Godlike Moment
Today's lesson of the King James Version of the Bible is on a very strange scene.
It is Christ Jesus vs. a fig tree. And the fig tree seems to have outflanked Christ. The tree refused to provide its fruit for hungry Christ. And Christ a sort of got angry, which was observed by His disciples. It is very strange.
But Christ was living as a mere man but not as the God. And an ordinary man sometimes meets an incongruous situation with his personal or inner integrity. Matter in the universe moves according to conditions of the universe the God had set on His creation of it but not to the human ideal. No matter how holy or powerful a man or a woman is, he or she would have to face a very uncomfortable situation. For example, a Pope might be treated as a criminal, and a queen must face a very mean incident of her family. And Christ met with a rebellious fig tree.
As the God even created the Devil, He must have given a chance of existence to such a tree.
So, coming back to His holy sense, Christ as the God ordered the fig tree not serve anybody since it denied serving Christ who was the God in his inner nature. Indeed if a subject refused to server a king, he is not allowed to serve anybody in the kingdom, in order to protect honor of the king. So, it meant that Christ took back His authority as the God to a kind of save His face for Himself.
So, this episode is very human if He is a simple human being like us, but we have to probably say that this episode is very godlike since He is such God.
But all the 12 disciples there looked like misunderstanding something.
Although the Gospel states that Jesus "found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs.", we should not read this passage as if it were a horticultural manual. As these events bracket the cleansing of the temple we are meant to see that the fate of the unfruitful tree symbolizes the character and fate of the magnificent temple of Jerusalem. Jesus expected the temple to be a house of prayer, for the temple authorities to conduct their affairs unobscured by commercial exploitation. As Jesus saw it, there is never an off season for the Temple. Yet the temple authorities failed to produce fruit. In the words of writer Joseph O'Hanlon: All leaves, and no figs.answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.http://iconsandimagery.blogspot.jp/2010_11_01_archive.html
Christ Jesus however did not abhor the fig tree especially, since He mentioned it in His teaching, giving a kind of credit to it:
Luk 21:29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees;
Luk 21:30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.
Luk 21:31 So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.
So, the fig tree is, nonetheless, not far from Heaven.
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Mar 11:11 And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.
Mar 11:12 And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry:
Mar 11:13 And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.
Mar 11:14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.