As a reminder, NTI Mark is a fictional story that provides helpful symbols. Our role is to derive meaning from the symbols, and then live from the example provided by those symbols.
I am reminding you of this today, because today’s reading in NTI is quite a bit different from the way the stories are told in the Bible. In the Bible, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey and is hailed as king by crowds of people. The next day, he wakes up hungry. The Bible says:
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, 20-21
That fig tree “withered from the roots” and died.
After cursing the fig tree, Jesus went to Jerusalem. This is what happened next:
On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 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 11:15-17
Why does NTI tell the story differently? Because, NTI Mark is a fictional story that provides helpful symbols. Our role is to derive meaning from the symbols, and then live from the example provided by those symbols. So, NTI changes the story in order to provide us with an example we can follow and model ourselves after.
What about the story as it is told in the Bible?
The morning after Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was hailed as king, the Bible says:
The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. ~ Mark 11:12
As we know, Jesus fasted 40 days and 40 nights in the desert and refused the ego’s temptation to turn stones into bread. But on this day, Jesus sees a fig tree in the distance and, even though it wasn’t the season for figs, he gets so angry at the tree for not having fruit that he curses it, and it dies. Doesn’t it seem a bit unusual that physical hunger would have such a strong effect on him?
It’s interesting to note that “hungry” has more than one definition. The obvious definition is “feeling the need for food,” but notice some of these other definitions:
Having a strong desire or craving; grasping
Strongly motivated as by ambition; power-hungry
Extremely desirous, avid; hungry for recognition
It’s possible that thoughts of grandiosity entered into Jesus’ mind as he rode into Jerusalem the evening before, and so the next morning he woke up “hungry.” It’s also possible that he was beginning to sense the threat of arrest, and he was upset by thoughts about that. Whatever the case may have been, it appears he was not immediately alert to his thinking. He was temporarily deluded by his thoughts, and that’s what led to the outbursts with the fig tree and in the temple courts.
In NTI, Jesus doesn’t make the same mistakes that he made in the Bible. NTI provides us with a role model that we can emulate when we notice wrong-minded thoughts in our minds. However, the Bible story is helpful too, because it can be helpful to realize that even Jesus made mistakes. That point-of-view can help us forgive ourselves when we are not quickly alert to our thoughts.
