Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 351

Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple area. He looked around at everything and, since it was already late,
went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

The Lord's look around the temple area carries an ominous note in today's gospel, as we shall soon learn. To emphasize his teaching, Saint Mark begins and ends this three-part story with the word look. In the third chapter, the astonished apostle said,

“Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered."

This is the same word, but a different time and place from, "God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day."

As I am studying the Book of the Prophet Isaiah now, I would expect a pronouncement of violent and savage doom to follow this inspection. What actually happened was quite different. First, he instigated a one-man riot as he upended tables and chairs, and physically barred anyone from entering the temple area. Then, Mark says, he taught them, perhaps with an angry shout,

“Is it not written:

My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples?

But you have made it a den of thieves.”

As the story continues, there will be blood but it won't happen as we expect. The Lord himself will die in bloody agony. His enemies supposed they had punished him for his invasion of the temple and other misdeeds, but we know he died for our sins. 

We could not bear the consequences of our sin, nor would we learn anything from it, as history has shown. Every prophet since Moses to Malachi had prophesied doom for our neglect of the widowed, the orphaned, and the alien; and we had suffered the defeat of Israel and Judah, the siege of Jerusalem and the razing of both Solomon's and Herod's temples; but the widow, the orphan and the alien were no better off. Even Isaiah had argued, "All flesh is grass, and all their loyalty like the flower of the field." They learn nothing from being punished. 

Did we learn anything from the death of God's son, or his rising from the dead? 

The threat remains, as well as the promise. The fig tree was cursed, as the Baptist had promised when he declared, 

"Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."

The scripture teach us to eat from the tree of wisdom, rather than that of the knowledge of good and evil. The latter is the tree of hypocritical arrogance, the former is the tree on Calvary. Unlike the small scroll which Saint John ate, the fruit of Christ's cross tastes bitter in our mouths but is sweet to our stomach. 

Sometimes we know the cross physically with acute pain and chronic suffering. More often we know it with bitter disappointment in life. Plans fall apart, investments fail, opportunities are closed. We are ghosted by friends, let down by no-shows, and betrayed by lovers. Even Even mystical love comes with anguished loneliness. 

But still we love, hope, and believe. The Spirit remains and we resume both prayer and sacrifice. Jesus looked around the temple, and returned the following day to make his statement about it. And when Peter pointed to the withered fig tree, Jesus taught him its lesson: 

"Jesus said to them in reply, “Have faith in God. "Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him. And they returned once more to the temple."