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The Markan Fig Tree Sandwich

 In Mark 11, we have a picture of Jesus travelling from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem to enter the Temple for the final week of his ministry.  Along the way, he finds a fig tree with a full covering of leaves, even though it is still early spring.  Jesus approaches, expecting to find early figs because the fig tree will often set a breva crop.  However, he finds the tree barren, without any fruit at all.  Jesus makes a pronouncement that the tree will no longer produce any fruit.

Jesus continues on to the Temple and begins teaching.  Here he is challenged by several groups of religious leaders and to each one he points out their shortcomings.  He calls them whitewashed tombs and hypocrites.  In essence, he goes to the Temple with all its splendor and its highly educated teachers, a tree that is full of leaves and apparently healthy.  Looking closely, however, he finds only decay and hypocrisy. Like the barren fig tree, he cannot find any fruit.

In parallel with his pronouncement against the tree, Jesus disrupts and cleanses the temple, casting out the money changers and ultimately proclaiming that the temple will be utterly destroyed.

On his way back to Bethany, after leaving the Temple, he comes upon the fig tree, which is now withered and dead.   

The meaning of Mark, having placed these stories directly juxtaposed with each other, is that the fig tree is an object lesson for the coming destruction of the Temple.  What happened to the fig will eventually happen to the temple as well.

Botanical explanation: Jesus saw the fig tree was full of leaves. Fig trees can set edible fruit early which slowly develops in complexity and flavor over the long season. This tree was already fully leafed out but had set no fruit. If it had been the "season of figs" then the reasonable assumption would be that the fruit has already been harvested or eaten by birds, but because it was early in the season we can only conclude that the tree was barren and had never set any fruit.  

Object lesson. The fig tree looked good from a distance and had plenty of leaves, but when you got closer you could see that it was not useful for providing fruit. Jesus went from the fig tree into Jerusalem to visit the Temple. The Temple was the symbol of the relationship between God and the people of Israel and it was ornamented with gold and jewels and it continually hummed with activity, particularly during the Passover week. Outwardly, it appeared from a distance that the relationship was alive and healthy, just like the fig tree. 

However, when Jesus got closer, he saw that much of the activity was with the money changers and merchants, which Jesus described as a "den of robbers." He approached the temple looking for fruit, but he found that it was barren. He drove the merchants out as he cleansed the Temple. He questioned the religious leaders later in the week and described them as hypocrites, who appeared full of wisdom and piety but were like whitewashed graves. Again, outwardly they appeared to be holy, but inwardly they were corrupt.  

Passing by the fig tree the next day, they saw the fig tree "withered from its roots. When Peter pointed this out, Jesus replied "Have faith in God." 

Historical Lesson. During the week, Jesus prophesied that the Temple would be destroyed, just as he had said about the fig tree. He told the disciples that it would be within their lifetimes, but that they had some missionary work to do first. Forty years later, the Temple was completely sacked by the Roman army. Just as the fig tree had withered, so had the Temple

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