Today's fig tree cursed

In a couple of Sundays' time the sermon at our church will be on Mark 11:12-25, one of the most amazing and challenging sections of any gospel, I think.

For those of you who don't know it (and I just looked it up, so I cheated!) it's two stories wrapped round each other - Jesus sees a fig tree with leaves but no fruit and curses it - Jesus goes to the temple, sees people misusing the central building of the Jewish faith for their own ends and profit, and throws the people out - the disciples notice that the fig tree Jesus cursed has withered.

What is Jesus showing us? Well the fig tree is a visual aid (they didn't have PowerPoint in those days!) It's a visual aid to illustrate what will happen to the Jewish religion, which was set up by God's people according to God's Word but has become man-centred, not God-centred, a religion in which people choose what they want to believe and look for what they can get, instead of listening to what God tells them and looking for what they can give God. In the Old Testament, the Jews were often pictured as a fig tree - and so the cursing of the fig tree that doesn't bear fruit (which is its job) is a sign that the temple and the whole Jewish religion has been cursed too, because it isn't doing its job of worshipping God properly.

What does that have to do with 2007? Well, look around you - churches closing, churches half-full, churches with no-one under the age of 40 in their pews. An Anglican church which seems determined to tear itself apart because a majority of bishops and clergy don't want to listen to the Word of God anymore (you'll see a lot in the papers about the church breaking up over homosexuality in the next couple of months, but really the issue is whether we trust in God's Word in the Bible or not). Throughout Europe, cathedrals and churches which look nice but are full only of tourists, not of Christians.

Why? Because God cannot and will not bless those who claim to be his people but have twisted the Christian faith into their own religion, which allows them to do whatever they like and call it worshipping God. A church which doesn't preach the gospel cannot expect to prosper, because it cannot expect to enjoy God's blessing. It may look good - perhaps it attracts lots of people into it choir, maybe lots of people come because 'it's what you do', or because it's linked to a local school - but there will be no heart in it, and no fruit coming from it, because there's no gospel.

How do we avoid this fate in our churches? Well, Mark 11:22-25 shows us what Jesus considers true religion, true faith in him. 'Have faith in God'; 'ask...in prayer'; look for forgiveness from God and forgive others. Those are the foundations of the church which bears fruit: faith in God and His Son, prayerful hearts, and a knowledge of forgiveness of sins and a forgiving attitude to others. That's the sort of church we need to be in, and if we're not then we should move to one. Better to be in a church of three people, a tiny plant, which bears fruit for God, than in a huge, confident church, a massive tree, which is cursed and will wither.