TGBC Saturday, 30 January 2021 Mark 11:12-14 and 15-19
They seem to be staying overnight in nearby Bethany and coming into the city and temple every morning for the day. Where are they lodging? You may think they're at the home of Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus, but this is Mark's story, and every writer has poetic license to tell his story as he will. In the case of our four canonical gospels, each tells his story according to what he's picked up from others, and in the oral traditions, and, in my mind, jotted down on yellow sticky notes to arrange in the sequence that makes most sense and best suits their agenda. In Mark's gospel maybe they're staying at the home of Simon the Leper, IDK.
Couple of little traditions, pericopes, stories today. Jesus curses the fig tree because the poor thing doesn't have any figs on it for him to pick and eat. I had fig trees for many years and they only gave me fruit in July and I loved to go out and pick figs and eat them directly off the trees on summer mornings; but I never got angry when there were leaves but no figs in the springtime. But Jesus curses the tree (in the Scholars Version they render Jesus words "damn you") and, in my mind, breaks its heart and it withers and dies.
What's Mark doing? It's a shocking anger story, and Mark is not trying to show Jesus in a bad light, he's just telling it like it was. And more: literarily for one thing, he's not simply telling stories, here Mark again is showing you (the reader) Jesus' power and authority, in this case over nature.
Then in the second pericope for today, they arrive in Jerusalem with the crowds, and go to the temple. Seeing the bustling marketplace of stalls with vendors scamming people left and right, selling tourists crippled and starving birds for sacrifice, cheating visitors as they exchange their worldly money for temple currency, Jesus becomes enraged and goes berserk. IDK, maybe he was still hungry and cranky from the fig tree incident? If he had stopped for breakfast at the Chick-fil-A on the road into Jerusalem all this wouldn't have happened. But as it happens, he turns over vendors' tables, pulls down their stalls, lets birds out of their cages, grabs a rope and starts whipping at people, coins are rolling everywhere, birds are fluttering in panic, people are screaming and shouting, the peace is disturbed - - what do you expect, the temple authorities are so angry that they want to kill him.
This is the sequence in the Synoptics, and it leads directly to enraged temple authorities determining to kill Jesus. Poetic license, different in the Gospel according to John, where Jesus "cleanses" the temple in the very beginning of the gospel story; and where the precipitating justification for killing Jesus is that he raises Lazarus from the dead and now the crowds are flocking to Jesus instead of respecting the temple authorities.
Incidentally, Lazarus only appears in John's gospel, but see earlier discussion of Secret Mark.
At any event, here's today's reading:
Jesus Curses the Fig Tree
(Matthew 21:18–22; Mark 11:20–25)
12 The next day, when they had left Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if there was any fruit on it. But when He reached it, He found nothing on it except leaves, since it was not the season for figs. 14Then He said to the tree, “May no one ever eat of your fruit again.” And His disciples heard this statement.
Jesus Cleanses the Temple
(Matthew 21:12–17; Luke 19:45–48; John 2:12–25)
15 When they arrived in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. 16And He would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.
17Then Jesus began to teach them, and He declared, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’ ? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’ ”
18 When the chief priests and scribes heard this, they looked for a way to kill Him. For they were afraid of Him, because the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching.
19 And when evening came, Jesus and His disciples went out of the city - -
+++++++++
- - presumably back to their lodging in Bethany.
For TGBC reading this morning I'm using the Berean Study Bible, here's my link https://biblehub.com/bsb/mark/11.htm in case anyone would like to check it out. As well as the websites Early Christian Writings, Early Jewish Writings, and Bible Gateway which has so many Bible translations in so many languages and versions, I've used Bible Hub for years because of its direct access to Greek and Hebrew texts including interlinear and parsing and word definitions. And now Bible Hub offering these new translations and formats that are free online. BTW, they call it the Berean Bible because of what Luke says was Paul's experience with these kind, generous and scripture-loving folks at Acts 17:
Paul in Berea
10The brothers
As with much in life, you don't need to know everything as long as you know how to find out, where to find it, and are alert enough to cull out the worthless.
RSF&BLM&PTL
T+