Matthew 21 - If Only Leaves were Edible

Nothing but |Leaves

Palm Sunday is coming up in a few weeks. You can buy plastic palm branches, distribute them to the children and have them march up the aisles during a service singing “Hosanna, hosanna.” Possibly—if we were to update the story to Canada, 2015—it would be called Spruce Sunday and the branches would be cut down from our own spruce trees.

I'm never sure what to make of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, a kind of rally/demonstration of Jesus' followers proclaiming him king and according him some ancient rituals of coronation. Somehow it seems out-of-joint considering the previous chapters where the horizontal kingdom gains so much emphasis. Did it make the papers? I wonder. Did Jerusalem actually notice? Did they have a demonstration permit?

Matthew is telling the story; before he wrote it as a part of his gospel some decades after the event, it probably existed in the oral history of the growing church, possibly written down on scraps of papyrus, most likely already a part of the tradition of the church. How they told the story—whether or not they acted it out with children and hosannas and palm branches—faith in the authority and the majesty of the Christ, I can imagine, was proclaimed regularly. Without it, Jesus would slip back into the dusty, forgotten annals of other self-proclaimed Christs—of which there were many—other revolutionaries, other legends of redemption that fade and are replaced by the march of events.

Being one of many who value, almost worship, the existence of trees and flowers, the cursing of the fig tree leaves me unsettled (no pun intended), particularly since it grows in an inhospitable soil and in a place where trees take a long time to develop, live long if they survive. Jesus is hungry, Matthew writes, and hopes to pick figs to eat. The fig tree is barren of fruit, though, and so Jesus places a curse upon it rendering it infertile . . . forever! (Had he been hot, looking for shade, would this leafy fig have been blessed? one might irreverently ask.)

Quite clearly, this story is not about fig trees; this symbolic fig tree is unproductive, the religion of the Pharisees and Sadducees is unproductive, infertile. Jesus' rage at the waste represented by the dirth of spiritual food is palpable: the cleansing of the temple in this same chapter is another indication of the depth of his disappointment. He stands in the line of the prophets before him; the people are invited to God's table and they go elsewhere, they stubbornly refuse to be gathered in. They've wasted all their chances!

This may not be what Jesus meant at all. Perhaps his hunger had just made him angry. If that were the case, though, I doubt that Matthew would have recorded the incident. It's always tempting to “apply” such stories, and to say that transposed to today, the infertile, fruitless fig tree represents such and so. But knowing how Jesus turns what seems obvious upside-down, I don't think that's a safe exercise. Suffice it to say that a good church, a faithful church should probably have figs hanging all over it.

After a paragraph in which Jesus fields questions about his and John the Baptist's authority to do what they do, we have two stories on that very subject. A farmer rents a section of land to a stranger on a crop-share basis, i.e. as payment for the use of the land, the owner will receive one-third share of the crop. So in fall, the farmer (owner) sends some men and trucks to pick up his rent in the form of wheat. The renter, being greedy and refusing to recognize the authority of the rental agreement, kills the truck drivers. This parable really needs little explication: the owner will seize back the land and rent it to someone who will honour the agreement. (Think barren/fertile fig tree; Matthew is following a theme here.)

There are two sons. There'd have to be two or there'd be no story, right? One says he'll obey the father, but doesn't. The other says he won't obey the father, but then does. Which one would you like to have as a son?

As I understand it, both must decide whether or not to acknowledge the father's authority. The first pretends to obey but doesn't: he's obviously intended to represent the religious leadership of the day whose trappings make them look like faithful children but whose actions betray their disobedience. The other son represents those who, with time, come to recognize the authority of the father after all (sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, the outcasts), a reminder that Jesus appeal is primarily to the poor, the ill, the rejected: the ones who have gone unfed because of the infertility of their so-called spiritual leadership (think barren/fertile fig tree).

From the palm branches to the fig tree to the vineyard, Chapter 21 is rife with plants and fruit. Fitting imagery even for our time when the fruit of the gospel should be feeding a hungry world.

Another old gospel song comes to mind; I don't remember it well but it has a line that goes something like, “we offer him nothing but leaves.” Wow!