Christ's cleansing of the Temple – and what happened next
After cursing the fig-tree, Jesus enters the Temple, casts out the traders, and begins His solemn teaching. And the key to it all is the fig-tree.
After cursing the fig-tree, Christ enters the Temple, casts out the traders, and begins His solemn teaching. And the key to it all is the fig-tree.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How Christ’s second purging of the Temple prepares the ground for His final teaching.
That this moment of severity reveals His sovereign authority over sacred things.
Why He turns from external cleansing and the destruction of the fig tree to an exhortation on faith and prayer.
For more on the context, and how it relates to “Our Lord’s strangest miracle” of the fig tree, see the Editor’s Notes to Part I.
The Barren Fig-Tree
Passiontide, Part I, Chapter II
St. Matt. xxi. 19–22; St. Mark xi. 13–26; St. Luke xix. 45–48.
Story of the Gospels, § 134
Burns and Oates, London, 1889
Headings and some line breaks added.
Cleansing of the Temple
‘And they came to Jerusalem, and when He was entered into the Temple, He began to cast out them that sold and bought in the Temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the chairs of them that sold doves.
‘And He suffered not that any man should carry a vessel through the Temple. And He taught, saying to them, Is it not written, My house shall be called the house of prayer to all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves!’
The circumstances which are thus described by St. Mark, with rather more fulness than St. Matthew and St. Luke, are very much the same as those of the former purging of the Temple by our Lord three years before. There is, however, a little more of severity on this later time, especially as on that occasion, when He ‘made a scourge of small cords,’ He did not overturn the chairs of the women, as they seem to have been, who sold the doves, for the lesser sacrifices, but simply told them to take these things away, and not make His Father’s house a house of traffic.
In other respects our Lord’s conduct was identical. Moreover, it seems as if He carried on the work of purgation which He had begun, for it is said of Him ‘that He would not suffer any man to carry a vessel through the Temple,’ which seems to imply that He remained there teaching, and when any one came by with a vessel in his hand, our Lord turned him back.
Teaching of Our Lord
We seem here to have traces of a teaching in the Temple which occupied either a whole day, of which we have no detailed account, or part of one of the days of which the details are given us.
It must be remembered that the ordinary teaching of the people by our Lord was usually of the same character, plain explanations of the law of God, moral instruction in virtue, a teaching which does not contain the controversy with His opponents which He entered on when He was challenged by them, when insidious questions were put to Him, and the like. The teaching of this kind which our Lord delivered in the Temple, seems to be, ordinarily, left by the Evangelists without special record, and it was probably much the same in substance with their own subsequent teaching in Jerusalem and elsewhere.
This then must have been the staple of His teaching, even during these days of the Holy Week, while the parables which He delivered in answer to the Pharisees and others, which are so clearly prophetic or descriptive of their own conduct and the manner in which they would be dealt with in His own Kingdom, are more particularly related, as being something out of the common method of His teaching.
We must not therefore be too much surprised if we find that the incidents of a day like this, the first of His teaching in the Temple after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, are but shortly recorded. It may have been otherwise, for we have no clear definite statements to guide us to the number of days spent by our Lord in the Temple, and the occupation of each.
It would seem as if our Lord’s enemies had hardly the courage to attack Him in any way while the people crowded round Him in the Temple, and that it was not till the day after the cleansing of the Temple that they ventured to come upon Him with their questions, beginning with the formal demand for the authority with which He has done so much which especially galled them, in assuming a command over the Temple itself, which interfered a good deal with their personal interests.
This may have been done then on the day subsequent to the cleansing itself, the greater part of which may have been employed by our Lord in peaceable teaching in the sacred precincts themselves. The day that followed was to be a day of fierce controversy, unlike the ordinary teaching of which we speak, but it begins quietly with the instructions given by our Lord to His disciples about prayer suggested by the incident of the cursing of the fig-tree.
The disciples remarking on the fig tree – the lesson of Our Lord
‘And when they passed in the morning they saw the fig-tree dried up from its roots. And Peter remembering said to Him, Rabbi, behold the fig-tree which Thou didst curse is withered away.
‘And Jesus answering said to them, Have the faith of God. Amen I say to you, that whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed and be cast into the sea, and shall not stagger in his heart, but believe that whatsoever he saith shall be done, it shall be done unto him.
‘Therefore I say unto you, all things whatsoever you shall ask when you pray, believe that you shall receive, and they shall come unto you. And when you shall stand to pray, forgive, if you have ought against any man, that your Father also Who is in Heaven may forgive you your sins. But if you will not forgive, neither will your Father Who is in Heaven forgive you your sins.’
That lesson which our Lord drew from the fig-tree as it stood withered before the eyes of the Apostles, was of a new character, as if He had wished not to dwell too long on the reprobation of His chosen people. The lesson which He drew immediately from the miracle was the power of prayer, as if He wished them rather to understand this from what they had seen, than the terrible doctrine of the final reprobation of the wicked who had paid no heed to grace.
Perhaps they had been discoursing on the power of prayer on their way to the daily work in the Temple. At all events, He chose this subject for the instruction to be drawn from the miracle rather than any other, and perhaps He did not wish them to dwell longer than was necessary on the miserable fate of the Synagogue.
It was more important that the disciples should receive some new encouragement in a matter which He was continually urging upon them, such as confidence in prayer.
For more on that lesson and encouragement on prayer – and how it relates to faith – see the next part.
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The Barren Fig-Tree
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