Humans come up with all kinds of gods. The details vary but
the basic character tends to be the same. The gods always tend to be big, and
attractive, and glorious, and powerful, and for all those reasons they tend to
zap and destroy whoever is not all those things so their own divine reputations
won’t be sullied by association.
I have some
familiarity with a lot of those gods. I even have a degree in gods and
god-things. But in all my studies, I’ve only ever come across one god who doesn’t
just do big, amazing things but silly, minor things as well. With so much predictable similarity between all the gods that
humans have come up with, it’s striking that there would only be one who anyone
has ever claimed might take a break from forming the eons to eat an apricot or
banter with the guys at the drugstore. Throughout human history we’ve conceived
of many gods that were more grand, more attractive, more clearly in control,
but I’m astray to find another who might have to replace the wheel bearings on
a cart or observe the thirty minute rule between lunch and swimming.
There’s a story in the Gospels of Jesus getting mad and
kicking a fig tree. A fig tree! Isn’t it great? In seminary, the arbitrariness
of this story used to drive me batty as I struggled fruitlessly to wrestle some
cosmic meaning out of it. Anymore, I love it specifically because it’s so
arbitrary. Think about it. Everyone knows that gods are big and cosmic and
sovereign. They have been ever since elders first sat around campfires and told
stories about them. Many of those gods are vengeful and have a short fuse, but
when they get angry, they do things like blast enemy armies with lightning bolts
and rattle the pillars of the earth. They don’t take it out on fig trees. I
love it. The whole episode is so stupid!
When some keen observer of the world’s normal patterns
writes the next bestselling exposé on how the stories about
Jesus in the gospels are a bit implausible, I bet she'll leave out the part
about the fig tree. They never mention that story. A god who turns water into
wine and makes blind men see is a bit suspect. But what do you do with a god who
does some venting on an angiosperm?
Christians in our culture always want to fight back when
they’re called fools for believing this stuff. Why do they always fight back?
Do we ever listen to ourselves? Our claim is that the Alpha and Omega of the quantum energy, and exploding quasars,
and dark matter of the cosmos one time threw a tantrum on the nearest flora.
And it’s not like the author of Mark even apologized for him. There’s no verse
that goes on to say, “Later, as he was checking to see if his foot was broken,
he regretted how unsanctified this action must have looked at a time when a
young god should be coming into his own.” Instead, he just casually wrote down
that the second person of the trinity and agent behind all history kicked a fig
tree like it was a journal entry on a particularly slow day. When people call
Christians fools for believing this stuff, I believe the proper response is to
raise one’s right hand and say, “Guilty.”
Now, if you’re reading this and you’re willing to allow that
I’m foolish enough to worship such a person, it may not be clear yet why I’d
find something as weirdly specific as this little dendro-assault to be
important.
As I write, my late brother-in-law weighs heavy on my mind.
He would have been 25 today. We lost him in 2012 after a long struggle with
bi-polar disorder. He was a natural around a stove and a pretty gifted drummer.
When I was dating my wife, and he still wasn’t sure about me, we were able to
connect over the fact that we both loved every album ever made by Canadian
trio, “Rush.” It’s amazing how even the seemingly insignificant little quirks
of the people we love become the most cherished memories of a grieving parent
or sibling.
I’ve been introduced to many different kinds of gods who do
and care about many magnificent things. But at no point in my life have I even heard
of another god who takes notice of the most minute factoids of our
personalities and the fleeting details of our stories. Most gods have bigger
fish to fry.
Only one who might kick a fig tree in a temporary lapse of
composure can I imagine might also cherish the memory of how one kid in a small
Midwestern town liked to sauté his asparagus or learn the
drum fills to “2112.” Not just the limitless expanses of the cosmos, not just
the fathomless folding and unfolding of eternity, but these tiniest character
traits, so quickly forgotten in the moment, but so infinitely precious in
hindsight—these are the oddball little components of life that this oddball god
has deemed worthy of the divine time. The God of Jesus Christ doesn’t overlook,
in the name of “the big picture” or “not
losing sight of the forest for the trees,” the funny little passions and
one-of-a-kind idiosyncrasies of real people that lived and longed and laughed and
loved. The God of Jesus Christ has
decided that those are the things that really matter, the things worth
participating in, the things that make people irreplaceable, the things that
are worthy of redemption and saving.
That’s what we celebrate during Holy Week.
No comments:
Post a Comment