Making Space For Strangers
Mark 11.12-21

One of the ways that the Bible helps us learn more about God is by giving us metaphors, word pictures, to describe what God is like. One of those pictures is of God as a gardener. In Gen 2.8-9 it talks about creation as a garden. ⁸ Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.

In Isaiah 5 there is a poem called “The Song of the Vineyard” that talks about the relationship between God and his people in terms of a man and his vineyard. “He dug it up and cleared it of stones / and planted it with the choicest vines. / He built a watchtower in it / and cut out a winepress as well. / Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, / but it yielded only bad fruit. (Is 5.2)

Jesus will pick up that very same image in Mark 12… He then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. 2 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.

The same idea comes out in another parable in Luke 13, only this time it’s a fig tree. ⁶ Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. ⁷ So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ ⁸ “ ‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. ⁹ If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’ ”

When you plant a garden, or a vineyard, or fruit trees you look for fruit, and, like a gardener or farmer, God looks for fruit from the things that he plants. When he starts something he has a clear idea in his mind of what he wants to see happen as a result. Way back at the beginning of the book, when God is just starting out with one man, Abram, he tells him what his plan is.

“I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; / I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. / I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; / and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12.2-3)

God’s plan was, and still is, to create a community of people, and bless them, in order that they might be a blessing to the whole world. That’s his plan. That’s what he’s looking for. He’s looking for fruit from his people that will be a blessing to the whole world.

A barren tree (Mark 11.12-14;20-21)

With that in mind, let’s look at this passage in Mark 11. This is another one of Mark’s sandwiches; a place where he has taken one story (about Jesus clearing the temple court) and wrapped it in another (about Jesus cursing a fig tree.) It’s like a hamburger. The fig tree story is the bun and the temple story is the burger. Mark does this deliberately, so that the one story helps us understand the other.

We’ll start with the outside story, the bun. ¹² The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. ¹³ Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. ¹⁴ Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it. … ²⁰ In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. ²¹ Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”

[slides of fig trees etc.]

So, there’s Jesus, walking toward Jerusalem, and he sees a fig tree a little way off the path. That’s not unusual; fig trees, olive trees and grape vines are common all over the Middle East. What is strange is that the tree had leaves on it. Even though it was a couple of months before there should have been leaves on this tree, here it was with leaves on. I don’t know why it had leaves on it. Maybe it was in a particularly sheltered area where it got lots of sun and little frost. A little micro climate like you find around here, between the escarpment and the lake. (That’s why the Niagara Peninsula can grow peaches and grapes this far north.) Mark doesn’t tell us why the fig tree has leaves on it, but he does mention it twice, just to make the point.

Now, fig trees are a little strange because the figs themselves appear before the leaves do. So, even though it was really early in the year, since this fig tree had leaves, then you would expect it to have fruit too, since the fruit always comes first. That was why Jesus went over, hoping to grab a snack on his way into Jerusalem.

What he found was a tree that looked as if it should have fruit but in fact it only had leaves. It looked pretty. With its nice green leaves it probably even looked healthy. But it was actually barren, worthless as a fruit tree. It had the promise of fruit, but none in reality.

Then Jesus does a very strange thing. He curses the tree. He says, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And, as we discover the following day, the tree dies. The first question that most people these days have is, “Why would he kill a tree for not having fruit when it isn’t even the season for fruit?”

The tree is not the point. In our situation today, with the environment as a huge issue, we’re tempted to read this story through the eyes of global warming. “He killed a tree! Trees absorb greenhouse gases. What a terrible thing to do!” But first century Palestine did not have a problem with global warming. It was an agricultural community, and like most agricultural communities, they managed their environment way better than we do. They had to. If they didn’t, they starved. Part of that good management was to get rid of fig trees, or vines, or olive trees that were barren and sterile. Any farmer would have done the same by pulling the tree up, that’s the point of the parable in Luke 13. Jesus did it with a word. Either way, the tree still ended up dead. We need to avoid getting all bent out of shape because Jesus killed a tree.

Remember that this story is wrapped around another one. The “bun story” is about a tree that looks like it should have fruit but doesn’t, so it’s disposed of. Let’s look at the “burger story.”

A barren temple (Mark 11.15-19)

Jesus walks on and arrives in Jerusalem.

¹⁵ On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, ¹⁶ and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.

[Picture of temple]

The temple compound was huge, one and a half kilometres around the wall. The wall was 30m (100ft) high. The main building was 56.1m (184ft) high, covered in gold, with gold spikes on the roof to stop birds from landing on it. It stood higher than everything else in the city so you could see it from a long way off.

[Have you ever stood on the edge of the escarpment on a clear summer evening and seen the setting sun reflecting off the CN tower and the skyscrapers in Toronto, 60km away? That’s tame compared with the sun reflecting off 1000s of square metres of pure gold.]

The temple was a beautiful sight. It was the centre of the city’s life, something that everybody in Jerusalem was proud of.. It was the centre of religious life, with sacrifices and teaching going on every day. It was a military centre, the most fortified building in the city. And it generated huge amounts of income from the commerce associated with the coming and going of pilgrims.

It was the commercial side of things that Jesus got upset about, but not because of what they were doing. Pilgrims would come to the temple from all over the ancient world. They couldn’t very well bring sheep and goats and stuff for the sacrifices with them, so they brought cash and bought the animals for the sacrifices when they got to the temple. No problem there.

The problem was where the stalls were set up. They couldn’t set them up in the temple itself. That would have been unheard of. So they set them up in the closest possible place, the large open area around the temple, the court of the Gentiles.

Now, traditionally this passage has been called “The Cleansing of the Temple,” but Jesus isn’t actually in the temple itself. He’s out in the Court of the Gentiles where the stalls are. So what’s he so upset about?

Listen to his own explanation…

¹⁷ And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: “‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’?But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The temple was off limits to anybody except Jews. There was a wall around the building, about a metre and a half high, with signs that said any non-Jew passing that wall would be killed. But there were many non-Jews who were attracted to Judaism, even among the Roman legions that occupied the land. (Cornelius is one example in Acts 10.) The closest they could get to the temple was the court of the Gentiles, which was supposed to be a place where they could pray and learn more about God.

It’s really hard to pray and meditate on who God is in the middle of a Middle Eastern market. They’re noisy. They’re smelly. Think Boxing Day sales; only lots more people, lots more noise, and way more smell. People are squeezed in, shoulder to shoulder, looking for the best deal on a dove or a goat. And that’s what the priests and leaders of the temple had made the Court of the Gentiles into, a marketplace.

Remember God’s call to Abram, maybe 2000 years earlier? “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” How exactly were the peoples of the world going to be blessed by Abram’s descendants when they had taken the space set aside for those peoples, those outsiders, those strangers, and dedicated it to their own agenda?

I can hear it now. A priest trying to decide how to manage all the stalls that people were setting up to buy and sell sacrificial animals. “Well, you know, we do have this big open space right here. We could put them all in here. It would kind of cramp any foreigners who might come to learn of God, but who cares? This is our place and our temple. They’ll have to fit around our agenda.”

This passage is not about buying and selling in the temple. It’s about allowing our own priorities to take precedence over God’s priorities, about allowing our own business to take precedence over God’s plan of blessing the nations, the strangers.

The temple was beautiful and bustling with activity, but like the fig tree, it only had the appearance of life. It was actually barren, fruitless when it came to the reason it was there.

A barren church?

A barren tree and a barren temple. Neither of them fulfilled their purpose. People plant and grow fruit trees for the fruit. Although the original reason for apples and oranges is to make new apple and orange trees, when you plant an orchard full of them it’s the fruit you want. (You usually grow new trees from cuttings, not seeds.) A fruit tree exists to provide fruit… for others. Its purpose in life is to have the fruit picked so that others can enjoy it.

The text that Jesus quoted about the temple says the same thing about the temple. My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. The purpose of the people of Israel was to show the character of God to the nations around them. That’s what it says in Deuteronomy 4, ^“the nations… will hear [about God’s good laws] and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” ⁷ What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? Like a fruit tree, they were supposed to exist for the sake of others, for the sake of the nations around them, to be a blessing to the world.

There is a great temptation for us, as church-going people, to fall into the same trap as the religious leaders of the Jerusalem temple. We can begin to believe that church is about us and our needs. After all, it’s our donations that pay for this building and everything that goes along with it, shouldn’t our needs and our priorities come first? Shouldn’t the ones that pay the piper be able to call the tune?

[Newbigin slide]

That’s not the way it works. I have a quote on my computer desktop that reads, in part, "The Church… does not exist for itself: It… exists for God and for the world that Jesus came to save." Like a fruit tree, we’re not just here to look pretty. We’re supposed to be productive. We’re supposed to bless others.

I had a conversation this week with Georgina and Sheila, about the drop-in that runs on Tuesdays. That is a ministry that serves the neighbourhood. It’s part of the fruit of this church that folks around us can reach out and be blessed by. It doesn’t serve us. It serves others. But Sheila and Georgie and getting a little tired. They need some help, some volunteers, who will step up to the plate and get involved. Sheila, in particular, cooks a meal every week for the drop-in. She would like to have someone take one Tuesday a month so she can have a break and not come straight off night shift and go into the kitchen.

There are other ministries too that need people to be involved.

[slide of typical week]

I’m proud of this congregation. When you look at a typical week at Wentworth, most of the things that we run here are outward looking ministries. They are ways to bless our neighbours and our neighbourhood. But they need people to get involved if they’re going to be sustainable.

Sheila and Georgie need people to join them on Tuesdays.

Tracy needs people to help with children and family ministries.

These aren’t sidelines for us. They aren’t optional extras for the really committed. They’re why God has put us here at Wentworth and Cannon; to bless others, and to let them see God at work in our lives, so that they would want to follow him too.