Main news for 17 February 2019

King James Version (en)

Mark, Chapter 11, verse 12

¹²And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry:

NOTES

Those who came to trade in the temple had no intention of defiling it. They were quite devout people who had put up for sale what pilgrims needed for the rites. The transformation of God's house into a den of robbers...

The parable of the fig tree puzzles many readers: why, in fact, did it have to wither, since the time for it to bear fruit had not yet come? At the same time, the story of the withered fig tree is usually not connected with the cleansing of the Temple, the account of which it frames. Meanwhile both stories form a single whole, and the key to them is the Savior's words about faith that moves mountains. What is faith here? Confidence in God's existence? Certainly, but that is only the foundation. Trust? Yes, of course: without trust in God one cannot speak of spiritual life at all. Yet both the one and the other are only preliminary conditions for the action called faith. The action itself is connected with recognizing the Kingdom as an undoubted and unconditional reality present here and now.

If any technical terminology were appropriate in this case, it would be most accurate to speak of a person's "switching" to perception of that reality which is called the Kingdom and which is always present in him. It is almost impossible to do this by oneself, or more precisely, almost impossible to remain in the state called the Kingdom, but with Jesus everything is possible. So it was with Peter, for whom the Kingdom remains reality as long as he looks at Jesus. And not only a purely inner reality: beginning to perceive it within ourselves, we very soon learn to perceive the Kingdom outside as well. Then everything listed becomes possible, including mountains that move. This is no surprise, because nature in the Kingdom is absolutely obedient to man. So too the fig tree: it withered not because it failed to bear fruit, and not as punishment for disrespect toward the Messiah, but because it did not become part of the Kingdom.

It proved useless for the Kingdom there and then, where and when fruit was expected from it. Contact with the Kingdom never passes without consequences. The one who does not acquire the fullness of life offered to him may well lose even the small part of it that he has. The only question is whether this will happen as quickly as it did with the fig tree. And the surest road to not entering the Kingdom is trading in the Temple. In every sense of that expression, from the literal to the most symbolic of all possible senses. Not because a person does not need money, since while we have a relation to this world we will need some amount of it, but because money has no place in the Kingdom. One can and should thank God for a successful deal if trade is our profession, but our gratitude must not become a deal. Otherwise the Kingdom closes itself to us, with all the consequences that follow.

The story of the fig tree that withered at the Savior's word is a vivid demonstration of what spiritual power is and where it comes from. The sentence may seem unjust...

The story of the fig tree that withered at the Savior's word is a vivid demonstration of what spiritual power is and where it comes from. The sentence may seem unjust, since it was not yet the season for fruit, and some evangelists even make a point of noting this. According to the laws of the fallen world, that is so; but with Christ the whole fullness of the Kingdom draws near to the fig tree: its power, its love, its life. A person is free to choose, but the same cannot be said of a tree: either it becomes part of the Kingdom, and in the Kingdom, according to the prophet's testimony, trees bear fruit year-round without interruption, or it perishes, dies, deprived of the life it did not accept. Why such a thing is possible at all remains an unanswered question for now, one of the sad mysteries of a fallen world lying in evil.

Perhaps the issue is learning to abide wholly and completely in the present moment, in that "here and now" where alone the contact of time flowing in this dimension with the fullness of the Kingdom's times and with God's eternity is possible. Meanwhile, the fallen world in a certain sense constantly lags behind itself, behind its own being, behind the dynamics of its own existence. The best-known manifestation of this lag is entropy, and it is entropy that prevents the fallen world from existing in rhythm with the time God has appointed for it.

The manifestation of entropy at a specific point in creation can place that point outside the spiritual influence being exerted on it in God's time, and then it finds itself outside God's world. The same can happen to a person if he falls out of God's present, allowing spiritual entropy to take possession of his heart and soul. Falling out of God's dynamic always begins with the loss of trust in God, and then it inevitably entails the immersion of a person's spiritual "I" into his own psyche, above all into old psychic wounds, traumas, and grievances, which usually, among other things, also prevent him from forgiving the very offenses committed against him.

At the social level, spiritual entropy appears in particular in the triumph of form over spiritual meaning, of custom over the content of spiritual life, which Jesus fights when He drives the merchants out of the Temple. Of course, they had no place there, and the Torah forbids trading in the Temple courtyard, but the established custom proves stronger even than the Torah's prescriptions, especially once people grow used to it and it becomes part of tradition. It is against this tradition with a lowercase letter that Jesus speaks, for He understands where the spiritual roots of such violations lie and what the triumph of such a tradition means in the spiritual life of the community.

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