. We don’t normally see Jesus cursing things. In fact, this is the only story where such a thing happens. And it’s weird. It looks like he’s just hungry and he goes to this fig tree, but it doesn’t have any fruit because ITS NOT THE RIGHT TIME FOR FRUIT so he curses it. He says it will never bear fruit again. A little while later in the gospel they pass this same tree and the disciples note that the whole tree is dead. 

What? 

My thoughts and interpretation around this text are heavily influenced by Amy-Jill Levine in a book called “Signs and Wonders.” Amy was one of the fabulous speakers at the Wild Goose Festival some of us went to in July. She is a Jewish New Testament scholar. Take a moment to figure that out-with a little reminder that the New Testament begins with the birth of Jesus, and tells about the birth of Christianity. It is not part of the Jewish Bible. But AJ Levine is a New Testament scholar and teacher, and part of what is great about her is that she’s interested in helping people like me not interpret our sacred text as being anti-Jewish, which we kind of do whether we know it or not. 

First, AJ Levine says that she sees Mark as an author/storyteller who is provocative, drawing readers in and then encouraging conversation about and continuing the stories. Remember this is the very fast gospel where Jesus does everything immediately, and so he just kind of drops these stories in there and then runs. Even the end of the gospel, where Jesus dies on a cross and then the women find the tomb empty and they’re very afraid and tell no one. When Andrew Lloyd Weber put that on stage in Jesus Christ Superstar, ending with Jesus death, Christians were scandalized because it didn’t end with the resurrection. But that’s literally also how the book of Mark ends. 

You’ll note that in the text, we get this story about the fig tree with no fruit that Jesus curses, and then we get him going into Jerusalem, to the temple, where Jesus gets uncharacteristically mad, yells at people, knocks down tables and says that this is his father’s house which should be a house of prayers, but has been turned into a den of robbers.

Levine would point out here that a “den of robbers” is actually NOT where robbers go to steal from people. It is where they go to hide. So that’s interesting. 

Then, Levine says: Jesus, who fed the 5000 with a few loaves and fish, is hungry. Had he wanted to make the tree bear fruit, he could have. So that suggests something different is going on. 

She starts looking into all the fig references in the bible, because that often gives us a cultural context to understand what is going on. I’m going to spare you the word study. 

But this fig tree that Jesus comes upon does not change it’s nature when he comes upon it. It remains what it has always been; a tree that operates according to the seasons. 

And then he goes to the temple. The temple does the same thing. Jesus had hoped that, with his presence in Jerusalem, the temple would change its nature. But the temple remained true to its nature: it did not bear fruit when Jesus appeared. 

This is likely what Mark (the writer) had in mind. Mark wrote the gospel 60-70 years after Jesus lived, and guess what had happened to the temple? 

It had been destroyed. 

Therefore, Mark telling this story is likely giving us a prediction story that the temple will fall, for not bearing fruit, because it was so sinful -- a den of robbers. 

The next part supports this fig tree=temple even more: He tells his disciples “if you say to this mountain, be taken up and fall into the sea-if you do not doubt but have faith in your heart then it will be done in your name.”

That’s…a powerful thing, if you have enough faith. 

And guess what mountain they were standing on? The temple mountain. So by the time Mark’s audience was listening to this, they were looking at the ruins of that mountain, whose temple had fallen down into the sea.

So I, along with Dr. Levine, have two issues: one seems to claim that if you have enough faith/pray hard enough, you can make these disastrous things happen. And the other is that it suggests that sin caused the temple to fall. That the temple wasn’t bearing fruit, or the tree wasn’t bearing fruit, so it dies, and it does so because Jesus has enough faith to make it happen. 

That’s a terrible thing to believe because actually there’s nothing to suggest that the temple was particularly corrupt, or why would they even go there? The temple was probably about as corrupt as any human group of organized people, and of course we’re no exception. 

But obviously it isn’t true that with enough sin or enough faith a place will be destroyed.  We in our lifetime have seen plenty of public places that HAVE been corrupt and those places remain standing.

We have also seen plenty of places that have been destroyed, and to suggest that such destruction is because of sin — well that is a theology I do not believe in.

“because to doubt is HUMAN. Without doubt there is no humanity. That we persevere in the face of doubt is a part of the human challenge. ”

The other problem is about how perfect your faith can be, to move those mountains. If it’s about perfect faith without any doubt—another purity culture question--then we may as well quit listening, because to doubt is HUMAN. Without doubt there is no humanity. That we persevere in the face of doubt is a part of the human challenge. And there, in needing perseverance, is where prayer can help. 

Back to this dead fig tree; this empty mountain. Here’s what we hear from Dr. Levine: “To curse is to harm, and with that curse we are left with nothing. So, be careful what you wish for—be careful how you pray, what you pray for.”

Here’s one more weird thing. There’s a missing verse: check out this link to  Mark 11 NRSV. 

Look for verse 26.

Ah. It’s not there. For sure if you google Mark 11: 26 you’ll find it, but in many versions of the Bible it isn’t there, except in the footnotes (maybe). The fact that it is omitted means there are enough scholars who think it probably wasn’t there in the earliest manuscripts. Verse 26 says this: “But if you do not forgive, neither will your father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

Now if you take and apply that to the fig tree story, it's giving another warning: if you curse people, that comes back upon you too. 

Well, it’s still a curious story. I am not coming to the end and telling you that Jesus didn’t actually curse the fig tree. I’m not even making it okay. I don’t even like it. Why did he kill a tree as an object lesson? Why was he so mad that day?

I mean—I guess we know. First, in the book of Mark we get a very human Jesus. And in that humanity, for good and for bad, we can see ourselves. Jesus was on his way into Jerusalem to be killed. So he had some reason to be angry at the world. And still...

To the best of our ability, may our prayers be for healing, for well-being, for restoring that which is broken or corrupt. And may those prayers be more powerful than any curse.