Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

“May no one ever eat of your fruit again!”



It sounds like Someone is having a very bad day.


With these two stories of the fig tree and Jesus’ upturning tables in the Temple, Saint Mark uses his familiar “sandwich” formula. He begins a story, inserts another story, and then finishes the first story. We should read these two stories as a single unit because they reflect on one another. Understanding that literary device, Jesus’ curse on the fig tree becomes a parable about the “fruitless” pharisaic religion of his day.


This Pharisaism is endemic to all three religions descended from Abraham and Sarah – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I see it as the attempt to placate God without actually pleasing him. It is shaking hands without looking in the eyes. It is giving a token gift without regard for the person who receives your gift. It going through the motions of covenant; talking the talk without walking the walk. It is barren and inevitably calls down the curse of God upon itself.


It often takes enormous effort on the part of friends, family, counselors, employers and – very likely -- enemies to help me see how pharisaic I have become. It takes enormous courage and persistent practice to set aside those obnoxious habits. And finally, if I do manage to come out of that dreadful place I will recall my behavior and my attitudes and wonder with remorse, “What was I thinking?”


But today I am fascinated by another element of this story – Jesus’ apparent “bad day.” Is it possible that Our Savior can have a bad day? Can he suffer a bad mood? Do we “have to watch our p’s and q’s” on a day like this?


But why shouldn’t this man have a bad day? Is there some law against it? Who made that law? I have bad days; don’t you? Can nothing good come of these days?


It’s easy to judge myself by certain unspecified, irrational standards and suppose, “I am having a bad day; therefore I am a bad person; therefore I should say nothing and do nothing and no one will get hurt. I should only crawl in a hole and disappear until this passes.”


But maybe God uses our moods for his own purposes. There are some things that just won’t get said or done as long as we are in full control of our thoughts, words and deeds. 


Periodically my Dad would have a bad day. On at least one occasion he visited the upstairs where six of his children lived and discovered a massive accumulation of Stuff. There was hardly room for a child to lie down and sleep. Suddenly the window was thrown open and clothes, books, boxes, toys and piles of trash were flung into the yard. He tossed out my brother’s make-shift altar! Alas. It had to be done. The house might have burned to the ground with all that stuff. 

Forty years later, thirty years since he died, we laugh about the incident. Thank God for this wonderful man, his occasional moods and the limits of his patience.