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Matthew 21:12-21
Jesus at the Temple
12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.
16 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him.
“Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read,
“‘From the lips of children and infants
you, Lord, have ordained praise’?”
17 And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.
The Fig Tree Withers
18 Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.
20 When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” they asked.
21 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.”
As we often stop to remind ourselves when we are studying the Gospel according to Matthew, many of the leading Bible scholars say it was compiled specifically to make the story of Jesus known to Jewish readers. Matthew presents many of the stories and teachings from the life of Jesus in ways that highlight their connection to the history and traditions of the Hebrew people. He also takes pains to point out the connections with the prophecies about the Messiah in the Hebrew scriptures.
Today’s reading is a case where you almost have to keep that connection in mind understand why the compilers of the lectionary have chosen to put the two stories together. On the face of it the two stories don’t seem to have much of a connection. But when you think about how the stories would be read or heard by a Jewish audience, a connection begins to come into focus. And it’s an important connection, one that would have been more obvious to the original Jewish readers than it is to us as modern followers of Jesus.
The first story is Matthew’s account of Jesus ‘cleansing’ the temple in Jerusalem – chasing out the corrupt moneychangers and merchants selling sacrificial animals. As he was doing that, Jesus was speaking – probably shouting – lines from two of the major Hebrew prophets. He quoted Isaiah in saying that the temple was meant to be a “house of prayer” for all people, and he quoted Jeremiah in saying that the merchants had turned the temple into “a den of robbers.”
As you might remember from past Reflections, the New Testament scholars say what upset Jesus was that the merchants selling sacrificial animals and those changing money into the special coins for paying the “temple tax” had become corrupt. These merchants had been granted monopolies, and they exploited those monopolies to jack up the prices of sacrificial animals and the rates of exchange for temple coins. Some scholars say the animals were being sold for as much as eighty times their value outside the temple walls. (That kind of thing still happens with monopolies – think about the cost of a beer at a ballpark or popcorn at the movies.) The Jewish readers of the Gospel of Matthew probably knew about the corrupt practices of these temple merchants, so they might well have shared the anger Jesus was expressing.
Matthew’s Jewish readers would also see the significance of the second part of today’s reading – a part that seems strange and irrational to us. Jesus curses a fig tree for having no fruit. The fig tree was a common symbol of the Jewish nation, and especially of its religious establishment. Finding a fig tree fruitless and cursing it would have been pretty threatening to the Hebrew religious leaders – it would have seemed like symbolically cursing them. They might have reacted as many Americans react to the burning of our flag. And having the tree wither would really have spooked them.
So you can probably see why I say there’s an important connection between these two stories, and one that would be meaningful to Jewish readers. In both of them, Jesus condemns the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the Jewish religious leadership.
But what are these stories supposed to mean to us as readers twenty centuries later?
The story of the cleansing of the temple reminds us to be on guard against allowing self-interest to creep into the things of the faith. The sale of sacrificial animals and the changing of money had both started out as a service to worshipers. But it eventually turned into a money-grab by the leadership.
The story about the cursing of the fig tree reminds us that God expects us to be ‘fruitful,’ and that his patience is not unlimited. At some point, if we’re not bearing fruit for his kingdom, God may run out of patience with us and move on. That might be true of churches, of denominations, even of individual people who think of themselves as disciples but who bear no fruit.
So what’s the fruit God expects of his Son’s disciples? Maybe lives that are being changed in his image, service to others in his name, and efforts to share his love with others so they become disciples, too. So the cleansing of the temple and the cursing of the fig tree nudge us to ask ourselves whether or not God would consider us to be ‘fruitful people’ by that standard.
Let’s pray. Lord, help us to guard our hearts against seeing the things of the faith in terms of what they can do for us. And help us always to be committed to bearing fruit for you, and for your kingdom. Amen.
Blessings,
Henry
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