Under the Fig Tree

During the post-Civil War period in the United States, five words had the power to summon a vision of "heaven" in the eyes of tens of thousands of families: forty acres and a mule. These words said something much more than undeveloped land and a sturdy beast of burden. They were inspiring, revolutionary, even transformative, words — transforming one from subjugation unto mastery, from being owned-property to becoming a property owner, from helpless dependence to self-reliant independence, from hopelessness to building a future with its promise of prosperity. These words summoned up the vision of a Promised Land proclaimed boldly by General William Tecumseh Sherman in the late 1860s. In fact, 40,000 freed slaves were awarded forty acres a piece, under the administration of General Sherman with the backing of President Abraham Lincoln. But then Lincoln was assassinated. Andrew Johnson succeeded. And all would come to naught.

The vision would be lost. But the words lived on, becoming a kind of talisman, a "high sign," signifying a world of opportunity, hard work, and dignity.

The lifeworld in Palestine during Jesus' time also cherished a high-sign signifying a Land of Promise. In their case, eight words were required to weave the same magic spell: each man under his vine and fig tree. To those who understood, the vision was of fullness, abundance, both material and spiritual, a Land of Promise overflowing with milk and honey. We encounter these words in the First Book of the Kings:

Judah and Israel dwelt safely: a United Monarchy strengthened by its combined forces and all ruled by the same famously wise king, Solomon. All manner of things were very well from Dan in the far north to Beersheba in the far south. "From sea to shining sea," we would say.

These eight words rang out through the ages. Even foreigners knew of their power to inspire. When Judean King Hezekiah rebelled against the King of Assyria, to whom he had paid tribute as a vassal, the Assyrians sent delegates to the leaders among the people bearing a message:

In Polynesia it is said, "And every one will dwell under his own ulu tree (his breadfruit tree)." Feed a family for a day, and feed a family for a lifetime! It is the vision of paradise.

The message of the King of Assyria sought to weave a spell. In effect, it said, "Return to your golden age!" with the inevitable implication that the present age was a long falling-off from a former glory.

It is ironic that the restoration of Judah's glory should be promised by a Mesopotamian king, for it is the figure of the Mesopotamian king who had diminished this same glory, was the reason for the falling down. It was the Mesopotamian king who would destroy Solomon's temple, take the Judean elite into exile in Babylon, and who would forever pollute the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, dragging the people away from the holy place where they entered the Kingdom of Heaven and reducing them to idolaters offering blood sacrifice. What a difference here! From this luminous place where you enter into company with God to standing at an altar with blood dripping down your arms and the stench of dead animals filling the place.

As we know, the United Monarchy of Kings David and Solomon was certainly a golden period in the collective imagination of Israel and Judah. We might say that a great boundary was drawn in the Hebrew imagination: the splendor and fullness of the reigns of David and Solomon on one side and a world grown weary and old on the other — religion filled with God's light before the exile and a polluted and diseased semblance planted like a tumor within the body of Judah following the return from Babylon, as we have considered in past reflections.

To quote Prof. Yehezkel Kaufmann of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,

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The Incarnation of God's Son, sent by the Father to regather the Lost Tribes, is deeply rooted in the soil of this faded glory. As we have considered in other reflections, the pattern of Jesus' call of the Twelve discloses a Hebrew-Jewish distinction. Eleven of them descend from the lost tribes to the north of Judah, while one man's name means Judah (Judas is a variant spelling). The latter is a deceiver, a betrayer, a polluted man who represents the exiles that have been resettled in Palestine and financed by Mesopotamian overlords. Today we would say they are fake Hebrews. Under the influence of the Babylonians, a Second Temple would be built defiling the religion of Israel-Judah with animal sacrifice. These Babylonian Jews by Jesus time can only understand God in terms of blood sacrifice — a vile and twisted view leading them to offer God's own Son on a Cross in order to save their own skins, says the High Priest Caiaphas (Jn 11:50): "Him! Not us!"

The Eleven, by contrast, represent the people who were not exiled, who remained in the land, and, by that same measure, who continued to be faithful to the Israelite religion of Kings David and Solomon.

This is more than plausible speculation. We have a historical background which is able to situate us. When the Judean elite returned from exile speaking a new language (Aramaic), having rewritten the Holy Scriptures under Babylonian direction, practicing polluted religious rites whose substance was the blood of animals, and planning to build a Second Temple (completed in 516 BC), where these rites would desecrate the ideals of David and Solomon, many Judeans fled. Small wonder!

They joined a large colony south of Egypt on an island called Elephantine and built a temple there in 525 BC following the traditions of the Fathers. When the Persian king Darius heard of it, he issued an edict in 419 BC ordering the Hebrews in Elephantine to practice animal sacrifice in their temple.

As a footnote, the disgusting idea of mauling terror-stricken animals deeply offended the Egyptians. In their rage, they destroyed this temple, in which spiritual union with God had devolved into a stench-filled slaughterhouse.

This same rage we see in the face of Jesus, Who symbolically overturns the cult of blood sacrifice, dashing both men and their caged animals to the ground. As we have noticed in past reflections, when Jesus declares,

he uses the Greek phrase οικον εμφοριον / oikon emphorion. English Bible translators, not knowing what to make of this, fabricate a motivation putting words in Jesus' mouth concerning a "den of robbers." But that is not what Jesus says. He says "a house of trade." They ignore the hard fact that it is trade which Jesus has singled out.

And what is being traded? It is the absurd proposition that blood sacrifice might be exchanged for unity with God. That is, the rites of theosis, or sanctification, offered in Solomon's Temple had devolved under Babylonian influence into a swap of blood for salvation. Far from becoming sanctified, these men countenancing a blood-thirsty god offer their idol the blood of animals in order to save their own skins. It is a ritual act that plainly says, "You! Not me!" Jesus goes on to explicate this in His parable of the Priest and Levite, who leave an unconscious man bleeding on the side of the road as they hurry off to secure what they imagine to be their salvation.

Framing this most remarkable scene of Jesus overturning the cages of animals and whipping the men who provide them, is the fig tree. On the way to His appointment with history, Jesus passes a fig tree growing near the Second Temple. He declares

You see this cutting off from a golden age.

On the way out of Jerusalem, following His riotous demonstration, He passes the same tree with His Disciples, who say,

Can we see this clearly? Jesus' actions on the way to His demonstration say, in effect, the promise of a golden age and life is impossible with this temple. He then arrives to the temple. He actually makes the whip he will use to beat these men. And then on the way from the temple, the withered fig tree. It is so obvious once we understand what is being said.

Jesus' reply to the Disciples emphasizes the central importance of faithfulness (this whole section is on personal faithfulness) as opposed to the grisly trade carried on in the Temple. The significance to us is clear. The life of intimacy with God and faithfulness will lead to the Promised Land, figured in every man under his fig tree. This is all that matters. The sacrifice of bulls and goats might be important to Babylonians, but they could never be a substitute for the life of Divine faith.

While blood-sacrificing Mesopotamians might destroy Solomon's Temple on Mt. Moriah, while they might defile the temple at Elephantine dooming it to destruction, they could not destroy the interior temple that lived on in the hearts and imaginations of the faithful Israelites, who built their own Temple on Mt. Gerizim.

These people had never been exiled. And when they saw their confreres returning from Babylon, they saw what had happened to them: grotesquely deformed.

The Hebrew religion and lifeworld might have been extinguished in Jerusalem, but it continued to be the path to God in the living community of hearts and minds in the historical tribal regions to the north. As we have noticed, Eleven Disciples are selected from among these people, a theme which resurfaces in the call of Nathanael. Jesus says,

Nothing grotesque. No surprises here. "This is no Babylonian," Jesus says. "This is an Israelite man."

Now, if we should miss the momentous character of these words issuing from Jesus' mouth, as I did for decades, then let us pause to notice that this is the only place in the Christian Gospels where the word Israelite appears. This is very special moment.

On that score, St. John uses the term "Jews" sixty-six times — as compared to the handful used by Matthew (5), Mark (6), and Luke (5) — always referring to the Mesopotamian Judeans. He intends the obvious meaning: these people are not one of us; they are not among the faithful of God. That a man of Judah, whose name signifies Judean identity, should turn out to be the betrayer is an irony almost too much to bear.

But let us return to the call of Nathanael, which is the subject of our Gospel lesson this morning. As Philip ushers Nathanael into the presence of the Anointed One, Jesus offers him the sacred words:

And Nathanael replies with the counter-sign:

The exchange is brief. The words are few. And they are perhaps meaningless, even indecipherable, without first understanding the two worlds that lived side-by-side in the Levant: the Hebrews in the North and the Babylonian Jews in the South, who invented their own religion: Judah-ism.

The former age, the golden time of faithfulness, is abundantly evident in the words of Jesus who speaks of angels ascending and descending (Jn 1:51) of Heaven being opened, of lampstands (Mk 4:21), who fed the 5,000 and the 4,000 with manna (Mt 14:13-21; Mk 6:30-44; Lu 9:10-17; Jn 6:1-15), who is the Anointed One, and who will be understood to be a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb 7:1-10). For these are the things of glory that were lost following the desecration of Solomon's Temple, precisely these things: angels, the lampstand, manna, the anointing oil, the staff of the High Priest Aaron, and above all the throne of God the Ark of the Covenant, on which Jesus will sit when He returns in glory, the glory that had been lost in the sickening miasma of blood sacrifice. You see, these were the things that were in the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple. But following the reforms, and the Babylonian influence, the Holy of Holies was stripped of these precisely things. Everyone who hears Him knows that Jesus is the speaker of the true religion.

He is indeed the High Priest, the King of Israel. He is indeed the successor of David and Solomon .... and much more than that. And He is assembling priest-kings around Him, twelve in number, who will sit upon twelve thrones (Mt 19:28, Lu 22:30) as the Lost Tribes of Israel are regathered and ordered rightly once again in the fullness of time.

On this Sunday when we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy, let us remember above all that faithfulness to the traditions of the Fathers is the principal vocation of the Orthodox Church. The Babylons of today continue to issue their edicts. They continue to demand that we submit to the depraved and perverted ways of their idols. But the Orthodox Church that I know will never bend, will never bow, and will never permit heresies and twisted theologies to pollute her temples.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.