It’s strikes me that one of this week’s passages, Mark 11:14-16, is what author Scot McKnight might call “a blue parakeet.” In his book by that title (which I would recommend as a provocative, yet I think essentially faithful, postmodern approach to the Bible), McKnight tells the story of a blue parakeet showing up “in the wild” of his backyard. Obviously, it didn’t belong there among the sparrows and other native birds. But there it was, no doubt, having gained its freedom from a home in the neighborhood. It struck McKnight that at first the other birds were frightened of this large and very colorful intruder. But gradually they became accustomed to it and even hung around with it.
McKnight uses this the blue parakeet as a metaphor for those passages in the Bible that are strange, difficult to understand, or even offensive. There is a tendency for readers to simply ignore those passages rather than wrestle with why the Biblical writers (and the Holy Spirit!) would have included them. We get accustomed to them without engaging them. He argues that these “blue parakeet” passages are important because keep us from putting God into a nice, neat theological box that we think we can totally comprehend and control.
In Mark 11 we read, “The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 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.” [Mark 11:12-14 (NIV)] At first glance, this looks like Jesus is simply annoyed at not having figs to eat and curses the tree out of personal pique. That being the case, he seems much more like the Greek gods of myth who were too human in their frequent pettiness and angry outbursts. If that’s the kind of Lord we follow, then Christians better tread lightly out of fear of our being cursed ourselves.
What follows in the text is Jesus throwing the moneychangers out of the Temple. Then Jesus and his disciples have another encounter with the unfortunate fig tree. “In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!” “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.” [Mark 11:20-23 (NIV)]
If anything, the situation has gotten only stranger … or more like a blue parakeet. I’ll leave you with some questions to wrestle with:
Does Jesus have a specific teaching purpose in cursing the fruitless fig tree? If so, what might it be?
Does the fig tree incident have any connection with the cleansing of the Temple?
Why might Jesus talk about “faith” in connection with the dead fig tree?
I am not going to try to answer each of these questions for you. But I will take another run at this story next week.
–Pastor Mark
2 Comments
Blue Parakeet Theory
The Blue Parakeet analogy is an interesting way to compare the teaching in Mark 11. However, even though this teaching may seem strange, I think there are reasons why Matthew recorded this event.
• Reason one – the figless fig tree. I’m no fig farmer but my understanding of fig trees reveals that they produce both fruit and leaves at the same time, actually fruit first. Even though the time for figs was not yet, the tree had leaves so it should have had fruit also. Now here comes the creator of that tree, He observes it operating outside normal parameters therefore kills it. This action would be rather normal for a creator wanting to prevent a perverted plant from professing something it didn’t possess. However cursing this tree did set up the background for Peter’s proclamation and Jesus’ reply in Mark 11:21-22; 21 Peter remembered what Jesus had said to the tree on the previous day and exclaimed, “Look, Rabbi! The fig tree you cursed has withered and died!” 22 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God.” (NLT) This conversation prompted Jesus to explain how He used faith to kill the plant without touching it. After the reason two break I’ll give you the rest of the story.
• Reason two – the temple marketers. Like the hypocritical fig tree, Jesus disliked the way temple marketers were perverting the use of His Father’s house. The context of Mark 11 must be taken as a whole teaching; destroying the temple marketing program is not an isolated event in the middle of the fig tree story. The marketers are people while the fig tree a plant; Jesus dealt with them differently but I think both events stirred up anger in Jesus which prompted Him to deal with the problem. Tim Stein did a good job Sunday linking these actions by Jesus to our core convictions; actions do speak louder than words.
• Reason three – the rest of the story, how faith works. We don’t have the luxury of hearing the inflection in either Peter’s comment or Jesus’s reply but I don’t think they were casual. I think Peter was amazed, even shocked that Jesus could kill a tree by speaking to it while Jesus was frustrated that after about 3 years of discipleship Peter didn’t understand the power in faith. Jesus explained how He performed this miracle in Mark 11:23-25. Pages of text, albeit entire books, have been written on these three verses; neither space nor time nor my knowledge allows me to attempt a complete explanation about the operation of faith but some of the bottom line items in this scripture are: faith is released by speaking words, our belief system is very powerful and in Christ anything is possible. Maybe an entire year of bible study on faith would bring out a better understanding of this scripture.
I propose, instead of dismissing Mark 11:12-25 and its companion in Matthew 21:18-22 as a Blue Parakeet one should view this instruction on the operation of faith as some of the best instruction in the bible on how to achieve miraculous results in this physical world. By the way these three concepts do not plumb the depths of this passage of scripture.
Bob Cizek
Does God become frustrated on the lack of understanding of humans as pious as Peter?
Did Jesus need to destroy the tree to exhibit the power of conviction or operation of faith after he had already done so innumerable times by curing lepers and breathing life into the dead? That too to his staunches disciples?