NOTES for Mar 11:12-26

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.

The Gospel story-parable about the withered fig tree begins by mentioning that Jesus, after leaving Bethany, felt hungry. There is, of course, nothing surprising in this: human nature is human nature, and it makes its demands. But in the life of the Messiah everything was not so simple, even if we speak of His earthly path. The God-man has absolute command of His human nature; for Him, in principle, there can be no situation in which He gives in to His human nature out of weakness.

In this case, hunger and thirst are not forced necessity, but the result of a conscious choice. Approaching the fig tree, Jesus offers it the chance to satisfy His hunger. At first glance this may seem strange. But He Himself said that every participation in His life makes the participant part of the Kingdom He brought into the world. If this is true of people, then it can be thought true of the rest of creation as well. Of course, the participation will be different in each case, but that does not change the essence of the matter.

For the fig tree to give its fruit to the Messiah is the same chance to participate in the life of the Kingdom as it is for a person to receive the Messiah in his home. Of course, a tree is not a human being; it cannot understand the situation in a human way, nor can it make a choice or decision in a human way. A tree is limited by the natural laws God established for it. But sometimes these laws can work differently. For example, when the Kingdom is near. And sometimes they may not work differently; this depends on many reasons. But if they do not work differently, it means the Kingdom passes by, with all that follows from that.

Although the words about the fig tree and its withering seem more or less understandable, it remains unclear how the sayings about casting down mountains and the power of faith are connected with this. And indeed, Jesus was not calling people to perform all kinds of magical tricks with nature by means of faith.

The incident with the fig tree is undoubtedly a symbolic action meant to show the sad condition to which Israel, and especially its leaders, had brought itself. In Jesus' opinion, the chosen people for the most part were not fulfilling the mission laid upon them: to be a witness of the divine presence in the world. The same meaning is most likely put into the words about moving "this mountain," that is, the Temple Mount, into the sea. Here, of course, we have figurative speech. From now on Jesus' followers receive the ability to "move the mountain" of the most complex circumstances of existence, both of all humanity and of each individual person, that is, to comprehend the divine designs concerning what happens both in the surrounding world and in the depths of one's own soul. Apparently the original meaning of the words about casting down the Temple Mount, in connection with the words about the fig tree, was to explain the providential character of the destruction of Jerusalem and the catastrophe of the Jewish people, who did not listen to the warnings and rebukes of their Messiah. Now this can be understood as a constant reminder of the fragility and futility of all human efforts to "preserve" and "tame" God for the achievement of purely earthly interests and goals, whether personal or universal.

As for God's unquestioning fulfillment of the requests and prayers of the believer, here the main thing is not to lose sight of the expression "faith of God." It can be translated as "faith in God," as "God's faithfulness," and even as "the faithfulness of God Himself." Regardless of the variant chosen, the essence of Jesus' instruction is clear: true prayer, being turned toward God, consists of actions, words, or unmoving silence in the Holy Spirit. And such an attitude and state make it completely impossible for a Christian to do anything without God and not as God does it...

"Forgive, and you will be forgiven" is a principle known long before Christ came. But in our fallen world it is usually taken to mean mutual indulgence: close your eyes to my sins, and I will close mine to yours, and we will not spoil each other's mood with mutual reproaches and claims. Of course, such an arrangement usually works only as long as the interests of one of the parties are not seriously affected, but quite often it still helps preserve decency and the appearance of normal relations. In everyday life, this is often what is called "forgiving your neighbor his sins."

But Jesus undoubtedly means something else: for He was never tolerant of any sin, although He always forgave the repentant sinner. He plainly proceeds from the fact that we are all sinners, and each of us needs, on the threshold of the Kingdom, to be forgiven those sins of which we repent and for which we grieve. But then we have no moral right to demand an accounting from others: either we begin to reckon up sins, and then there can be no question of the Kingdom, or we allow ourselves to be judged and cleansed from sin by the One who alone can do this; then the road into the Kingdom is open to us. The choice is ours.

What, after all, is the connection between faith and forgiveness? And do unbelievers really have no ability to forgive at all? Of course, if by faith we mean what is most often meant by it, namely religiosity and everything connected with it, the questions asked may appear, at the very least, strange. But if we see in it what most authors of the biblical books saw, namely faithfulness, much immediately becomes clearer. At the same time it is important to keep in mind that faithfulness in this case, judging by the context, applies not only to relationship with God, but also to relationship with one's neighbor; in any case, Jesus never says that He means only faithfulness to God or to Himself, as Messiah or as Teacher. And that is no surprise, because faithfulness is indivisible. Either it exists, and then it permeates every relationship, whether with God, with Christ, or with one's neighbor, or it does not exist, and then it is nowhere and in nothing. Moreover, faithfulness is unconditional, because at its foundation lies that spiritual wholeness which, for life in the Kingdom, to which Jesus calls the faithful, must be absolute.

Only this makes forgiveness possible: forgiveness is not indulgence toward the sin of one's neighbor, which often makes one close one's eyes to the obvious (unless, of course, it concerns the one closing his eyes directly), but the ability to see in one's neighbor that image of God which gives even the greatest sinner hope for salvation, a hope that remains until the day of Judgment. This is what the Savior calls us to: to live the life of the Kingdom and to look at our neighbor with the eyes of a citizen of the Kingdom. And to forgive the neighbor's sins until God carries out His judgment.

Only two things does the Lord call essential for prayer in today's Gospel reading. He speaks of faith and forgiveness. It is very important that Christ is not speaking about faith that the God to whom our prayer is addressed exists. That, generally speaking, is self-evident. Nor is the Lord speaking about faith that the prayer will be heard, though that too is important. Rather, He emphatically speaks of completely childlike trust in God: believe that you will receive what you ask for, and it will be yours. Here lies the boundary between prayer and magical spells, between communion with our loving heavenly Father and forcing ourselves into a state of ecstasy. And the second thing the Savior commands us is this: for prayer to take place, it is necessary to forgive. For it is forgiveness that creates the "territory" of communion where man and God have something that unites them. God forgives us, and if we try to forgive one another, then our common language with God is built up.

Jesus does not ask us of course to cast mountains into the sea. In fact, if we really have faith in God, that is trust in God Who created seas and mountains, then we will not dare to remove mountains He created! If that is the case, what is He talking about then?

Jesus uses this description of "mountain cast into the sea" above all as an image of what is absolutely impossible to be made by human strengths, but possible to be made by God. Therefore, Jesus speaks one more time about a genuine faith - "evidence of things not seen” (Heb.11 1), binding Man to God in such way that miracles begin to occur in that man’s life - the manifestations of the actions of God’s power.

Doubt opposes such a faith; this doubt can be very simple: but can God do what I ask Him? Such a doubt is certainly easier to surmount. But there are more delicate doubts; for example: is God listening to my prayer? We need here an internal image of God, not only an Almighty God, but also a loving God. Here is an even more complicated example: do I have enough faith in order that what I ask gets realized? Such doubt is an entrance to the vicious circle, making us to be self contained, separating us from God. We can destroy it only by a resolute effort – reject egocentric thoughts and turn to God; but this is too difficult for us, harden by our egoism.

Here is a remarkable example of what can result from pulling quotations, even from the Gospel, even from the words of Christ, out of the context in which they stand. People who read this verse almost inevitably ask again in distrust: "How is that? And if I ask, believing that I will receive, say, for the death of my enemy? Will that also happen?"

But Christ here is not saying what one may ask for and what one may not; He is speaking of how to ask. He is speaking of the power of faith in prayer, not of what prayer should be directed toward. That is also addressed, but in another place; see Matt. 7:11; Luke 11:13. We read as though we wanted not to understand Christ, but to catch Him in His words. And He is trying to teach us trust, the ability to live not by what has already happened, but by what is happening right now, at this very moment of our communion with God.

Here is an excellent example of what can bring the extraction of a quotation from its context, no matter if it is from the Gospel or from the words of Jesus Christ. Reading this verse, people practically ask again suspiciously: “how? So if we ask having faith, let say the death of our brother; shall we receive it? This request will come true too? But it is necessary to notice here that Jesus does not speak about what we can ask and of what we cannot, He just speaks about the way it is necessary to ask; he speaks about the power of faith in the prayer, and not of what the prayer should be consisted. We also find this in other places in the Bible (see Matthew 7 :11; Luke 11:13). We unfortunately read this verse as if we do not want to understand Jesus, but rather to take Him at His word. While He tries to teach us trust, the ability to live not on what has already taken place, but on what is taking place right now at the very moment of our communication with God.

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.