Mark 11:12-1

Jesus gets upset
Mark 11:12-19

A day has passed and now it’s Monday on the week leading up to Jesus’ death.  Today’s section of scripture might be called “Jesus gets upset” (so I titled this devotional “Jesus gets upset”).  Now, for those of you who say: “Jesus would never get angry, that’s a sin,” well, you may not have read the Bible too carefully.  Jesus (being fully God and fully man) was a man of passion, and Jesus had a lot to be angry about on this day

Is it a sin to get angry?  Psalm 4:4a tells us that we can be angry, so long as we do not sin.  That has often confused me, being that anger is one of the “7 deadly sins” of the medieval church.  On this particular day, Jesus was cursing trees and knocking over tables which shows that some aspects of being angry must be OK.  Jesus was without sin.  If the cause is a just cause, then it’s OK, and Jesus shows us two examples of what some call “righteous indignation” (being upset for a right reason) in these verses.

In part one, Jesus goes to find fruit on a fig tree and when He doesn’t find any, He curses the tree.  Mark clues us in that it is not fig season, so if there were figs, they’d be growing out of season.  Matthew 21:18-19 further tells us that the tree in question had leaves on it, and since figs and leaves always grow together on fig trees, Jesus expected to find some fruit, even out of season. When there wasn’t any fruit to be found, Jesus got upset.

OK, I’ll grant you that things are probably as clear as mud so far, so I’ll tell you why this story was included, and why Jesus was mad.  The answer is that this story is not just about figs; this story also serves as an allegory, or an illustration, about God and the Jewish people.  The Bible is full of these allegories, so if a Bible story doesn’t make sense on the surface, you need to think allegorically.  The fig tree represents the Jewish people; and this fig tree, like the Jewish people, was so well taken care of, that it/they were able to sprout leaves out of season.  Despite every advantage given them though, the Jewish people turned away from God and became “fruitless,” much like that fig tree.  That’s why Jesus was mad — His own people had rejected him, and very soon would kill him.

Part two makes more sense: no allegory.  Jesus gets mad at the moneychangers and merchants in the temple court.  Why?  God commanded the Jewish people a long time ago to sacrifice animals during the Passover in the temple of Jerusalem.  The people were still willing to do this in Jesus’ day.  Those who didn’t bring an animal to the temple could buy one in the temple court, but at gouge rates and only with “temple money” that needed to be converted from all other currencies; also at gouge rates.  The Pharisees were no doubt getting a kickback from these transactions.  Since this annual event was mostly mandatory, the traffic was high and so were the profits.  Jesus went a little berserk because these “robbers” were fleecing the people who came to seek God and in the process, were turning His house of prayer into a den of thieves.  The Pharisees did not like what Jesus did (turning over tables, releasing animals) or what He said (robbers!) and began to devise ways of killing Him.  He was ruining their profitability!