As the Son of God, the fully human, fully divine physical incarnation of the Almighty, Jesus is perfect. But in His perfection, it is sometimes difficult to relate to Jesus - to truly embrace the ‘fully human’ side of the Jesus equation. This is why I love the story of Jesus shouting at a fig tree.
In the Gospel of Mark, the story is recounted as follows:
‘Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.’
At first glance, there is something quite obvious to consider. This physical incarnation of God Himself is angry that a fig tree has no fruit – despite of course knowing that it was not the season for figs! Jesus, as the Son of God, is all-knowing. He knows that it’s not the season for this fruit. And yet, with all the power that He has, Jesus curses the tree. Because He is hungry, He doesn’t want anyone else to eat fruit from that tree either.
It doesn’t seem very Christlike to me. Indeed, as the great atheist and humanist philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in ‘Why I Am Not A Christian’, ‘It is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue, Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history’.
I wouldn’t go as far as Russell does in the second half of his statement, but he does have a point in the first instance at least.
The Gospel of Mark does, however, offer a rationale for this seemingly random story:
‘Have faith in God…whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’
So perhaps the moral of the story is that prayer is so powerful, God is so powerful, that we can get anything that we truly believe in? In the story, Peter says to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!’. The story is therefore a testament to God’s power; that, through Jesus, anything is possible. But to me, it still seems odd that the victim of this power is a fig tree that was simply doing as nature intended. The fig tree was simply following the cycles and seasons of life that God Himself had established, as outlined in the creation story.
From simply reading the text, I am still unclear as to the purpose of the fig tree stories. That’s why they intrigue me so. Certain interpretations of this account state that the fig tree symbolises Israel and that the cursing of the tree actually represents the cursing of the Jews for failing to accept Jesus. Yet another opinion is that the Tree of the Knowledge in Eden was also a fig tree, and that Jesus cursing the fig tree in the Gospels is actually Jesus attacking that which brought sin and death into the world.
Whatever explanation you hold to, the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew show an angry man shouting at a tree for not being in season. It seems silly, stupid even. And yet, in its ridiculousness, there is something profoundly human. Don’t we all get mad at things being the way they are? Haven’t we all lost our temper for very little reason before?
For the life of me, I do not understand this story. But it speaks to something deep within about what it is to be human, and shows that Jesus is fully human as well as being fully divine. And that, for all the confusion it continues to cause me, is why I love it.
Written by Nathan Olsen. Nathan works in the Careers department at Queen Mary University. He is a fairly recent SCM alum but feels old now that he works with students!