NOTES for Mar 11:12

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 happened unnoticed, contrary to the conscious will of those gathered there, as everyday practical concerns accumulated like dust and covered over the very thing for which the temple exists.

When we come to God with our everyday needs, we are not committing a sin, for He Himself invited us to ask for them. But when we come to the temple only with practical needs, forgetting the selflessness of our relationship with God, we risk becoming those same "practical people" who made the temple a place of commercial deals.

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.

Today's reading is devoted to several themes that, at first glance, seem completely unrelated to one another. But this is only how it looks at first glance; with a more attentive reading, the connection between them is not hard to notice. The parable of the fig tree, which dried up at Jesus' word because it did not bear fruit when the Savior needed its fruit, becomes a kind of frame for the story. At the same time, the text says directly that there was no fruit on the tree because the season for that fruit had not yet come (v. 13). Later, the image of the dried-up tree becomes the occasion for Jesus' conversation with the disciples about what true faith is (vv. 21-26). And from this conversation it becomes clear that true faith is not at all about drying up trees or moving mountains with a single word. The image of a mountain obediently throwing itself into the sea is only an image. The point is something else: if faith is genuine, there are no barriers for it in this world. It belongs not to this world, but to the Kingdom of God. And in the Kingdom there is no place for the unalterable laws of nature that determine the life of this world. In the Kingdom the will of the living God acts, and everything in it is determined by this will and by a person's relation to it. For in biblical language, faith means, above all, a person's trust in the one in whom he believes. And faith in God means trust in Him and in the One through whom the Kingdom entered this world. The measure of such trust determines everything, including questions of life and death. And this, as we can see, concerns not only people, but even trees. According to the laws of this world, the fig tree should not have borne fruit at the time when Jesus approached it. But according to the laws of the Kingdom, it should have borne fruit, and it dried up because it did not bring forth fruit. Jesus carries the Kingdom with Him, and everything that finds itself in this Kingdom is either transformed or, if not transformed, destroyed. But a person is not a tree, and therefore for a person his fate in the Kingdom is determined by his own choice. And the concluding part of today's story (vv. 27-33) speaks precisely about what prevents a person from making the right choice. On the one hand, the temple leadership ("chief priests") and the learned theologians ("scribes") do not want to recognize John as a prophet because, after such recognition, they would have to give up much in their own already familiar way of religious life. They would have to admit that their religious leadership, obvious both to themselves and to many others, is in fact far from so obvious, and that their whole life is not nearly as morally and religiously blameless as they were accustomed to think. There is hardly anyone to whom such an admission comes easily, and not everyone in such a situation decides to make the right choice. But simply to reject what a prophet of God says is frightening too, especially if such a prophet has authority and respect among the ordinary people. And then a person often decides on what the chief priests and scribes eventually decided to do: keep silent, avoid a definite answer, and therefore avoid a definite decision about the question. When one very much does not want to resolve a difficult problem, the temptation appears to evade it, perhaps even to try to forget about it altogether. But if one gives in to this temptation, relationships with God become impossible in principle, because even a clear and unambiguous denial still leaves God some possibility of acting on the one who denies. But the absence of choice (and therefore the absence of a definite position) makes such action completely impossible: in that case God would have to make decisions for a person that are fundamentally important for him, and God does not want to do this, leaving the freedom of choice to the person. Here, of course, one can no longer speak of any relationship of trust, because any relationship presupposes a readiness to choose, make a decision, and carry it out. The same situation developed with the merchants whom Jesus drove out of the Temple (vv. 15-18): they truly had no place there, but their presence in the Temple had already become one of those folk customs that, in the eyes of the mass of believing people, often become an integral part of genuine Tradition, though most often they have nothing to do with that Tradition. Both the temple leadership and the learned theologians, of course, could not fail to understand this. But in this case too they preferred to keep silent about the problem: attempts to change something would have caused too much unrest, too many interests would have been affected. It seemed simpler to try to get rid of the disturber of the peace than to solve the problem (v. 18). Thus the unwillingness to make a choice gives rise to the desire to get rid of the source of disturbance at any cost.

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.

When reading the Gospel story, many people ask: why did Jesus treat the poor tree so unfairly? After all, it was none other than God Himself who established the very laws of nature according to which every tree bears fruit in its proper season. That is how it was, is, and will be; that is how it ought to be. But there are, of course, exceptions to the existing order of things. In fact, such exceptions are what we call miracles. The Kingdom entering the world is a miracle by definition. That is why miracle accompanies the Savior everywhere: He is the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. But what if He is near and no miracle takes place? Is that possible? Of course it is; in fact, it happened often, because not everyone who met Jesus became a witness to or participant in miraculous events. One can pass by the Kingdom without noticing it, at least as long as it has not yet been revealed in all its fullness, transforming our world completely. But to pass by the Kingdom means to lose the fullness of life contained in it. That is why the fig tree dried up: it did not become part of the Kingdom, and now we can hardly answer the question of why that happened. But through the example of the fig tree we can understand what awaits us if, like it, we remain without any share in the life of the Kingdom. It is a stern example, but a spiritually useful one.