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Stranger Things: Figs and Felons
Have you noticed how grocery shopping has become chaotic.
It starts with parking and goes all the way to getting your money back from the cart.
I enter the store and immediately my eyes start watering from the lighting.
It’s like the store is saying, “I’m make so much money, I don’t care if you go blind from my lights.”
I mean it really is not an enjoyable experience.
People don’t even know which lane to pick anymore.
And none of our local grocery stores are exempt from this.
It is chaos.
Especially at peak times.
Throw into the mix folks chatting on their cell phones and you can sit for significant amounts of time just trying to get a bag of crackers.
I was walking down a utensil aisle one day and on one of the shelves was a package of frozen sausages.
Why? I’ll go down the ends of the aisles looking down each one to contemplate whether it is even worth it based on the clientele talking up residence.
Sometimes your stuck between two carts facing different directions.
You look up and make eye contact with another shopper coming the other direction and you both know the chances are good you will die there, waiting to access a jar of baby dills.
I even get dirty looks at grocery stores for trying to be polite.
Sometimes I just feel like doing a hit to pass then dragging products off the shelves to make my escape.
The other day I just picked up one item and was going to use self check out.
As I’m walking towards it I make eye contact with one of the clerks and he ha these big sad eyes.
I don’t think he was sad, but an overwhelming sense of “I feel sorry for you.”
came over me.
And I went to him and had him wring in my one item.
He was probably thinking, please go use the self checkout and let me have my break.
You may think I am exaggerating but just talk to Lisa about it.
She’ll confirm my dislike.
I Had no idea grocery shopping could be a wonderful experience until I visited a Safeway in another city.
Wow!.
They have low lighting but still enough you can see, the store itself is quiet.
Anyone with sensory issues would love shopping at Safeway.
There is even a Safeway in Langley that turns down lights and sounds even more between 4-5 for folks with sensory issues.
I’d be willing to pay a bit more for an experience like that.
You go into one of the stores and think, this is the way shopping for food was meant to be.
The story we are looking at today is similar to my shopping experience but on a much more significant scale.
It involves a fig tree, a curse, a temple, and an open air market.
The story we are looking at today is similar to my shopping experience but on a much more significant scale.
It involves a fig tree, a curse, a temple, and an open air market.
Interestingly this is a bit similar to how people experience church.
Some love that loud bright feel during a service, others like a subdued quiet experience.
We all have a preference about how things should be.
We all have likes and dislikes.
We all have environments we prefer over others.
The story we are looking at today in our series Stranger Things, involves a different kind of environment.
One that excluded those who were seen as less worthy of approaching God.
It is one of the events in the life of Jesus involving an innocent fig tree and a bunch of felons.
It is an event recorded in all four of the historical accounts of the Life of Jesus.
We are going to look at the one in Mark chapter 11 starting at verse 11.
I’m not going to give to much away about the book of Mark because we will be working through it starting in September, but Mark is a book of action showing Jesus taking decisive steps in front of his disciples and others.
After three years of touring Israel, sharing his message, Healing the sick, building into his disciples.
Jesus is headed towards Jerusalem to face his eventual arrest and execution.
On his last trip he takes a detour into the wilderness from the Sea of Galilee in the north.
Walks down on trails that are still used today, stops over in Jericho and Bethany and as he heads to Jerusalem is greeted by crowds cheering him on.
Before this encounter with a fig tree Jesus enters Jerusalem like a king.
People were throwing their coats on the ground, waving palm leaves.
Thinking Jesus is coming to take over Israel as the rightful king.
But it is already a little late
Lets read the passage and then explore it a bit more.
A little weird right?
Why curse a fig tree that ins’t in season?
So let’s ignore the fig tree for a bit and focus on what happened in the temple.
Have you ever gone into a child's room with the express intent to keep your cool but upon opening the door you feel righteous rage at the state of the room?
“This room is to be a place of homework and sleeping, not Xbox, ants, and mold.”
Mark 11:11-
What Jesus does here is nothing like that.
But maybe we get a little bit of his feelings here.
Here was a place that was supposed to be functioning in a way that brought people in.
Instead, it is keeping people out.
Let’s ignore the fig tree for a second and figure out what Jesus was doing in the temple.
So he comes in in the evening the night before, has a look around.
Has some time to think about what he just saw, and is reminded again of his clearing of the temple almost three years earlier at the start of his public ministry.
In the first instance he tells the folks in the temple,
John 2:
He then has a conversation with the religious leaders about his death and resurrection.
They didn't get it.
He comes back this time and nothing has changed.
Having all night to think about his approach, Jesus again clears the temple.
Picture of the temple.
During the time of Jesus was the time of what was called Herod’s Temple.
King Herod, not a nice person, was smart enough to know that having a nice temple would keep the people of Israel mostly happy.
So he made them an amazing structure for them to offer sacrifices and offerings to God.
It was the second largest temple Israel had ever built and it was amazing.
It was the second largest temple Israel had ever built and it was amazing.
Compared to Solomon’s temple who ruled Israelite at the height of it’s power, and we see that Solomon could have done way better.
This was an amazing place.
So why was Jesus so agitated.
To understand that we need to zoom in on the temple itself.
Jesus probably came into the temple through what was called Solomon’s Porch which would have placed him facing the entrance to the temple itself.
On the temple mount there were places only certain types of people could go.
There was the court of the gentiles, This was where the gentiles or non-Jewish people could gather to worship God.
They weren’t allowed into the temple itself.
So they couldn’t even offer sacrifices to God for the forgiveness of sins.
Zooming in a little more, we get to the temple itself.
First we have the court of women.
This was the furthest into the temple that a Jewish woman could go, again unable to present a sacrifice.
In front of the altar we then would have the court of men and the court of priests.
These being the only ones who could bring an offering or sacrifice for sin.
So this exclusion alone would have been enough for Jesus to get upset.
The nation of Israel was supposed to be unique among the nations right from the start.
Here are just a couple of the commands that God gave them regarding foreign people:
Deut 10:
We could stop there and understand why Jesus started to thwack people with a stick.
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