Because of my travel schedule, I’ve been away from Reformed Journal quite a bit over this first half of 2025. I’m so glad for people like Nancy Knol who have so beautifully taken my spot!

That also means that I decided to write about something today that I actually shared with my congregation way back during Holy Week. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

This year, I was assigned to lead our reflections on Monday. Other days certainly get better marketing: Spy Wednesday, Maundy Thursday. But it’s still an interesting and important day, this day after the excitement of Palm Sunday and the day before Judas decides to betray Jesus.

At least as chronicled in Mark 11, it’s book-ended by journeys into and out of Jerusalem, passing by a fig tree. In between, Jesus clears out the money-changers in the temple. As a reminder, here’s the full passage:

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.

15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17 And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

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. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

At first glance, it seems like an odd juxtaposition of events. And I’ll be honest: I’ve always felt sort of badly for that fig tree. I mean, it’s just standing there, minding its own business. It’s not even “fig season,” after all. So why would Jesus curse it, so that when the disciples pass by it again it has withered? (And in other gospels it withers ON the spot).

This led me down a rabbithole to understand figs. Here’s a few fun facts I came across:

• Some rabbis thought that the “forbidden fruit” of Genesis was the fig because of Adam and Eve using fig leaves to clothe themselves.
• Figs are one of the very first (if not THE) fruits cultivated. According to Harvard Magazine, “New archaeobotanical evidence pushes the dawn of agriculture back to 11,400 years ago, when humans living in a village eight miles north of ancient Jericho began propagating seedless figs.”
• Figs are associated with fertility in the ancient world. The Babylonian goddess Ishtar took the form of a fig tree. Buddha came to enlightenment under one. 

But significantly, the fig is not a fruit. Bon Appetit terms it an “inverted flower,” or the fabulous word, inflorescence.

What’s also context for this story is that the fig develops before its leaves. So when Jesus sees the tree “in leaf,” it’s not unrealistic that there could be some fruit already. 

Even more significant is its pollination process–which is most important for our purposes. I learned a great deal from the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden website, which explained:

“There are over 750 types of figs worldwide, each one requiring pollination by its own unique species of wasp,” [Mary] Lincoln [Exhibitions' Assistant] explains. Fig wasps are so small, out of sight, and so seemingly insignificant that they don’t have a common name. But they are essential to the figs that have coevolved with them over 65 million years in synchronized service to each other. The rhythm of their respective life cycles is fine-tuned to meet each other’s needs at just the right time. Figs offer a snug nursery where fig wasps can lay eggs and raise young. In turn, wasps distribute fig pollen, enabling the plant to make seeds and reproduce. Theirs is a unique relationship, one of the best examples of mutualism in nature, where both of its members and the wider ecosystem benefit.

When it comes to fig pollination, it’s what’s inside that counts. An immature fig emits an enticing odor to signal that it is ready to be pollinated. Attracted by that odor, the female fig wasp burrows deep into the fig, tunneling a passageway for herself so narrow that she loses her wings and pieces of antennae in the process. She won’t need them. She will die in the dark interior of the fig after her life’s work here is done.

Once inside, she moves from flower to flower, laying her eggs and spreading the pollen she has brought with her from the fig where she was born. The flowers she pollinates will soon produce seeds; the eggs she lays will hatch, her larvae feasting on the tissue of their small, silent nursery. “Male fig wasps hatch first, tiny and wingless, to mate with their unborn sisters inside the fig,” says Lincoln. “Then they tunnel their way out and die. The females are pregnant when they hatch, ready to make their own exit through the same tunnel.” Born and bred inside a fig, female fig wasps emerge from their edible incubators carrying a cache of pollen, ready to lay their own eggs in another immature fig and begin the lifecycle of a new generation. 

I’m so struck here by the sacrifice of the female fig wasp: “tunneling a passageway for herself so narrow that she loses her wings and pieces of antennae in the process. She won’t need them. She will die in the dark interior of the fig after her life’s work here is done.” Call me an English professor, but that sounds like a Christ figure in her descent into death, giving her very self to bring life.

Maybe it helps us connect to Jesus’s behavior in the Temple, where he is downright waspish with the those profiting off of those who have come to worship.

And though the fig tree and the Temple may initially seem unrelated, it doesn’t take too much pondering to see that the fig tree and the activities in the temple are both the same: they are not doing the work for which they were created. No figs, not worship. Just empty show—a seemingly healthy tree, full of leaves. But no fruit. A temple made for worship, debased by buying and selling—and theft. A “house of robbers.”

Where’s the fruit?

In both cases, I feel like the pollination is to blame. Clearly, the fig tree doesn’t have its wasps. But neither does the temple. Instead of people working at the temple to increase piety, they are decreasing it. They’re not self-sacrificially giving of themselves to produce the environment for spiritual growth. 

So what might that pollination be? Jesus gives an indication when he reminds the disciple that the temple is a “house of prayer for all people.” And as the passage comes to an end, notice his emphasis on prayer: 

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. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

In other words, we can’t produce our own fruit. But we can in conversation with God–that is, in prayer—access the activating power for spiritual growth. The promise here is that conversation with God can do amazing things—the metaphor of the mountain into the sea. What could be more powerful than that? But it’s also noteworthy that we also have to be in right relationship with each other, forgiving each other as we are forgiven. As with the fig, the channel of activation has to be open and unobscured. 

One takeaway—as our little individual fig trees and institutionally in our corporate gatherings: we know that nothing comes without recognizing the waspishness of the cross: Jesus gave up everything to activate the fruit of our lives, delicious in its abundance. 

Without that, we may look healthy from the outside, but really we are as good as withered already. 

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash