Angry Jesus?

"The Vine Dresser and the Fig Tree" by Tissot
(public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

We sap some of the Oom Pah Pah from the Christ of Incarnation when we insist upon every icarnate word or deed being hyper spiritual.

What Jesus does is breathe meaning into everything upon revisitation and reflection.

It would not be sinful and need not be purposeful for Jesus, caught up in the flurry of the moment, to be angry at a fig tree not producing fruit out of season and curse the tree - especially if he could use it the next day as a teaching point that prayer is powerful.

Our anger is not sinful. What we do in anger or speak in anger or how we cling to anger, these things are under our control and can turn to sin.

Jesus, instead, directed his anger to a wall in the form of a fig tree and illustrated the power of faith, words, and prayer.

He demonstrated that things do not have to be hyper spiritual in order to have meaning and significance.

He taught us to be in charge of using and directing our words of faith.

Mark 11:12-26

On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.

He said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again."

And his disciples heard it.

Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers."

And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city. In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.

Then Peter remembered and said to him, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered."

Jesus answered them, "Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. "Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses."

Skip the redundancy, but read the insightful comments on this original post.