Jesus enters the temple and drives out everyone buying and selling there. He overturns the tables of the money-changers and the seats of the pigeon sellers, and he explains himself from two prophets in a single sentence. The first half comes from Isaiah, where God's house is a house of prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7). The second half comes from Jeremiah, who stood at the temple gate and told a people that trusted the building to protect them while their lives said otherwise that they had made it a den of robbers (Jeremiah 7:11). A den is where robbers retreat after the crime. The people in Jeremiah's day did wrong and then came to the temple as if it covered them. Jesus applies the same charge to the temple standing in front of him.
Then the space begins to do what it was built for. 14"the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them." Children are crying out 15"Hosanna to the Son of David!" The chief priests and scribes see the wonderful things he does and become indignant. Matthew reports their anger at the healing and the children's praise, and he says nothing of the tables. Jesus answers them with a psalm, 16"Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise." The people with the least standing in that building are the ones getting the praise right.
The next morning Jesus is hungry on the road back to the city, and he finds a fig tree with only leaves. A tree in leaf advertises fruit, and this one has none. He says 19"May no fruit ever come from you again!" and the tree withers at once. The scene is the verdict on the temple acted out a second time, in a smaller shape.
The two scenes explain each other. A temple full of sacrifice, festival, and crowded courts, producing no prayer for the nations; a tree full of leaves, producing no figs. Both look alive from a distance, and both receive the same verdict. Religious appearance has a way of settling in where the substance was supposed to be, and the appearance can be so complete that no one inside notices the difference.
The disciples marvel at how quickly the tree withered, and Jesus answers with a promise about faith: 22"whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith." Read beside the temple scene, the promise has a place to stand. A house of prayer is where this kind of asking happens, and Jesus has just cleared the room for it. Prayer needs no market and no system standing between the one who asks and the God who hears.
Look through your own days for leaves without figs, and for any noise that has crowded out prayer. Take one thing out of the way this week, and then ask God plainly for something you need and expect to be heard.
Prayer
Father, we have our own version of leaves without fruit, habits that look alive from a distance while producing little you could call prayer, justice, or welcome. Search us as you searched that temple and that tree. Where the appearance has outrun the substance, prune what must be pruned, and teach us a faith that goes to you directly and finds you there. In Jesus' name, amen.