Remembering the fig tree

One of the interesting bits about remembering the Passion Octave this year with many different groups has been the role of the fig tree. I wonder if you remember it?

During his comings and going around Jerusalem in Holy Week, Jesus is remembered for cursing the fig tree. In the first place he sees a fig tree that has no figs on it. He's a bit cross and curses it. Sure enough when they pass it the next day the disicples notice the fig tree has died.

Various people who write about written down Bibles comment on this small but perverse incident as the only ocassion Jesus is recorded as cursing nature. So what do you make of it?

In the various rememberings of the Passion Octave I've done this year a number of different patterns emerged. In the first example there was a group who remembered curing of the fig tree three times in Holy Week, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. This proved to be a real laugh: Oh no, not the fig tree again! Another group didn't have the fig tree in at all - the memorable fig tree had become the forgotten fig tree.

This week Jane drew my attention on her blog of Laughter and Liturgy (that's listed on the side of my blog page) to a parable of trees in recorded in Judges chapter 9 in the written down bible. This parables features a number of trees the second of which is the fig tree.

It reads: 'Then the trees said to the fig-tree 'You come and be our king'. But the fig-tree answered 'In order to govern you, I would have to stop producing my good sweet fruit'.' [Judges 9:10-11].

So I wonder if the link is kingship. Holy Week is a different kind of king week. From Palms to Cross and early morning Garden, Jesus is demonstrating ways of contradicting the kingship ideas of his day, and ours. In cursing the fig tree is he saying something about his own refusal to be co-opted into the schemes and plans of human beings. There's no fruit on the fig tree and there's no chance Jesus is going to agree to be king either. Yet at the same time, he goes beyond the kingship ideas of those around him and produces fruit for those willing to to see beyond the bare branches of the fig tree. It is the kind of image that contains the sort of paradox Jesus seems to have been good at: not what we are expecting, challenging our expectations and interpretations.

As we approach the Feast of Christ the King again this year (this Sunday) may be a bit of remembering of Christ the King and Fig-Tree Curser would be in order.