Given that at Southside we don't have anything official going on this week until a joint service with Ayr Baptist and New Prestwick Baptist on Friday night, I thought that it might be worth offering up a brief reflection each day throughout the course of this Holy Week.
"Why?" you are perhaps wondering. "Isn't this just any old normal sort of week?"
Well, in short, no - not exactly. True, as followers of Jesus we should be seeking to live every day of our lives in light of His life, death, and resurrection; and whilst this Sunday coming will be Easter Sunday we in fact celebrate the resurrection every Sunday (every day, in fact). Yet it still strikes me that in many churches and/or the lives of many Christ-followers that the attention which will be paid to this most pivotal week in our faith, especially when compared with the society driven hullabaloo of one of our other major festivals, Christmas, is relatively little.
And so given that if I were forced to choose which is more significant I would have to say Easter I thought a brief, daily reflection as we navigate through this week might be helpful...
So yesterday was Palm Sunday - the Sunday on which many churches will have remembered Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. And in Mark's version of events the next day was an incredibly significant one - one which I had the privilege of preaching a couple of years ago. Because on the Monday Jesus' clears the temple: He goes in there, none of the 'meek and mild' of Christmas carols, and overturns the benches of the money-changers and people selling merchandise within the temple courts. And either side of this high octane event Mark places the story of a fig tree: in the first part, a fig tree that wasn't producing fruit and which Jesus' cursed for the fact; and in the second part, just one day later, a fig tree which was now found withered from the roots.
And what I realised as I studied for preaching on this passage was the fact that this whole story of the fig tree was actually something of an enacted parable. The fig tree was Israel: and at times, and from a distance, it looked leafy and like it should be producing fruit. But then up close it was seen to fail at it's most basic of tasks: bearing fruit.
Now I realise that this whole thing could do with a lot more explaining but the gist of the challenge is this: are we like the fig tree paying something of a leafy lip service to following Jesus - we look good from a distance, but get up close and it's all bluster with no content? Or are we like the people that Jesus' is looking for: trees producing fruit in keeping with their purpose?
Because in this pivotal week leading up to His eventual crucifixion and resurrection the first thing that Jesus does is reveal something of God's priorities for His people: that we produce fruit in keeping with repentance (Matthew 3:8). Because Jesus' calls us as we are, but doesn't leave us as we are: He changes us to become more like Him; more like the head of the body which we read elsewhere in scripture is Christ Himself.
And so as we launch into this week I ask a simple question: does my life demonstrate leafy lip service or fruit producing faith? Because, as the example of the fig tree and the over turning of the tables in the temple demonstrates, there is only one sort of life that Jesus expects of those He has set free...
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