Passion or Puppet

You have every right to ask, ?What has this guy been smoking since coming to this conference? Why is he using the story of Jesus cursing a fig tree as a text at a church that has committed itself to progressive Christianity? Doesn't he know that this is one of the most embarrassing stories in the New Testament? The account makes Jesus look like a combination show-off and dunce. Mark, the writer, looks bad also, for he felt forced to interpret it in ways that make no sense. Wouldn?t it be better if we left this story alone and hope as few people as possible ever read it?

If those are your thoughts, I empathize. But I am unrepentant. The story of cursing the fig tree is one of my favorite Bible stories. Why? Because I agree with the sentiments just described: it makes both Jesus and Mark look foolish. Yet it is one of the most revealing stories of the New Testament. It is especially revealing for all of us who can no longer embrace all that is implied in the divine Christ and are seeking a new introduction to the human Jesus.

Let us go quickly to the essence of the matter. I have shared with you that I enjoy the Bible because it is filled with arguments. To read scripture is to take a ringside seat at a debating society. Whenever I come across a passage that doesn't make sense on its own, I find myself asking, "What is the argument here? With whom is this person in conflict?" Then I try to peel back a layer or two and find out what basic question lies underneath.

That is the process I invite you to share with me in regard to the story that is our text.

We know the nature of the major disagreement among the earliest followers of Jesus. How should they interpret the life and teachings and death of the person who had been known as Jesus of Nazareth?

Those who had known Jesus in the flesh, some of whom were no doubt still alive when Mark wrote, had seen him as an unusually effective itinerant teacher and healer—one among many such people of the time. His contemporaries had encountered him as a genuine, flesh-and-blood human being who did not wear a halo and who rubbed a number of people the wrong way.

Some of those who knew Jesus in the flesh had come to think of him in the role of Messiah. It is important to note that the role of Messiah, in Jewish terms, was a human role. The Messiah was to be a leader, perhaps a leader chosen and empowered by the divine, but his humanity was beyond question. Because he would be a human leader, a Messiah could be followed. The Messianic role could be shared. Those who thought of Jesus in that earthy way took one side of the emerging debate.

The other side of the argument had been introduced by Paul, who had written his letters before Mark composed his Gospel. Paul told his Gentile friends that Jesus was more than a man, that he was a divine being who had been sent on a unique mission—a mission to complete the central human drama. Jesus, by his death and resurrection, had lifted the curse put on humanity by the rebellion of the original human, Adam. Apart from that, Paul did not say much about what Jesus said or did, or whether other people could live in similar ways. Paul's bold concept envisioned Jesus in a role no one else could fill or would ever need to fill. As Christianity moved increasingly into the Gentile world, this second, divine understanding was rapidly becoming the more popular side of the debate.

The implication of Paul's position was that Jesus' spoken lines had, before his birth, already been written and his major actions already choreographed. In that process the Hebrew Messiah was transformed into a Greek concept: the Christ. This shift is more than translation from one language to another. This was a shift from a human being doing tasks that other human beings could also do, to a divine being doing divine things that mere mortals could not imagine doing. Jesus could be admired and emulated; the Christ could be admired and worshiped.

We easily see why this is such an important debate in the early church. Indeed, it may be an even more important debate in the twenty-first century. The question of whether to worship the Christ or follow Jesus seems like the stuff of academic debate, pointless, perhaps, in the pews of local churches.

On the contrary, the issue of worshiping Christ or following Jesus goes to the heart of the nature of religion. To worship Christ is to place the emphasis on heavenly things. Those who worship the Christ try to avoid the sins (most of them sexual) that make one spiritually unclean, they embrace dogmatic positions that offer them forgiveness for all their sins, and they look forward to eternal life in the presence of the Christ. Those who follow Jesus place the emphasis on earthly things. They attempt to model their lives on the compassion of Jesus, his refusal to react violently toward those who did violence to him and his remarkable openness toward those persons the remainder of society had marginalized. The way you answer the question of worshiping Christ or following Jesus determines the kind of person you are, and the nature of the religion you follow.

The church, as it developed its dogma, attempted to walk around this debate by having it both ways. Jesus was fully man and fully God. Neat! Except that the formula has never worked for me or for millions of others who try to be believers. I am convinced it has never worked for the church as a whole. The effort to have it both ways has meant that the church has developed clear road maps to guide the faithful to heaven, but it has failed to draw adequate road maps leading to human dignity or to communities of peace and justice.

The emphasis on the worship of Christ, which results from the Nicene formula, has turned our tradition upside-down. The Bible is an earthy book about earthy subjects. Concerns of peace and justice permeate the Scripture and cannot be ignored today. Imagining Jesus to be a heavenly creature violates all of that.

I am convinced the story of the cursing of the fig tree is in Mark's gospel to help us see that we cannot have it both ways. The story is Mark's vote for the Jesus of history.

Speaking personally, the "fully God and fully man" formula breaks down when I ask myself the question of what we might today call Jesus' guidance system.

If Jesus were fully God, acting out a pre-determined drama written and directed by the divine, then his guidance system was (please pardon the spatial metaphor) "up there." He would have been a puppet on strings manipulated by another power.

The other concept is of a human being who, like all other human beings, receives guidance from his mind and from his gut. When new situations arose, Jesus, according to this second view, made conscious decisions about them, and was swayed, as well, by his emotions.

Most followers of Jesus, including those who stress his divinity, can accept that Jesus had a clear mind that helped him in his mission. But emotions? If he let himself be swayed by emotions, then the idea of participating in a pre-determined drama is altogether destroyed. If emotions enter the picture then Jesus was a passionate man. I mean that word to extend beyond its sexual connotations and I surely do not mean it in the Mel Gibson sense. Passionate people are spontaneous, allowing themselves to be pushed and pulled by meanings that lie beyond intellectual analysis. By saying that Jesus was passionate I mean he was a man fully involved with the world, able to respond to situations with the totality of his being.

So there we have it. The debate was (and is) between the passionate Jesus or the puppet Jesus. When all the nice theological points are set aside we have to ask of Jesus: from where did his guidance come? From where was the energy that urged him into action? You can have puppet or passion. You cannot have it both ways.

Enter, then, the writer of the Gospel of Mark. This writer knew the importance of the debate over the nature of Jesus. He made his contribution to the conflict openly, in plain sight where, unfortunately, most people have missed it.

The fact is, most people read the Bible only after putting on their spirit-tinted glasses. They expect that they will find spiritual things in scripture. Intention is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. People find spiritual things in strange places in the Bible and miss the sounds and smells of hard reality. I have been as guilty of this distortion as anyone. I was well into adulthood before I took off those spirit-tinted glasses and allowed myself to read—to truly read—the opening verses of the third chapter of Mark. A man with a withered hand had come to Jesus on a Sabbath. Jesus wanted to touch that hand with a healing touch (which was what all itinerant healers did in those days). Standing nearby were some people who objected. "You, there! You can't do that. Healing is work, and the Law prevents us from doing work on the Sabbath." Mark then wrote: "And Jesus turned to them in anger, grieved at their hardness of heart." Anger. Grief. Two powerful emotional terms back to back in the same verse. And this is in the sanitized English translation. The Greek words used to describe these two emotions are more muscular. (The same terms, when used in other parts of the New Testament, are translated in more forceful English. When they refer to Jesus, they are downgraded to simple anger or simple grief. We dare not let people know that Jesus had strong feelings!)

The truth that Mark wanted to convey was that Jesus was furious at the nay-sayers; Jesus was devastated by the idea that an ancient law could be elevated about the pain of a living, breathing, human being.

Passion or puppet? It is clear from the beginning where Mark stood.

Here is an interesting exercise. Read through the Gospel of Mark, all in one sitting. It is short, and will not take long. Keep a piece of notepaper next to you, and record the emotional terms Mark uses to describe Jesus. I think you will be amazed. If you have time and want to pursue this, do the same with Matthew and Luke, written about a decade after Mark. You will find emotional terms still appearing, but with less frequency. Finally, go to the Gospel of John, written later still. With the exception of one brief story, you will find no emotional terms at all. You do not need a formal academic course to trace the transformation from Jesus the passionate, spontaneous human of Mark to the puppet in a divine drama that is described in John.

We are ready now to return to the story of Jesus and the barren fig tree. I offer a non-traditional interpretation of that event. In the interest of honesty, I should report that our friends in the Jesus Seminar are confident this story is a product Mark's imagination. It was copied and expanded by Matthew. The scholars at the Jesus Seminar play with the idea that the story may have been a way of making a statement about the Jewish synagogue, implying it, too, was a fruitless tree. They reject that notion and offer no other explanation of how this story came to be at this point in the drama.

I want to suggest that the story of the barren fig tree is a part of Mark's effort to present Jesus in his absolute humanity. The story illuminates the passionate side of Jesus, and shows how he handled a moment of frustration and anger—the kind of moment that often ensnares the remainder of us.

Note the setting. The previous day had been difficult. Conflict had been its agenda. First Jesus had driven moneychangers out of the temple, setting off a series of events that would lead to his execution. Next came a group of people asking to be healed, under circumstances that caused more tension. People tend not to sleep well after a day filled with that much stress. It is easy, therefore, to imagine that Jesus had just spent a restless night. The next morning found him tired and hungry as well. He spied a fig tree and walked toward it. Drat! It had no fruit.

Now please take off any spirit-tinted glasses you may be wearing and let yourselves see Jesus walking toward the fig tree while Mark slyly inserts one more fact: it wasn't the season for figs!

How did this story ever make it past the censors? Not only does it show us a Jesus who became quite angry, he was apparently also disoriented by all that was happening. Jesus, who according to the people on the other side of the biblical debate, was supposed to be able to tell the future, was reported to have magical powers allowing him to see into the hearts of people, didn't remember that this tree wasn't supposed to have fruit! The pressures had caused him to become temporarily addled. I love it! This is my kind of guy!

So: how did it get past the censors in a time when the glorification of Jesus had already begun? I think this is why Mark ended the story with an interpretation saying it proved Jesus' power over nature. That argument does not wash. There were sufficient such stories already, and the story of the fig tree adds nothing to that argument. Mark was cleverly disguising this story as a witness to Jesus' power and thus slipping it under the radar screens of those who might have objected.

Mark was offering us a man whom you and I can follow. I can never hope to achieve Jesus' spiritual depth. I cannot imagine myself getting close to his level of dedication, his stubborn pursuit of his chosen goals even when that pursuit meant an early death. Yet, in this story, Mark has left an important door ajar. I can push that door open and follow this man, Jesus. He is far ahead of me, to be sure. But we can walk the same path.

This story leaves open the possibility that some modern people will walk shoulder to shoulder with him. We remember a Martin Luther King, Jr., who claimed to be a follower of Jesus, or a Hindu named Gandhi, or a Muslim named Kahn. Some of you may be persons who quietly witness for justice and visit the prisoner and the ill. If so, you follow Jesus very closely. Jesus was not trying to carve out a unique role. He was attempting to carve out a new way of being in the world. Into that new way everyone was and is invited.

However one chooses to deal with the details of the story, the answer to the original question seems quite straightforward. "Why did Jesus curse an innocent fig-tree?" He did so because he was tired, frustrated and hungry. He acted as he did because, as the Statement of Faith of one denomination insists, "He shared our common lot." Sharing our common lot means that Jesus, like all the remainder of us, was sometimes angry. When angry and frustrated, he could act in ways that later would seem foolish. This is no puppet on divine strings. This is an earthy, passionate man whom we can follow.

What is at stake here is only partly a question of the nature of Jesus. Of more importance, what is at stake here is our relationship to Jesus, and, more broadly, our relationship to the Christian faith.

Since we continue to refer to ourselves as "Christians", as in Center(s) for Progressive Christianity, that relationship should be clear. In most cases it isn't clear.

Allow me a personal statement. For myself, I become increasingly nervous about the word "Christian." The term seems to nudge me toward the "Christ of faith, Christ the redeemer, blood of the lamb" side of the faith. Which is decidedly not where I am. Saying I am a Christian is the only way I know to identify myself with a broad tradition in which I wish to remain, but using that term is, frankly, a bit dishonest. So I prefer to speak of myself as a "follower of Jesus." Finding a way to identify us with that tradition while insisting the tradition continue to evolve is a conundrum. If you share this concern, we should continue to work for a solution. Terminology is important.

Referring to the tradition, the two thousand year, evolving way of life that has its roots in Jesus, brings us to a crucial question. If we accept the implications of the Gospel of Mark, especially the implications of the story of the cursing of the fig tree, does that read us out of the tradition? Many of those in positions of leadership in our churches insist that we are legitimately in that tradition only if we accept the Christ event, the once-in-history occurrence in which one person's suffering and death gives life to all who call on his name. I understand that position. I hope we are not here to exclude those who believe in that style. We are surely not here to replace one orthodoxy with another. I hope we are here to insist that the tradition is broad, and that it includes and always has included, folk like you and me.

I will go farther. I want to insist that those of us who are committed to the historic Jesus, the passionate Jesus of Mark, the Jesus who cursed a fig tree even when it wasn't the season for figs, represent a strand of our tradition that is at least as authentic as any other strand.

As Elaine Pagels and others have been telling us, the tradition began quite broadly. For more than three hundred years the young church included many people who insisted on following rather than worshiping Jesus. Many understandings of Jesus flourished, and people of a variety of views made their contributions to the development faith community. Then came the "fully God and fully human" formula. Since then there have been pockets of resistance in every generation.

The original documents, that is, the biblical writers, are on our side. There is now an easy way to check this out.

Computers are much maligned by people of religion—rightly so, at times. Yet computers have their better moments. If you have good bible software on your computer you can be an instant Bible scholar. Call up the four Gospels, and search for the word "worship". You will find the only references to worshiping Jesus come in the temptation stories. Worshiping Jesus was Satan's idea, and Jesus rejected the possibility forcefully. Passionately.

Now type in the words, "Follow me". The phrase will come on your screen twenty-one times, all direct quotations from Jesus. Four of those times have to do with the cross. "Take up your cross and follow me." Think of the implications of that. Think of the implications of that for Christian orthodoxy. Orthodoxy has insisted that the suffering of Jesus, Mel Gibson style, was a once-in-history occurrence that completed a divine drama. The writers of the Gospels were sure that Jesus understood himself and his mission quite differently, and read their understanding back into Jesus' words. According to those earliest complete documents, the suffering of Jesus was redemptive, it was vicarious, and it could be repeated by all persons who aligned themselves with the life of Jesus.

When we read the Gospels, we become aware that Jesus was confident all his tasks could be repeated. He never allowed himself to be drawn into the trap of being an answer man, depository of truths that could be found nowhere else. His teaching method was Socratic. "Tell me," someone challenged him, "What is the greatest of the laws?" Jesus simply turned the question back: "You tell me. What do you think?" When pressed for answers he told stories, most of them cryptic, demanding that the listener supply the interpretation. Once he instructed seventy of his friends to go out and do what he had been doing. "You go preach. You go heal. You do not need me to be present to participate in the redemptive acts of the divine."

The implications of this simple fact are overwhelming: Jesus invited people to follow him, not to worship him. Meditate on that until you see the foundations of a rigid orthodoxy crumble. Best of all, meditate on that until you see the possibility of reconstructing your relationship to Jesus out of the ruins of that old, inflexible system.

Today we have put quite a bit of weight on one strange biblical story. I am convinced that the story holds all that weight, and perhaps more. Most of our conservative friends are embarrassed by the account of the cursing of the fig tree, for they fear it makes Jesus look foolish. Perhaps. For me, the important fact is that the story makes Jesus look real.

Traditionalists want me to look at Jesus and discover what it is to be God. I want to look at Jesus and find out what it is to be human. The story of the cursing of the fig tree tells me that in looking to Jesus—the passionate Jesus—I am looking in the right place.



Jack) Good
Roanoke, VA
USA

Author of The Dishonest Church, Rising Star Press, 2003.