With Palm Sunday just around the next bend, I was thinking this morning about the account of Jesus "Temple Action" as its recorded in the book of Mark. It's the day after his triumphant donkey ride into Jerusalem, and on his way into Jerusalem, Jesus comes to a fig tree. Finding no fruit on the tree, Jesus speaks a judgment over it the tree: "May no one ever eat fruit from you again!" Then he goes into the Temple of God's people, looking for spiritual fruit (prayer happening for all the nations) and finding none, enacts a dramatized judgement over it (tipping over the money-changer's tables).
On the way home they see the fig tree shriveled, and start to put one and one together. Then, to put the exclamation point on it all, Jesus tells a parable about a Landlord who sent his Son to the tenants of his estate, to get the fruit of his vineyard, and they decided to kill him instead...
Mark wants the question here, I think, to be obvious: what would Jesus find in us if he were to ride triumphantly but unexpectedly into the "fig-tree" that is our lives (our church, let's say, or our relationships, or our individual lives). Would he find the "spiritual fruit" that he was looking for in the Temple that Palm Sunday morning so long ago? Or will he find what, in fact, he found there: people chasing after their own self-aggrandizing agendas?
Fruit on the Tree, a devotional thought
Labels: devotionals, mark, Palm Sunday
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