Not giving a fig: #EasterLIVE

I’ve been enjoying following and taking part in EasterLIVE, a Twitter stream telling the story of Easter through the eyes of different characters. My main character is a pub landlord called Benny who has hired out his upper room to a group of Galileans for a party on Thursday night. However, I became rather side tracked yesterday and found myself reflecting on the experience of a fig tree.

On Monday of Holy Week Jesus and the disciples head from Bethany towards Jerusalem and the Temple. This is what happens according to Mark 11:

¹² The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. ¹³ 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. ¹⁴ Then he said to the tree,“May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

The story continues the next morning as Jesus and the disciples again return to Jerusalem:

²⁰ In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. ²¹ Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”
²² “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. ²³ “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

In order to understand the story we need to recognise the literary structure that Mark frequently uses in his gospel. Mark often pairs incidents together so that they interpret each other in what can be called a framing technique. The narrative begins with Incident A, Incident B then takes place and finally Incident A continues and concludes. In Mark 11 the fig tree is Incident A and what takes place in between the beginning and conclusion of the story is Incident B Jesus prophetic action in the Temple (Mark 11:15-19). The fig tree therefore symbolises Jerusalem and the Temple and Jesus’s words and actions are a prophetic judgement on them.

But I can’t help wondering how the fig tree owner would have felt when he discovered the fate of his property.

Table of Hope

At morning prayer today we spent a few moments reflecting on a painting of the Last Supper. HAPAG NG PAG-ASA (Table of Hope) was painted by Joey Velasco and depicts a group of street children in the Philippines in place of the disciples gathered around Jesus.




The artist explained that the original intention behind the painting was to remind his family to be grateful for the food they have. Having finished the painting Velasco went back to find out more about the lives of each of his subjects and the painting took on fresh meaning with each story. The girl on the far left clutching the bag, for example, lives in a graveyard.

In this haunting video Sa Kambas ng Lipunan (On the Canvas of Society) Velasco talks about the painting and the stories of the children behind it. It’s quite long but well worth watching if you have the time.



Joey Velasco died in July 2010 of kidney failure.

It’s always been messy

I’ve been reflecting on a comment from Bishop Christopher’s sermon at the Chrism Service this morning in Chelmsford Cathedral. He pointed out that Messy Church is not some recent initiative for outreach and worship coming from the pages of a glossy magazine; it’s what the church has always been called to be. God, in Christ, engaged with the world and it was a messy business. The messiness of slopping water from a bowl as feet are washed; the messiness of the blood, tears and earth at Golgotha; the running, stumbling, breathlessness, confusion and garbled exclamations of Easter Sunday. The church runs the risk of treating messiness as an inconvenience and an embarrassment, when it should be a characteristic of what we are called to in proclaiming the Good News and engaging with the world around us.

As +Christopher spoke I remembered a Maundy Thursday service at Waltham Abbey where I served in the early 1990s. The then Bishop of Chelmsford had come to preside at the evening service and as part of the liturgy there was a foot washing ceremony. The chairs were carefully set out by the vergers, preselected members of the congregation came forward with their feet already scrupulously clean. Shoes and socks were carefully removed and the bishop, in a spotless purple cassock with a perfectly ironed clean towel tucked in his belt, knelt before each and washed their feet. I confess that before the service I had been tempted to tell those chosen for the foot washing to run barefoot around the field next to the Abbey church and tread in some nicely maturing dung. The whole experience was of an expertly choreographed ritual embedded in the liturgy. Was this really what Jesus was about? One of my colleagues commented that a more powerful action would have been for the bishop to go and make the tea for the refreshments after the service and then wash up!

If we follow the example of our Lord then things are bound to get messy; they always have. Messy Church is something we should embrace and rejoice in, not shy away from or try and tidy up.

still broken

About 11:30am on Monday I glanced out of my diocesan office window and wondered what was going on as I watched various cassocked men heading for Chelmsford Cathedral. Then I remembered that on Monday of Holy Week the cathedral hosts the ‘alternative’ Chrism service. Each Maundy Thursday a Chrism service is held in the cathedral and all the clergy of the diocese are invited to attend. It is an opportunity to gather together; to renew ordination vows; to bless oils which will be used in parishes throughout the year and to celebrate the meal Jesus gave us. However, as I said, an alternative service took place on Monday.

When the Church of England decided to ordain women as priests in the 1990s arrangements were put in place for those who could not support the move. These arrangements were set out in Appendix B to Ordination of Women to the Priesthood: Pastoral Arrangements and provide sacramental care as well as oversight for opponents of the ordination of women to the priesthood. Basically, provision is made in each diocese for a Provincial Episcopal Visitor, sometimes known as a ‘flying bishop’, who offers oversight to those who cannot accept the ministry of the diocesan bishop because of his acceptance of and participation in the ordination of women. It was these clergy who I saw going to the cathedral on Monday for their alternative Chrism service in Holy Week.

I thought back to another view through a window during Advent 2008. I was looking through the window of the small Franciscan church called Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives. The church is constructed in the shape of a tear and the view looks out over Temple Mount and the Old City of Jerusalem. This is traditionally remembered as the site where Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).

So there you have it: Holy Week, when we remember what God has done for all of us through his Son the Lord Jesus Christ and we have two separate services because we can’t agree on what Jesus calls us to be and do in his name. We can’t even share together around the Lord’s table.

Jesus wept and we should hang our heads in shame.

"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17:20-22

Crowd trouble

One of my favourite Holy Week hymns is Samuel Crossman’s My Song is Love Unknown. The third verse always stands out for me:

Sometimes they strew His way,

And His sweet praises sing;

Resounding all the day

Hosannas to their King:

Then ‘Crucify!’ is all their breath,

And for His death they thirst and cry.

Doug Chaplin has posted an interesting blog questioning whether the crowd that welcomes Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is the same crowd that then turns on him on Good Friday. Doug comments:

Every year, on or after this day, someone – sooner or later – and usually in a sermon, draws our attention to the “fact” that the crowds crying “Hosanna” on Sunday were crying “Crucify” on Friday.

I’ve already noted that in Luke’s Gospel it is the accompanying disciples who cry “Hosanna”. Luke, for one, doesn’t make the psychologising identification beloved by preachers, but which is read into some kind of harmonised “gospel story”.

I happened to be reading the section in Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan’s book The Last Week yesterday, in which they reflect on the role of the crowd in Mark. They make an interesting comparison between the Gospels and stress that in Mark the crowd is supportive of Jesus, forcing the hostile authorities to abandon any attempt at a public arrest (Mk 14:1-2) and therefore dependent on Judas to betray Jesus. They note:

• Mark has five references to a supportive/protective crowd between Sunday and Tuesday (11:8-10; 11:18; 11:32; 12:12; 12:37)
• Matthew has three of Mark’s five (21:8-9, 26, 46)
• Luke three or four depending on how one understands ‘the whole multitude of the disciples’ during the entry. (19:37-38, 47-48; 20:6,19)
• John only has the entry into Jerusalem (12:12-18)
• They also cite Josephus for a pro Jesus crowd and anti Jesus authorities: Jewish Antiquities 18:63-64.

What is clear is the recognition of a supportive crowd forcing the authorities to abandon any confrontation in public. Even if Luke is only referring to the disciples for the entry into Jerusalem, the crowd are still identified as supportive early in the week. Is this the crowd that turns on Jesus? Crossan and Borg argue against this and suggest a smaller, different crowd provided by the authorities. They don’t give much support for this argument except to say that it is unlikely the crowd from earlier in the week would be allowed into Herod’s palace.

To return to the hymn. Why I find it so powerful is that it reminds me how fickle I am in my own faith. Times of passion, joy and dedication are so quickly followed by periods of apathy and complacency. I may not be shouting out ‘Crucify’ in open hostility but the blandness of my discipleship is still depressing. It is also sobering to remember that one of Jesus’ most dedicated followers may not have shouted ‘Crucify’ on that first Good Friday but he did deny any knowledge of Jesus when the crunch came.

So I make the last verse of the hymn a prayer for this week:

Here might I stay and sing,

No story so divine;

Never was love, dear King!

Never was grief like Thine.

This is my Friend, in whose sweet praise

I all my days could gladly spend.