I can’t imagine a true Southern yard without a fig tree.

A fig tree is more of a bush-like plant, and if it has room to grow, it will spread up and out, expanding to cover enough area to make mowing and weedeating around it an Olympic sport.

I can appreciate a good fig. One of the tastiest delights of the summer season is the first warm fig plucked right off the tree. You might have to knock off an ant or two. 

Critters enjoy fig trees. The fruit draws stinging insects, and the ample cover attracts other assorted wildlife. Snakes are fond of fig trees because they are a source of food – not from the fruit, but from birds drawn to a fig tree’s branches, and to rodents that are also fond of a fig tree’s plump produce.

But it’s not time yet for fig trees to produce fruit. They’re just now putting out young and tender leaves.

My dad has rooted at least fifteen fig cuttings and has them ready for planting. He has protected them from the last of the winter’s frosts.

He has asked me if I want one or two. Two, most likely, in case one of them dies. I’ve not got the best green thumb.

Figs are common in the Bible. It is the first specific plant mentioned in Scripture, as Adam and Eve sewed coverings for themselves out of fig leaves after they had disobeyed God and realized that they were naked.

I wonder if the serpent was hiding in the shade of a fig tree. One thing is for sure: his prey was much larger than a simple rat.

The fig tree is also a representation of Israel itself. Hosea 9:10 says, “When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree.”

And again, the Bible tells us of the glorious time when “Judah and Israel lived in safety, every man under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon” (I Kings 4:25).

According to the Gospels, it was on this day of Holy Week, our Monday, that Jesus also encountered a fig tree, and he cursed it:

“The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard him say it.”

Mark 11:12-14

It was not time for the fig tree to produce fruit, but Jesus had a purpose for His illustration. In this case, the fig tree represented the nation of Israel’s spiritual unfruitfulness.

For immediately after he cast judgment on the fig tree, he cleared the temple, overturning the tables of the traders and money changers, who were making a large profit: “And as he taught them, he said, ‘Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers’” (Mark 11:17).

I picture an SEC football game, and the faithful pilgrims have arrived. The buying and selling of merchandise alone, just outside the gates, will average in the millions of dollars. Scalpers are hawking tickets, and others are overcharging for parking spots and hotel rooms. It’s a party, for sure, one in which a lot of unholy things will happen.

That was what the worship at the temple had turned into, or something fairly close.

I had always wondered, when I was a kid, why my grandmother frowned upon my taking whatever fundraiser sheet I’d been given at school to church. I liked being the high seller to earn a prize, usually something cheap, plastic, and sticky, like Slappy Hands. Remember those? They extended like a frog’s tongue, grabbing onto surfaces and getting covered in the first two minutes with dirt, hair, fuzz, boogers, etc. 

What better place to cash in than at the church house? It was full of my parents’ and grandparents’ friends, and I knew they wouldn’t tell me no.

Pizza kits? Jewelry? Wrapping paper? Tupperware? All bought and sold at the church, until my grandmother reminded me of Jesus’s throwdown in His Father’s house.

It’s not as if I was selling doves for sacrifice, nor was I charging to change currency into what would be accepted at the temple. But I still wasn’t going to church for the right reasons. 

All I wanted was a set of Slappy Hands. 

Thanks, Nanny. That’s a lesson that stuck with me.

Your fig tree was large and broad and always heavy with fruit. The dogs enjoyed the shallow kiddie pool that you placed in its shade. It wasn’t exactly living water, but it was an Eden all in its own right.

Yes, I’ll have a fig tree, maybe two.

Let them be loaded one day.

But please, Lord, no snakes.